Sunday, November 4, 2007

Mu Security Enhances its Security Analyzer

Mu Security announced a major new release of its flagship Mu-4000 Security Analyzer appliance, which is designed to test the robustness and reliability of networked products and IP business services. Mu Security's third-generation solution adds sharable analysis templates, interactive graphical response time charting and dynamic stateful protocol fuzzing as the basis for robustness analysis.



The Sharable Analysis Templates help to establish strategic best practices for system testing across organizations. Organizations often find it very difficult to add security metrics or repeatable processes across groups. Typically, only a small, specialized incident response group within a company has security expertise, whereas the larger product certification/testing group often lacks sufficient security knowledge to test for product robustness. Mu Security's Mu-4000 platform now supports customizable analysis templates that easily transfer between Mu-4000 appliances to help disseminate scarce security knowledge within organizations.



Latency-sensitive applications unable to process valid data in specific timeframes may not meet response-time goals or service level agreements. Mu Security said legacy fuzzing tools have never before attempted to measure a target system's ability to process valid traffic while being probed by invalid traffic.



With Response Time Charts, the updated Mu-4000 interactively exposes quality and availability issues to accelerate remediation. Customers can actively gauge a system's ability to maintain control and specific performance levels while processing unexpected inputs. In addition to hard failures (e.g., system crashes), users can now isolate hard-to-detect "soft faults" including memory leaks, CPU utilization spikes and rising latency levels to help service providers maintain SLAs by avoiding costly downtime.



Mu Security also noted that its dynamic stateful fuzzing engine can deliver structurally and semantically invalid attacks in all the relevant states of stateful protocols. These attacks include valid packets sent at the wrong time, or packets that are never valid, but are designed to cause damage to the code that implements the protocol's state machine(s). This latest Mu-4000 provides deeper and broader attack surface coverage, and enables customers to significantly reduce service-impacting vulnerabilities.

http://www.musecurity.com
  • In October, Mu Security appointed Dave Kresse as its new CEO and Kris Nagel as vice president of worldwide sales. Kresse was previously vice president and general manager of the storage management and application integration business unit at NetApp. Nagel joins Mu from SS8 Networks and is responsible for developing and directing worldwide sales strategies and managing operations for direct and inside sales. Mu Security Co-founder and former CEO Ajit Sancheti becomes the company's vice president of business development.





Spirent Completes Strategic Review

Spirent Communications completed the second phase of a strategic review aimed at refocusing its business portfolio and product development priorities, as well as identifying further cost savings. The company said it has identified incremental cost savings of £7.3 million that will have minimal effect on sales and product development. The plan calls for developing its core Performance Analysis business, with an emphasis on the further development of the Spirent TestCenter.
http://www.spirentcom.com

Unisys Partners with AppTrigger for Application Session Controller

Unisys has selected AppTrigger to provide its core technology for its upcoming Application Session Controller (ASC), a carrier-grade network element that enables IMS, VoIP, and legacy intelligent network (IN) applications to be resistant from the changes in converging networks.



Specifically, the Unisys ASC leverages AppTrigger's powerful IN-SCS functionality to enable service providers to bridge the gap by allowing their existing voice centric IN applications such as pre-paid and voice messaging are able to work within the IMS networks. The Application Session Controller allows service providers to avoid the need to replace these IN applications allowing for significant CAPEX savings. Additional benefits include:

  • New Applications and Mash-ups -- Multi-network session control capabilities to help eliminate stove pipes and modular architecture, reducing OPEX and speeding time to market for new applications and mash-ups.


  • SIP Modernization -- Upgrades SIP capabilities for existing Unisys Communications Media Module (CMM) customers, enabling greater scale and reliability while providing the foundation for next-generation network interfaces.


  • Application Migration --- Provides any-to-any application integration into the network, enabling full legacy-to-IMS and IMS-to-legacy application connectivity.


The Unisys Application Session Controller is scheduled to begin shipping later this year.

http://www.apptrigger.com

http://www.unisys.com


Alvarion Selected for M-Taiwan WiMAX Application Lab

Alvarion will supply its Mobile WiMAX technology to the first WiMAX Forum M-Taiwan WiMAX Application Lab (MTWAL), managed by ITRI at the campus in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The new lab, also referred to as a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) lab, has just been opened by ITRI for the purpose of testing and developing innovative Mobile WiMAX applications. Expansion of network coverage throughout the Hsinchu Science Park, National Chiao Tung University, and National Tsing Hua University, is planned as part of the project's next phase.



