Sprint Implements 40 Gbps IP-over-DWDM using Cisco/Ciena

Sprint is deploying 40 Gbps network trunks in its Tier 1 IP backbone using IP-over-DWDM (IPoDWDM) technology.

The implementation of IPoDWDM drives efficiencies by eliminating client connections between the router and DWDM system and increasing bandwidth four times by transmitting 40-Gbps across an existing 10-Gbps DWDM system. The companies said the integration of router and DWDM transponder components reduces network complexity and increases the scalability and resiliency of the backbone. IPoDWDM can also position Sprint to rapidly move to higher data rates (e.g., 100-Gbps) without overhauling the network infrastructure.


Earlier this year, Sprint completed final testing of the 40-Gbps IPoDWDM technology and enabled their first production 40-Gbps circuit. The implementation uses the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System with built-in transponders along with Ciena's CoreStream Agility platform to transport the wavelength across the fiber-optic network. To date, several 40-Gbps circuits have been deployed, and those are carrying commercial IP-based services.


Sprint, which is deploying the Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System across its global network, conducted the first 40-Gbps technology trial with live-production traffic in 2004. Sprint began deploying them in its IP core network in 2006. Today, Sprint CRS-1 routers are deployed in more than 25 U.S. cities.


Sprint began deploying Ciena's CoreStream platform in its Tier 1 IP backbone in 2000 and currently has more than 1,000 nodes deployed.http://www.cisco.comhttp://www.sprint.com

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Cisco Enhances IP-over-DWDM, Doubling Reach for 40 Gbps

Cisco announced a set of enhancements to its IP-over-DWDM technology (IPoDWDM), which is available on its core Carrier Routing System (CRS-1). These include new modules that can provide data throughput at 40 Gbps across existing 10 Gbps networks. The solution is positioned as a core transport architecture for handling the surge of traffic from video over the Internet.




The list of enhancements includes:

• Doubling the reach of the Cisco CRS-1 40-Gbps IPoDWDM to 2,000 kilometers without regeneration. The new 40Gbps physical line module interface supports deployments in virtually any geographic area.



• Extending the power of Cisco IPoDWDM solution to the network's edge on the Cisco XR 12000 and 12000 Series Routers with a new 10 Gigabit Ethernet shared port adapter that enables instant bandwidth up to 10 Gbps over 2,000 kilometers.



• Reducing provisioning on the Cisco ONS 15454 platform with an omni directional and colorless mesh reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM). This will decrease truck rolls and lower the requirements for power, space and cooling by more than 50 percent.



• Increasing resiliency with proactive protection feature that guards video and mission-critical data against fiber cuts by resetting failover benchmarks to 15 milliseconds (ms), three times faster than the industry standard of 50 ms.



• Enhancing the ability for service providers to deploy with separate data and transport departments with virtual transponder - now transport departments can directly manage the optics integrated into the router.

http://www.cisco.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Endorses MPLS-Transport Standardization Efforts

Alcatel-Lucent announced its commitment and support for MPLS-Transport Profile (MPLS-TP), building on the standardization efforts by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Enhancing MPLS with transport operational practices - including operation, administration and maintenance (OAM) and survivability - is expected to help carriers scale their transport networks while adding performance monitoring and multi-domain capabilities.


Alcatel-Lucent said it is committed to enabling seamless transformation of transport networks to converged MPLS-based packet transport. It has already added MPLS techniques to transport networks through its 1850 Transport Service Switch (TSS) portfolio -- where the current version of MPLS-Transport, the ITU-T T-MPLS, is already implemented and under test with several service providers -- and its 7450 Ethernet Service Switch (ESS) portfolio, which is deployed worldwide in carrier networks using MPLS pseudowires. This new effort brings these two related approaches together and delivers one unified set of MPLS-based packet transport standards.


