Mangrove Systems Targets "MetroMPLS"

Mangrove
Systems, a start-up based in Wallingford, CT, outlined its
vision for extending MPLS convergence to the metro and access
network infrastructure. Mangrove believes that core networks are
fundamentally divided between MPLS and Optical infrastructures.
In the metro, a single converged architecture that supports
traditional data, Ethernet, private line, VoIP and SAN
applications is required. This new converged metro and access
network requires new L1 / L2 platforms capable of extending MPLS
to a customer premise but without disrupting existing fiber
plant, SONET/SDH network elements or operational support
systems.

Mangrove's
MetroMPLS would enable service providers to move service
demarcation from the core MPLS network, out to the customer
location or access network. Its network architecture leverages
recently developed Pseudowire (PWE3) and data over SONET/SDH
standards along with network processors and a new generation of
multiservice framers.  Mangrove will use PWE3 (Martini /
Pseudowire) as its service multiplexing layer of choice and GFP
is the framing & encapsulation technology of choice. The
combination of PWE3 over GFP enables any service to be carried
over a common transport.

Mangrove said
that by blending Generic Framing Procedure (GFP), Virtual
Concatenation (VCAT) and MPLS, its MetroMPLS enables existing
and planned services to share an efficient, unified access
network. The company plans to introduce its first products next
month at SuperComm.
http://www.mangrovesystems.comIn April 2003, Mangrove Systems secured over $20 million in financing for its development of a GFP-based Transport Aware Switching system. GFP (generic framing procedure) is a method of supporting a wide range of service types and protocols (TDM, Ethernet, ATM and storage transport) over embedded SONET infrastructure.
Mangrove Systems was founded in mid-2002.

The company is headed by Jonathan Reeves, who formerly founded and served as Chairman and CEO of Sahara Networks (acquired by Cascade and then Ascend), and who also founded Sirocco Systems (acquired by Sycamore Networks).

Mangrove's technical team also includes John Gamelin (Vice President of Technology) and Paul Doolan (Vice President of Network Architecture). Gamelin previously served as co-founder and later, Vice President of Engineering with Tellium. Before that, he was a senior scientist at Bellcore. Doolan is credited with early development work in MPLS, including work on Cisco's Tag Distribution Protocol (TDP).

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Nortel Networks Unveils its Multiservice Provider Edge

Nortel
Networks unveiled its Multiservice Provider Edge (MPE) 9000
series platform for converging multiple services over an IP/MPLS
core. At its customer conference in Miami, Nortel Networks' said
its new platform would address the network reliability, service
scalability and traffic prioritization shortcomings of current
edge routers. Nortel Networks contends that its MPE platform is
built for the delivery of multiple services with appropriate
prioritization whether at Layer 2 or at Layer 3, unlike other
edge routers that are "mainly designed to route IP packets."  

Nortel's MPE
design will support IP-VPN, ATM, Frame Relay, VPLS, Ethernet and
broadband aggregation services for both the consumer and the
business market. On the network reliability issue, Nortel is
promising "Voice-Grade Reliability applied to all
services" based on provides non-stop routing, hitless
software upgrades, rollbacks and patching features. A separate
Gigabit Ethernet control plane is separately from the data path.
On the scalability front, Nortel said its architecture offers a
"pay-as-you-grow" approach that lets service providers
add capacity via in-service, upgradeable, multi-processor
control plane.



The first product in the series will be the MPE 9500, which is
positioned for medium to large central offices. It features a
mid-plane design with 40 Gbps or 80 Gbps of throughput.
Commercial availability is slated for Q4.  The company is
also developing a smaller, 20 Gbps MPE 9200 version aimed at
smaller POPs.



Standards-based north-bound interfaces are provided for
integration with existing OSS and network management systems.
Additional management and reporting features could be linked
into existing Passport WAN networks.



Lab trials are currently underway at Equant. TELUS and Infonet
also intend to conduct trials.

Regarding its recent partnership announcement with Avici Systems,
Nortel Networks described the new MPE 9000 family as
complementary to the core routing platforms provided by Avici. http://www.nortelnetworks.com

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ADVA Launches Ethernet Access Solution for North America

ADVA Optical Networking introduced a family of low-cost,
standards-based aggregation and demarcation products for the
North American market.  ADVA's new FSP 150 platform could
be used to deliver all types of managed Ethernet services
(E-Line, E-LAN, private and virtual private) to the customer
premise -- independent of speed, service or infrastructure
(SONET/SDH, dark fiber, or native Ethernet).



