A large variety of access network technologies and architectures that provide wide service portfolio to the customer are available for the network operators. Each of the potential access network architectures and technologies varies in complexity, network functionality, services supported and overall network costs. A detailed comparison of the economic viability of different access network scenarios is crucial for operators due to the high cost of this network segment. This paper identifies all essential elements of a general framework for the techno-economic analysis of different access network technologies and architectures, as well as describes some specific issues/problems related to the techno-economic evaluation of next generation (NG) access networks. The goal is to have at operator's disposal a methodology allowing the techno-economic comparison of the proposed access network solutions and their introduction/rollout.

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Optical access networks provide a future proof platform for a wide range of services, and today, several operators are deploying fibre to the home (FTTH) networks. Installing an FTTH infrastructure, however, involves very high investment cost. Therefore, a good estimation of the investment cost is important for building a successful business strategy and, consequently, to speed up the FTTH penetration. In this paper, for calculating the amount of cable and fibre in the outside plant together with the associated civil works, and the number of required network elements, two different approaches are investigated: (1) geometric modelling of the fibre plant based on approximate mathematical models and (2) geographic modelling of the fibre plant based on map-based geospatial data. The results obtained from these two approaches can then be used as input for preliminary investment cost calculations and/or techno-economic evaluations. Compared to more complex and accurate geographic modelling, we verify that especially with uneven population density and irregular street system, simple geometric models do not provide accurate results. However, if no geospatial data is available or a fast calculation is desired for a first estimation, geometric models definitely have their relevance. Based on the case studies presented in this paper, we propose some important guidelines to improve the accuracy of the geometric models by eliminating their main distortion factors.

A geographic approach is proposed to accurately estimate the cost of FTTH networks. In contrast to the existing geometric models, our model can efficiently avoid inaccurate estimation of the fibre infrastructure cost in the uneven-populated areas.

In this paper we take into account the business aspects of building wireless and optical access networks. A detailed view on broadband access network deployment costs, including both capital (CapEx) and operational expenditures (OpEx) is given. Main cost components of optical and wireless access networks have been identified, and the deployment costs of different architectures have also been presented

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This paper analyzes a novel methodology for calculating the throughput in a device, which hosts multiple virtualized network interconnect devices (i.e. virtual routers). The proposed methodology, which extends the well-known procedure (for non-virtualized IP routers) adopted from RFC 2544, considers the impact of heterogeneity of the offered load at the level of virtual routers. The utility of this methodology is demonstrated, analyzing the throughput of virtualized routers by four different virtualization platforms that use two different techniques, which are the paravirtualization (Xen and Citrix Xen) and the OS-level virtualization (Linux Containers and Jails).The results indicate that the virtualization platforms behave differently to distribution of traffic load among virtual routers. Finally, the need for the proposed methodology is motivated by performing extensive throughput tests on the aforementioned platforms at different work points of the network device (i.e. different offered traffic load distribution between virtual routers).