How Network Automation with Confluent Helps BT Stream TV Signals Across the UK

What this post added

This post details BT's implementation of Confluent Platform and Apache Kafka for network automation in their TV signal distribution infrastructure. It describes the Vena orchestration system, which leverages Kafka for reliable message distribution and event-driven architectures. The post outlines two key use cases: event-driven network onboarding using LLDP events and syslog connectors, and real-time network monitoring and fault detection. It highlights the technical reasons for choosing Kafka (de facto standard, ecosystem, stream processing) and Confluent (resilience, automated deployment, replication, monitoring, security, support). The post also discusses the challenges of a legacy network and the need for scalability and high availability in handling network events and potential alarm storms.