Optus has validated Live Protect on Cisco 8000 Series routers, supporting Optus’ work to strengthen network resilience and maintain reliable services for customers. This world first is the latest milestone in Optus’ ongoing investment in network innovation.
Live Protect helps harden supported infrastructure without disrupting services while a software fix is tested and validated. This allows Optus to maintain the rigorous testing and change controls needed across critical network infrastructure, while significantly reducing the time it takes to put protective measures in place across the national network.
The validation builds on close to a year of sustained Optus network innovation across 5G, spectrum, AI and automation, focused on increasing capacity, responding faster to network issues and strengthening network reliability.
As AI accelerates the pace of technology and network operations, Live Protect gives Optus another way to respond faster, applying targeted protections without restarting affected network equipment.
Sri Amirthalingam, Chief Technology Officer at Optus, said network resilience depends on how safely an operator can respond to change while maintaining the services customers rely on.
“Keeping the network up and running for customers is fundamental. What matters is being able to make changes quickly and safely, without disrupting the services people rely on,” Mr Amirthalingam said.
“Customers should not have to choose between a network that remains up to date and one that stays available. Our engineering responsibility is to deliver both,” Mr Amirthalingam said.
“AI is changing the time available to respond, but the dependencies across a national network do not become less complex because we need to move faster. Compressing the testing process can introduce the very disruption we are trying to prevent. We need to change that relationship.”
“The time needed to deploy a permanent fix should not determine how long we wait before applying a protective measure. Live Protect allows us to separate those activities, applying a targeted control while the permanent update goes through rigorous validation.”
“For customers, the measure is whether we can adapt the network safely while keeping their services running. That is the outcome the technology has to serve.”
The validation forms part of Optus’ broader IP network modernisation partnership with Cisco. Optus has also validated Live Protect on Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches in production.
“The existing approach to software lifecycle and patching practices won’t work in the new era of AI. Live Protect is one of the ways we are helping customers like Optus harden their Cisco Infrastructure and this validation is great confirmation of our strategy,” said Andy Schutz, Vice President, Product Management, Cisco.
The next phase is expected to extend validation to Cisco Network Convergence System (NCS) Series routers, which would build on the current work by reducing manual deployment steps while retaining the operational checks needed to manage network changes.