ADVA said its new FSP 150 complies with the latest IEEE 802.3ah
standard for Ethernet in the First Mile (EFM).  The FSP 150
supports point-to-point, ring and tree fiber topologies and
offers 50ms protection switching for all of these deployment
scenarios. It also inter-works with layer 2/3 restoration
mechanisms and supports frame-based, zero-overhead, in-band
Operations, Administration, Maintenance and Provisioning (OAMP)
capabilities. http://www.advaoptical.com

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Broadcom Unveils Converged NIC Ethernet Controller

Broadcom introduced its next generation Gigabit Ethernet controller featuring an integrated transmission control protocol/Internet protocol (TCP/IP) offload engine, iSCSI host bus adapter functionality, remote direct memory access (RDMA) technology, and remote system management. This integration allows a single server NIC to simultaneously perform storage networking, high-performance clustering, accelerated data networking and remote system management pass- through functions.



The TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) shifts the Ethernet protocol processing overhead from the host CPU to the network controller, freeing up the CPU and memory resources, thus allowing increased network throughput. The iSCSI functionality enables low-cost networked storage capabilities over an existing Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure (i.e. network cabling, switches, and routers). RDMA technology enables high performance server clustering and eliminates the burden of excessive memory copies when communicating between servers. The embedded in-band management pass-through technology allows for remote control of a server over a single network connection.



Broadcom said its new NetXtreme II Gigabit Ethernet Controllers represent a fundamental shift in networking because server vendors can now converge LAN, storage, clustering and remote server management onto a single Ethernet fabric. http://www.broadcom.com

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Verizon Launches MPLS-based VPN Service

Verizon launched a long-haul IP VPN service aimed at large business, education and government customers. The launch is part of Verizon's Enterprise Advance initiative.



Verizon's new service is available now in select Northeast and mid-Atlantic areas and will expand through the summer to Verizon markets in the South and West. Verizon is offering two service quality options -- basic and premier. Verizon also supports IP-VPN service with service-level agreements (SLAs) for both the local and long-haul portions of the company's network.



Verizon said its new IP-VPN service supports standard industry routing protocols, as well as Cisco's proprietary Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP). The company has spent $15 million to deploy an automated provisioning processhttp://www.verizon.com

• Last month, Verizon announced the completion of its national IP MPLS backbone, which provides the basis for its "Enterprise Advance" growth initiative. Since announcing the Enterprise Advance growth initiative in November 2002, Verizon has completed construction on nine regional rings connecting the company's local networks and launched national services. The MPLS network consists of some 200 routers deployed in 56 markets. The core network has routers in 13 cities across the country.

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Charter Cites Growth in Cable Modem Revenue

Citing stronger cable modem subscriptions, Charter Communications reported Q1 revenue of $1.185 billion, an increase of $55 million, or 5%, over the same period in 2003. Some highlights for Q1:

• added 125,200 residential high-speed data (HSD) cable modem customers on a pro forma basis. These additions, together with HSD customer growth over the previous three quarters, drove a 40% increase in HSD revenues on a pro forma basis and a 38% increase on an actual basis, compared to the year ago quarter.



• grew the digital video customer base by 68,800 customers, compared to a loss of 31,500 customers during the year ago period, on a pro forma basis. Charter also improved analog video customer trends with a loss of 8,500 customers during Q1 compared to a loss of 49,000 in the year-ago period, on a pro forma basis.



• capital expenditures increased 83% over the unusually low year ago period to $190 million, primarily driven by higher spending on customer premise equipment resulting from more customer connect activity and increased customer adoption of advanced services, including high definition television and digital video recorder technology. Expenditures on scalable infrastructure related to the deployment of advanced services including video on demand and commercial high-speed data services also increased. In addition, aggressive new build construction expenditures in the first quarter of 2004 more than doubled compared to a year ago.



• Charter reported un-levered free cash flow of $273 million for the first quarter of 2004, compared to un-levered free cash flow of $354 million in the first quarter of 2003. The decline in un-levered free cash flow was a result of increased capital expenditures as previously discussed.



• During Q1, Charter completed the sale of geographically non-strategic cable systems to Atlantic Broadband Finance, LLC for approximately $733 million, subject to post-closing adjustments. Systems divested in these transactions represent approximately 228,500 analog video customers.