"Alcatel-Lucent believes MPLS is the optimal technology to enable scalable Ethernet transport in carrier networks and has taken a leadership role in implementing MPLS-based packet transport" said Michel Rahier, President of Alcatel-Lucent's carrier activities. "We are fully committed to MPLS and MPLS-TP and will continue to develop a full range of products based on common specifications, working closely with service providers and other vendors to ensure interoperability."http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/ipnews

• In June, Alcatel-Lucent unveiled a network architecture that integrates Provider Backbone Bridging (PBB) and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) technologies to increase the scale and reach of Carrier Ethernet VPN services. Whereas many vendors support PBB on Ethernet Switches and others support MPLS on routers, Alcatel-Lucent's architecture combines the scalability benefits of PBB and the resiliency, traffic engineering and convergence benefits of VPLS and MPLS. The integrated PBB and VPLS solution is especially aimed at enhancing network and service scalability - both in terms of reach and MAC addressing.

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BridgeWave Debuts 60 GHz Point-to-Point Wireless Bridge

BridgeWave Communications, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, announced the availability of its SLE100 point-to-point bridge that delivers highly reliable, low latency, wire-speed 100 Mbps full-duplex, half-mile (800-meter) connectivity. The product leverages BridgeWave's existing 60 GHz radios and is priced at under $10,000 per link.


Enterprises can take advantage of unlicensed spectrum (U.S. and Canada) to bridge their LANs. The narrow beam width of the antenna enables highly secure transmission. Additional security features are available through a FIPS certified 256-bit AES Encryption option.


BridgeWave said the combination of its 60 GHz radio architecture and its set of network management features enables "point-and-play" operation with no RF configuration required. Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) simplifies installation using existing CAT5 cable infrastructure.http://www.bridgewave.com

• In June 2007, BridgeWave Communications, a start-up based in Santa Clara, California, raised $10 million in Series 4 funding for its gigabit wireless solutions. The funding round was co-led by Intel Capital and a new investor, Core Capital, with participation from prior round venture capital firms Cipio Partners, SDL Ventures, and Merifin Capital. BridgeWave's Gigabit Ethernet wireless technology is aimed at future backhaul transport capacity. BridgeWave utilizes the upper millimeter-wave radio spectrum in the recently-allocated 60-90 GHz range, enabling the multi-gigabit per second wireless connectivity. The company also features proprietary "AdaptRate" technology and Forward Error Correction capabilities optimized for longer distances.



• BridgeWave Communications is headed by Amir Makleff, who co-founded the company in 1999. Previously Amir served as COO and Senior VP of Engineering at Netro for three years. Previously to Netro, he was General Manager of Engineering and Marketing at Telco Systems and Nortel.

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Infineon's DSL CPE Silicon Adds Concurrent Erasure Decoding and Retransmission for IPTV

Infineon Technologies has enhanced its portfolio of ADSL2+ and VDSL2 solutions for customer premise equipment (CPE) with an IPTV over DSL feature package with capabilities such as predictive error decoding (Erasure Decoding) and Gamma Layer Retransmission.


Erasure Decoding improves impulse noise immunity with no changes to the carrier DSLAM, and can achieve up to two times better error protection than a non-erasure decoding capable CPE in real world deployment scenarios. The Gamma Layer Retransmission mechanism utilizes an intelligent traffic shaping and discrimination algorithm, in conjunction with central office (CO) equipment.


Infineon said the enhancements enable the optimization of real time services, such as IPTV, VoIP or Internet gaming with settings for minimum delay and maximum error protection to guarantee the best possible user experience. Furthermore an embedded Packet Processing Engine enables wire speed routing throughput for all packet sizes. This Smart Acceleration technology boosts routing performance while reducing the workload of the CPU core in the Amazon-SE and Danube Infineon chipsets, and also in future CPE generation devices.


In addition to implementing the IPTV over DSL feature package, Infineon continues an extensive interoperability test program both in its own facilities and with independent test labs (ITL). Recently, KTL Laboratories, a worldwide accredited ITL, validated the interoperability of the Amazon-SE chip in compliance with the Broadband Forum's TR-067 and TR-100 requirements.


