Overview of implementation constraints for flexible and intelligent hybrid networks

Modern communication relies on a variety of networks. A hybrid network for simultaneous use of different access and backbone technologies is favorable to minimize installation costs and to maximize throughput, availability and user experience. In further developing strategies and implementations for hybrid networks, future requirements — not only of pure communication — should be taken into account as well as communication for control reasons and market balancing as in smart grids. There is no sense in installing even more different communication infrastructure in parallel if we can fulfill the requirements with a flexible implementation of hybrid networks. In this paper we try to highlight several issues in hybrid networks as reliability, latency, security, and interworking and show possible methods of solutions and their interaction.