• As of 31-March-2004, the company had $18.108 billion of outstanding indebtedness, and $153 million cash on hand.

http://www.charter.com

• Charter Communications reported Q4 revenues of $1.217 billion, an increase of 2% over last year's Q4 revenues of $1.189 billion. Charter reported a net loss of 120,900 analog video customers over the past twelve months and a net gain of 2,100 digital video customers during the year. Charter ended the year with 6,431,300 analog video, 2,671,900 digital video and 1,565,600 high-speed data customers. The Company also ended the year with 24,900 telephony customers, principally in the St. Louis market, an increase of approximately 9% compared to the end of 2002.

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NETGEAR and Firetide Team on Wi-Fi Meshes

NETGEAR and Firetide announced a co-marketing agreement targeting large-scale WLANs in locations otherwise too difficult or costly to reach with wires. The partnership combines NETGEAR's access points and Firetide's Hotpoint Wireless Mesh Routers, which provide a wireless backhaul solution. http://www.firetide.com/http://www.NETGEAR.com

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Siemens to OEM Spectralink's Wi-Fi Phones

Siemens AG will resell SpectraLink's Wi-Fi wireless telephones as part of its HiPath Convergence Portfolio of products under an OEM agreement between the firms. The SpectraLink-manufactured Wi-Fi handsets will be added to the Siemens HiPath enterprise convergence architecture. Two handset models will be available: the optiPoint WL1 professional is targeted at general enterprise applications, and the optiPoint W1 professional is designed for healthcare, retail, and industrial markets. http://www.siemens.comhttp://www.spectralink.com

• In March, SpectraLink announced separate OEM agreements with Alcatel and Nortel Networks covering its Wi-Fi-based Wireless Telephones.

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Fujitsu Supplies ASICs to Greenfield

Fujitsu Microelectronics America has supplied three ASICs to Greenfield Networks, a start-up supplying high-performance, merchant Ethernet switch silicon. Fujitsu's ASICs, which are designed for network traffic management and packet processing, incorporate the industry's first SPI-4P2 Network Processor Streaming Interface running at 1.3 Gbps. ASICs range in size from a few million to over ten million gates, including memory operating at core frequency of 250MHz. http://www.fma.fujitsu.com/asic

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Cablevision is Adding 3,200 Consumer VoIP Lines per Week in New York

Cablevision System's new residential VoIP service, which is available in the New York metro area, is adding about 3,200 new customers per week. The cable company ended Q1 with 70,800 VoIP customers, up by 42,200 for the quarter.



Overall, Cablevision Systems' Q1 net revenues increased 19% to $1.2 billion compared to the prior year period based on continued strong growth at both the Telecommunications Services and Rainbow Media's Core Networks divisions. Consolidated operating loss totaled $9.6 million, compared to operating income of $31.6 million in the prior year period. Some additional highlights:

• 5,207,000 Revenue Generating Units, up 262,900 or 5% from December, and up 989,400 or 23% from the prior year period



• iO: Interactive Optimum digital video customers now exceed 1,000,000, up 150,200 for the quarter with a penetration rate of 35.9%



• Optimum Online HSD (cable modem) customers were up 71,900 to 1,129,000 for the quarter with a penetration rate of 25.6%



• Basic video subscribers decreased 820 for the quarter



• Total consumer revenue per basic video customer up 18% to $79.02, compared to $67.02 at March 31, 2003



• VOD/SVOD revenue of $6.13 per digital subscriber per month, up 46% from the prior year period's $4.21



• a 7% increase in advertising revenue from the prior year period

http://www.cablevision.com

• In November 2003, Cablevision announced the availability of its digital voice-over-cable telephony across its footprint of nearly 4 million homes in the New York metropolitan area. Cablevision's Optimum Voice service was introduced on a trial basis earlier in 2003 and officially launched throughout Long Island in late September. The service provides unlimited local, regional and long-distance calling across the U.S. and Canada for a flat rate of $34.95 per month. It includes five custom calling features (Caller ID, Call waiting, Call return, three-way calling and Call forwarding) and provides fully functioning E-911 service.

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Polycom Introduces New Enterprise IP Video Solution

Polycom introduced a new enterprise-class video conferencing solution priced at under $2,000. The Polycom V500 delivers video at 30 frames per second), near CD-quality wideband audio (14 KHz), H.264 video compression for higher quality video over lower bandwidth, and advanced video calling capabilities. Multiple network support options are offered, including cable, DSL, ISDN or LAN connections -- IP support up to 512 Kbps and ISDN up to 128 Kbps (separate model) .