Infineon noted that it is the cumulative worldwide market share leader for xDSL CPE devices with more than 110 million units shipped since 2003.http://www.infineon.com

• In 2007, Infineon Technologies acquire Texas Instruments' DSL Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) business, adding to its own line of DSL silicon products.

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Alloptic Receives Patent for "Multiple Wavelength TDMA Optical Network"

Alloptic has been granted a patent for "Multiple wavelength TDMA optical network" technology in the United States (U.S. Pat. 7,386,236). This patent provides intellectual property protection to Alloptic for the simultaneous use of multiple wavelengths to increase bandwidth over a passive fiber optic network (PON).


Alloptic noted that it was the first company to develop an Ethernet-based PON product and that it continues to introduce new technology to the communications industry, most recently with RFoG and 10G PON products.http://www.alloptic.com

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Avanex and 3S Photonics Reach Settlement

Avanex and 3S Photonics announced resolution of their contractual disputes. While neither side admits liability, the two parties have agreed to a settlement that includes payables, receivables and lost profit under the parties' terminated global distributorship agreement, and a release by both parties of all claims asserted against each other, including the dismissal of legal actions taken in New York, California, and the Commercial Court of Evry, France. With this resolution there will be no further litigation between Avanex and 3S Photonics.http://www.avanex.com

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Xelerated Unveils GPON Silicon Design

Xelerated, which supplies merchant silicon to eight of the top ten Carrier Ethernet systems companies, unveiled a new reference design for GPON. Specifically, Xelerated's new HX300 family of network processor units (NPUs) and Ethernet switches can now interoperate with Broadlight's BL3458 controller. The fully integrated GPON solution enables carriers to deploy revenue-generating services in the access network while reducing costs, increasing time-to-market and ultimately enabling mass volume deployment.


Xelerated's HX300 family of devices offers seamless support of Broadlight's 2.5 G mode interface. The solution is suited for both Chassis-based GPON systems as well as ETSI-based pizzaboxes. The Chassis-based solution typically uses Xelerated's HX310 series of programmable Ethernet switches on the line card to reduce costs while Xelerated's HX330 series of NPUs is used on the uplink card to terminate TR-101 and Metro Ethernet Services, as well as ETSI-based pizzaboxes.


Xelerated said its solution enables network equipment vendors to increase their densities on the line card to 16 GPON ports per line card, driving down costs and power while increasing integration. The HX300-based reference design for GPON will be available in Q4 2008.http://www.xelerated.com

• In June, announced its next-generation HX300 family of high performance network processors with integrated traffic management and fully-programmable Ethernet switches. The new silicon, which is designed for fiber access platforms, offers a combination of switching and processing functionality, enabling service-aware applications that readily adapt to changes in network conditions and optimize performance. It could be used in fixed-port, stackable and chassis- based networking systems that can be configured in mesh, ring, star, dual star and stackable topologies. The HX300 integrates 100-Gigabit, 40-Gigabit, 10-Gigabit and 1-Gigabit Ethernet ports. The HX300 is binary software-compatible with custom and Metro Ethernet Applications (MEA) that have already been developed for Xelerated's X10 and X11 NPU families.
  
  
  The HX300 leverages Xelerated's Dataflow packet processing architecture, ensuring wirespeed deterministic performance with programmability. The company said its NPU architecture scales to 100 Gbps full duplex. The advanced standards-based egress traffic management and the tight integration of the Xelerated Dataflow Architecture enables the HX300 family to support a QoS-aware distributed traffic management model for either chassis-based switching systems or meshed configurations. Triple play services are enabled by a flexible queue allocation and programmable hierarchy that enforces per-flow, per-subscriber, per-class Service Level Agreements and bandwidth guarantees.
  
