fferent transport attributes. Distributed edge computing, whether for enabling virtual RAN (vRAN)/cloud RAN (cRAN) operation, serving the disaggregated transport network, or hosting end user Option 1 Aggregation Backhaul Backbone Less than 10 ms latency one way ((III) Option 2 Midhaul Aggregation RU+DU (v)CU Backhaul Backbone Less than 5 ms latency one way ((III)>) Option 7.x Option 2 (v)DU Midhaul Aggregation Fronthaul (v)CU Backhaul Backbone Max 15-20 km ~75 us latency one way Figure 6.6.1 Backhaul, midhaul, and fronthaul (xHaul) transport networks. 6.6 Transport Network applications, drives yet more sophisticated transport network designs with compute resources and connectivity of distributed physical and virtual components. Integration of transport and computational components will produce a new xHaul infras- tructure. To target higher data rates, new fiber Ethernet technologies (e.g. N*10G, 25G, and higher rates) will supplant the GbE links prevalent for 4G, although some passive optical net- work (PON) solutions may only be sufficient for the near term. To tackle lower latency, new time-sensitive networking (TSN) and deterministic network- ing (DetNet) technologies are being introduced. New protection switching, fast reroute, self-healing, loop free alternatives, and frame replication technologies may be employed to address reliability challenges. Co-existence of traffic with wildly diverging requirements mandates support for network slicing across the transport network. Backhaul networks for 5G may be based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), optical transport network (OTN), PON, Carrier Ethernet, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), pure IP, segment routing (either MPLS or IPv6 variety), and vertical/horizontal combinations of these; and may be managed using distributed control protocols or cen- tralized management (e.g. SDN). Introduction of 5G into existing (brownfield) transport networks will necessitate migra- tion strategies. All of the above will transform transport networks, whether owned b