AT&T plans to provide the equipment as part of its "AT&T IP Video Bundle" managed servicehttp://www.polycom.com

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Volo Expands Executive Team

Volo Communications, a next-gen wholesale carrier, named John Wind as Senior Director of Marketing. Wind previously was Vice President of Marketing and Strategy of Epicus. http://www.volocommunications.com.

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Infineon Names Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart as CEO

Infineon Technologies AG appointed Dr. Wolfgang Ziebart as its new president and CEO. Ziebart currently serves as Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board at Continental AG, a leading automotive parts supplier. http://www.infineon.com

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Thirty-one Competitors Send UNE-p Proposal to Qwest

Thirty-one telecommunications providers submitted to a joint UNE-p proposal to Qwest Communications. In essence the proposal seeks a statewide, fixed pricing structure for both UNE-P and UNE-L elements. The companies said their proposal provides consistency and certainty over the four-year term of the agreement and would accelerate the move to facilities-based competition. The agreement provides for increases in the UNE-P rates charged by Qwest and decreased rates and improved performance measures for UNE-L. In addition, the proposal seeks to guarantee access to competitors for current and future services from Qwest. http://www.att.com

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MCI Cites Adverse Conditions for Q1 Loss

MCI reported Q1 revenue of $6.3 billion, down from $7.2 billion a year earlier, including the consolidated results of Embratel. The decline reflects the adverse industry environment, as excess capacity and new technology adoption continue to pressure pricing. Exclusive of Embratel, the impending sale of which is expected to be completed in 2004, first quarter revenue declined to $5.4 billion from $6.6 billion a year earlier. There was an operating loss of $205 million for Q1, compared to operating profit of $634 million in the first quarter of 2003. Excluding Embratel, the 2004 loss was $265 million, and the year-earlier operating profit was $604 million.



"Although we made significant strides in restructuring the company during the past year, overall industry conditions and an unfavorable regulatory environment affected our first quarter results," said Michael Capellas, MCI president and chief executive officer. "In response we are accelerating our cost reduction program, ramping new product introductions and optimizing our network wherever possible."



MCI outlined several initiatives aimed at lowering its cost structure and helping it to return to profitability in the second half of 2004. These include:

• increasing international traffic following emergence from bankruptcy;



• focusing on delivery of new IP-based products to its enterprise customers;



• further reducing its workforce by 7,500 positions in the second quarter of 2004; and



• further consolidating and optimizing its network operations.

http://www.mci.com

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MCI Extends its Hosted VOIP Service over DSL

MCI is expanding the availability its hosted VoIP services to include access via MCI's facilities-based DSL service, which covers markets serving many of the top US metropolitan service areas (MSAs) including Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago. Later this year, MCI will more than double its Advantage DSL coverage to reach more than four million businesses via an existing agreement with Covad. To ensure business quality VoIP, MCI manages both inbound and outbound voice prioritization and data packet fragmentation for DSL.



MCI is also enhancing the hosted VoIP through its recently announced relationship with BroadSoft. This will enable new capabilities, such as Outlook integration, call screening, click-to-talk capabilities, simultaneous ring, auto attendant and Web-based receptionist services. MCI Advantage customers also will be able to leverage a remote offices service which provides "road warriors" and teleworkers with the same network access and functionality on-the-go that are standard in a typical office setting. This remote office feature will allow customers to distinguish personal calls from business calls and eliminate the need for employees to log and submit business expenses for reimbursement. MCI completed trials of the BroadSoft solution last month and will offer a commercial solution to customers in June 2004. http://www.mci.com

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Colubris Adds Voice over Wi-Fi Capabilities

Colubris Networks introduced voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) capabilities for its multi-service WLAN solution. The voice capabilities include support for the SpectraLink Voice Priority (SVP) protocol, providing interoperability with SpectraLink NetLink Wireless Telephones. Colubris Networks also provides support for Wireless Multimedia Extensions (WME), a component of the IEEE 802.11e standard, enabling prioritization of multimedia traffic over a wireless network.



Colubris said its Virtual AP solution isolates each service on the WLAN with independently configurable security and QoS profiles for each service. As a result, a single, shared Wi-Fi network can now support VoWi-Fi applications, which typically implement Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) security enforcement, open guest Internet access with no security, and critical corporate data with robust WPA or VPN security.