Alvarion said its 802.16e end-to-end 4Motion solution will provide various applications over Mobile WiMAX, and promote multi-vendor interoperability performance of WiMAX equipment at the 2.5 GHz frequency band.

http://www.alvarion.com

http://www.itri.org.tw


Aruba Selects RMI's XLR Processor

Aruba Networks has selected Raza Microelectronics' (RMI's) XLR Processor for use in its enterprise wireless LAN (WLAN) products. RMI's multi-core multi-threaded processors address a wide variety of integrated, next generation applications, including integrated security, Web services, virtualized storage, load balancing, server offload and intelligent routing and switching systems. The XLR 700 and XLR 500 series processors are software and hardware compatible and each processor is available in a variety of power options including standard, low and ultra low power.

http://www.RazaMicro.com

Motorola Begins 3G Femtocell Trial in Europe

Motorola has completed end-to-end testing of its 3G femtocell solution and has begun trialing its solution with a major European operator (name withheld). Motorola is providing a range of femtocell customer premises equipment (CPE) and 3G devices, a core network concentrator, systems integration services and a CPE management solution - the Motorola Netopia Broadband Server (NBBS).
http://www.motorola.com

France's TDF Selects Harris Stratex Networks for WiMAX Backhaul

TDF, which has secured licenses to provide WiMAX at 3.5GHz across 11 territories in France, has selected Harris Stratex Networks to provide its Eclipse radios for Gigabit Ethernet connections in its backhaul network. Financial terms were not disclosed.



The Eclipse platform supports Carrier Ethernet transport and offers Layer 2 Quality of Service controls and features. It also provides scaleable bandwidth from 10 to over 600 Mbps in a single radio channel.



In France, as in most EU countries, annual license fees are charged on every radio link and are based upon the bandwidth used. http://www.HarrisStratex.com


JDSU Milestone: 400,000 980nm Pump Lasers

JDSU announced a company milestone: the delivery of its 400,000th 980 nanometer (nm) amplifier pump laser based on its planar platform. The recipient of the milestone shipment, Wuxi Zhongxing Optoelectronics Technology Co., which is located in Wuxi, China, has purchased more than 30,000 980nm pump lasers from JDSU over the past three years.



980nm planar pump lasers are used to power erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), a critical optical component that regenerates weakened network signals traveling long distances over agile optical networks (AONs).



JDSU estimates its planar pump lasers have logged more than seven billion field hours since shipments began in 2000. During that period, network operators traced only fifteen field failures to the planar pump lasers, equating to an industry-leading reliability figure of > 3 Failure In Time (FIT).

http://www.jdsu.com

CLEC Merger: Access Integrated Networks + Birch Telecom

Access Integrated Networks has agreed to merge with Birch Telecom, creating one of the largest competitive local exchange carriers in the south-eastern region. The combined company will have more than 300,000 voice and data lines, 100,000 small and medium business customers, annual revenue of $200 million and 400 employees. Both companies are privately held and financial terms were not disclosed.

http://www.accesscomm.com

http://www.birch.com
  • Access Integrated Networks serves nine Southeastern states including: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The company was founded in 1996 and is based in Macon, Georgia.


  • Birch Telecom serves 130,000 customers in more than 50 metropolitan markets across 12 states, including Kansas City, St. Louis, Houston, Dallas, Ft. Worth, Atlanta, Charlotte, Memphis, and Nashville. The company was founded in 1997 and emerged from Chapter 11 in 2006.

XO Wins Ruling in Litigation with Level 3

XO Communications prevailed in a legal ruling preventing Level 3 from interfering with XO Communications' business operations and directing Level 3 to specifically perform its duties and obligations under its fiber agreements with XO Communications. The dispute concerns whether XO has an unfettered right to light fiber it acquired from Level 3 in 1998. In subsequent contracts, XO also agreed to purchase wavelength services from Level 3. Level 3 argued that these related agreements stripped XO of its right to light the fiber it had acquired from Level 3. XO said the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware has now ruled in its favor.
http://www.xo.com

Cable & Wireless International Deploys MetaSwitch

Cable & Wireless International (CWI) has completed its first deployment of the MetaSwitch switching platform in Diego Garcia, a United Kingdom territory in the Indian Ocean that hosts one of the United States military's key overseas bases. The softswitch, which was installed and deployed in two weeks, replaces an older switch that was considered to be at end of its useful life.