  
  The HX300 family includes three core series: HX310, HX320 and the HX330. The HX310 consists of programmable Ethernet Switches for fiber access aggregation switches, GPON/EPON line cards, EADs. The HX320 Series is an NPU for CESR, Service Routers, Legacy Systems, 100 GE, 40 GE and OC-768 applications. The HX330 is an NPU with integrated Traffic Manager for CESR, Service Routers, GPON/EPON linecards, xDSL aggregation. The HX300 family will begin sampling in Q4 2008.

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BEA WebLogic Evolves into Oracle Communications Service Delivery Portfolio

Oracle introduced a set of software applications to enable next-generation, IP-service delivery The Oracle Communications Service Delivery portfolio combines components of the former BEA WebLogic Communications middleware platform and Oracle Fusion Middleware. The solution aims to help independent software vendors develop applications to help service providers monetize new services. It offers the ability to integrate with BSS/OSS to activate services, manage subscriber data and bill for services.


Oracle also announced today the availability of a key component of the Oracle Communications Service Delivery suite -- Oracle Communications Services Gatekeeper 4.0, a carrier-grade, standards-based environment for services exposure, services-layer policy enforcement, partner relationship management and network-access control.
http://www.oracle.com

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MontaVista Linux Carrier Grade Edition Registers Compliance

MontaVista Software announced that its Linux Carrier Grade Edition (CGE) 5.0 has registered compliance with the Linux Foundation's Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 4.0 specification, has earned Linux Standard Base (LSB) 3.0 certification, and is Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) logo certified.


"This three-way compliance is another proof of MontaVista's commitment to the Linux community and is evidence of MontaVista's continuing commitment to the specific carrier grade requirements of its telecom customers," said Paul Steinberg, chairman of the SCOPE Alliance. The nonprofit SCOPE Alliance is an association of leading network equipment providers to promote the availability and interoperability of open carrier grade base platforms based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) building blocks.http://www.mvista.com

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AT&T Joins Microsoft Partner Solutions Center

AT&T has joined the Microsoft Partner Solutions Center (MPSC), which is a 21,000-square-foot facility located in building 25 on the Redmond, Wash., campus of Microsoft. The center features Microsoft's scalable Hyper-V technology laboratories, partner showcase labs, an executive technology briefing room and partner offices for building, testing and designing superior network solutions that focus on delivering greater availability to revenue-centric, network-based applications and services. The center is designed to engage customers through executive briefings, technology demonstrations, architectural design sessions, proof-of-concepts, training sessions and custom engagements.


AT&T's involvement with the MPSC enables Microsoft's multiple lines of businesses and customers to test out applications that are being wirelessly enabled over the entire suite of Windows Mobile 6.0 and Windows Mobile 6.1 devices, such as Mobile Device Manager, TeleNav Track, Wi-Fi and simultaneous voice and data using Windows Mobile 6 with tethering.


AT&T also maintains a full-service retail store in the MPSC that allows Microsoft campus employees easy access to the latest Windows Mobile-based phones, accessories and services.http://www.att.com

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Hifn Debuts its New SentryXL Family of Security Processors

Hifn introduced its SentryXL family of security processors for delivering high-performance data encryption, compression, and hashing. The company said its latest silicon sets a new benchmark for size and power consumption as the industry's smallest standalone encryption and compression accelerator. The SentryXL design measures only 11mm x 11mm and has 0.3W of typical power consumption.


The SentryXL is software compatible with Hifn's earlier generations of algorithm accelerators. Applications could include wireless PicoBase Stations and FemtoCell stations.http://www.hifn.com/

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Optimum Lightpath to Acquire New Jersey's 4Connections

Optimum Lightpath, a division of Cablevision Systems, has agreed to acquire e 4Connections LLC, which operates a fiber network connecting a significant part of New Jersey. Financial terms were not disclosed. Based in Parsippany, New Jersey, 4Connections provides first and last mile fiber capabilities to businesses. The company has been an early supporter of New Jersey's quest for more advanced telecommunications networks.http://www.optimumlightpath.com

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