VoWi-Fi support will be available as a standard feature of the Colubris Networks CN1220 and CN1250 802.11 a/b/g enterprise access devices in July 2004. It will also be available as a firmware upgrade to Colubris Networks maintenance program customers. http://www.colubris.com

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Vodafone Tests Flarion's BWA in Japan

Vodafone KK in Japan will conduct a technology trial of Flarion's system for mobile broadband services. The trial will start in mid 2004 and will cover metropolitan areas of Tokyo. Vodafone will conduct field tests of Flarion's system performance, user mobility, subscriber scalability, robustness, and transparent delivery of enterprise and consumer applications over an end-to-end IP network infrastructure. The trial will use Flarion's commercially available FLASH-OFDM PC card modems for laptops and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), to field test broadband Internet access, enterprise productivity applications, as well as gaming. http://www.flarion.com

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Qwest Exits Payphone Business

Qwest Communications will sell exit its pay phone business by selling the operations across its 14-state local access area to FSH Communications. Financial terms were not disclosed. As part of the deal, Qwest will remain the primary supplier of public access lines, operator services and long-distance capacity to FSH. The commercial terms available to pay phone customers will remain substantially unchanged following the closing of the transaction.



"Over the past two years, we have engaged in a detailed examination of all Qwest's lines of business to maximize the profitability of our core operations," said Ken Dunn, Qwest vice president of corporate development and strategy. "Given the growth of the wireless industry, the pay phone business no longer fits with our long-term plans."http://www.qwest.com

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WildPackets Announces Real-Time VoIP and Ethernet Analysis

WildPackets announced the scheduled release of EtherPeek VX -- a integrated Ethernet and VoIP analyzer designed for enterprises, service providers, and the field service needs of equipment manufacturers. The produce provides both Ethernet and VoIP diagnostics in one solution. As a software-only solution, EtherPeek VX is designed to be portable and affordable.



WildPackets said its EtherPeek VX can analyze up to 100 open calls simultaneously, without requiring expensive hardware. The product provides per-call analytics and metrics, and supports multiple signaling protocols like SIP, H323, MGCP and SCS. The signaling analysis provides visual flow of messages between participating end-points in a call. The media plane analysis looks at packet-level details of RTP and RTCP streams and evaluates packet delay variations, packet loss, jitter, etc. and provides a passive MOS value for each call.



The solution can be used to detect problems such as inefficient bandwidth utilization, inefficient packet loss recovery, poor compression, sub-optimal jitter buffer length, quality degradation, inadequate Voice Activity Detection (VAD) and long signaling setups. EtherPeek VX will ship in July 2004. http://www.wildpackets.com/

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Telco Systems Offers WiFi Hotspot VDSL Backhaul

Telco Systems introduced a secure WiFi VDSL Internet access solution that provides Ethernet backhaul connectivity from a WiFi hotspot to a service provider's backbone network over existing copper-pair infrastructure. The design uses VDSL backhaul rather than T1 circuit provisioning, fiber or Category 5 cable. The Telco Systems secure WiFi VDSL backhaul solution integrates the company's EdgeLink VTU10 VDSL termination unit, which is at the WiFi access point; the EdgeLink V24S, which concentrates up to 24 VDSL lines from up to 24 wireless access points and provides uplink connectivity to the service provider's Internet backbone. Telco Systems' T5 Compact IP routing switch handles user authentication as well as traffic aggregation. The complete solution complies with the IEEE 802.1x standard and, when used in conjunction with a RADIUS server, controls access in a central location on a user or device basis with a certificate or user name and password combination. http://www.telco.com

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Packeteer Latest Data Compression Algorithm Promises Significant Bandwidth Savings

Packeteer has developed a new compression algorithm that it claims gives users up to 95% data compression depending on traffic type over point-to-point links with its equipment at each end. Packeteer delivers an Application Traffic Management system via intelligent appliances at the LAN/WAN interface. The Packeteer system identifies, protects and accelerates key business applications and controls malicious, recreational and other non-business traffic by providing deep visibility into the traffic. The new compression algorithm predicts entire blocks of content being transferred over the WAN. According to the company, the theoretical maximum compression ratio is more than 1000:1 as compared to prior algorithms that had theoretical maximums of 8:1 or 64:1.



The PacketShaper Xpress, the compression component of its solution, will be made available at no charge to those deploying its PacketShaper 1550 and 2550 appliances along with new or existing 8500 and/or 9500 series units. http://www.packeteer.com

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