The Diego Garcia deployment of a MetaSwitch VP2510 Integrated Softswitch includes traditional telephony, as well as new Voice over IP services enabled by the MetaSwitch infrastructure. Serving approximately 2,000 residents, the new system supports a combination of E1 and T1 traffic, and routes off-island traffic through satellite connections.



Cable & Wireless International has a broad international agreement with MetaSwitch that covers migration of its legacy switching infrastructure in a number of CWI business units to an IP based softswitch architecture. Financial terms were not disclosed.

http://www.metaswitch.com

Reliance to Power IPTV with Microsoft Mediaroom

India's Reliance Communications has selected Microsoft Mediaroom IPTV software platform for its IPTV service, which is expected to launch by March 2008. The contract was announced by Anil D Ambani, chairman, Reliance Communications, and Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, at a press event in Mumbai. Reliance Communications shall have the exclusive deployment right for the platform in India. Financial terms were not disclosed.



Reliance's IPTV service, powered by the Microsoft Mediaroom platform, will allow Reliance to deliver personalized TV experiences with several advanced features, such as video on demand (VOD), digital video recording (DVR), instant channel changing, and personal media sharing. Reliance plans to offer both SD and HD content.

http://www.microsoft.com

Google Unveils its Android Mobile Stack

Google officially unveiled its plans to offer a software stack for delivering mobile services from a variety of handsets. Google's announcement focused on two components: its Android software and the formation of a new Open Handset Alliance backed by major handset manufacturers and a number of marquee mobile operators.



The Android platform is an integrated mobile "software stack" that consists of an operating system, middleware, user-friendly interface and applications. Android is built on the open Linux Kernel. It will use a custom virtual machine to optimize memory and hardware resources in a mobile environment. Android will be open source and a software development kit will be released shortly. Google expects the first phones based on Android to be available in the second half of 2008.

The Open Handset Alliance "aims to develop technologies that will significantly lower the cost of developing and distributing mobile devices and services. There are 33 founding members, including: Aplix, Ascender, Audience, Broadcom, China Mobile, eBay, Esmertec, Google, HTC, Intel, KDDI, Living Image, LG, Marvell, Motorola, NMS Communications , Noser, NTT DoCoMo, Nuance, Nvidia, PacketVideo, Qualcomm, Samsung, SiRF, SkyPop, SONiVOX, Sprint Nextel, Synaptics, TAT - The Astonishing Tribe, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Texas Instruments, T-Mobile, Wind River.

http://www.openhandsetalliance.com

http://www.google.com

Deutsche Telekom Selects Ruckus Wireless for IPTV Rollout

Ruckus Wireless announced a landmark deal with Deutsche Telekom's T-Home division, which has selected its 802.11a Smart Wi-Fi systems to enable in-home wireless distribution of its Entertain Comfort IPTV service. Specifically, Deutsche Telekom will use 802.11a for its in-home wireless IPTV option. Ruckus said the combination of more non-overlapping radio frequencies (RF) with its "BeamFlex" interference and avoidance technology ensures flicker-free transmission of standard and even high definition television signals through the home. Financial terms were not disclosed.



Deutsche Telekom is private-labeling the Ruckus system as the Speedport W 100 Bridge under its popular T-Home brand. The Speedport W 100 is becoming available to consumers throughout the more than 700 Telekom shops and the online portal www.t-home.de.



T-Home is offering the Ruckus Wireless Smart Wi-Fi system as the only in-home wireless distribution option for its IPTV service. The SpeedPort W100 Bridge (a Wi-Fi access point and Wi-Fi adapter) is provided to T-Home customers at a one-time cost of EUR149.99.



The Ruckus Wireless system is a Wi-Fi system specifically adapted to reliably transmit IP-based streaming digital video over standard 802.11 technology. It achieves this by continuously routing Wi-Fi signals over the best and highest performing paths while steering these Wi-Fi signals around interference in real time.

http://www.ruckuswireless.com/