Tuesday, February 22, 2011

CTIA WIRELESS 2012 Show Set for New Orleans on May 8 - 10

The International CTIA WIRELESS 2012 show has been booked for May 8 – 10 in New Orleans, Louisiana. This year's event, which is expected to host 40,000 attendees, is slated for March 22-24, 2011 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. http://www.ctia.org

Broadcom Debuts First Dual-Port 10GBASE-T Adapter with Full Offload

Broadcom unveiled the first dual-port 10GBASE-T adapter with full offload capabilities. The PCI Express adapter supports both networking and storage traffic over a single 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) connection.


Based on Broadcom's proven BCM57712 MAC and BCM84823 PHY components, the new 10GBASET adapter is the first technology to bring full offload capabilities to 10GbE and the first to integrate TCP/IP and iSCSI offload on a 10GBASE-T medium. Tight integration between the MAC and PHY layers and end-to-end interaction between the server and switch provides optimized performance and flexibility. http://www.broadcom.com

Huawei Prevails in IPR Case Against NSN

The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued a preliminary injunction in favor of Huawei that prevents Motorola from transferring Huawei's confidential information to Nokia Siemens Networks. The order also requires Motorola to hire a qualified third party to ensure Huawei's confidential information is securely removed, and also allows Huawei to audit NSN's record of service it performs on Motorola-branded system that include Huawei products.


Huawei said its is pleased with the court's decision and that this legal episode gives it confidence to increase its investments in the U.S.
http://www.huawei.com

France Telecom Confirms Stephane Richard As Chairman and CEO

The Board of Directors of France Telecom formally confirmed Stephane Richard to the role of Chairman and Chief Executive Officer with effect from 1 March 2011. He replaces Didier Lombard, who has served in these roles since 2005.


Stéphane Richard, 48, graduated from Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales and Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA). In January 2003, Stéphane Richard was appointed as Executive Vice President of Veolia Environnement and Chief Executive Officer of Veolia Transport. From May 2007 to June 2009, Stéphane Richard was Chief of Staff for the French Minister for the Economy, Industry and Employment. Until 2007, he was a board member at France Télécom SA, UGC SA and Nexity SA.
http://www.francetelecom.com

Juniper's QFabric Scales the Data Center

Juniper Networks unveiled its QFabric architecture for collapsing multilayer data center infrastructure into a single, any-to-any fabric that unifies networking, storage and cloud computing resources.



QFabric, which is the result of the company's three-year, $100 million "Project Stratus," is composed of three components that create a high-performance, low latency fabric. The QF/Node acts as the distributed decision engine of the fabric; the QF/Interconnect is the high speed transport device; and the QF/Director delivers a common window, controlling all devices as one. The architecture breaks new grounds in its data plane, control plane and management structure. It also leverages custom 40nm ASICs to achieve extremely low latencies.



Initially, QFabric scales to 6,000 network nodes, allowing any network interface within the network to connect to any other interface in a single hop. Juniper achieves this 6,000 port switching fabric by decoupling the line cards on the central fabric and moving them out into the network using dual-homed fiber connections. The entire 6,000 node network is a single switch and can be managed as such.



Juniper believes that collapsing the traditional three-layer network down to a single, high-performance layer, will deliver exponential improvements in data center speed, scale and efficiency. The company calculates that the QFabric architecture is up to ten times faster, uses 77 percent less power, requires 27 percent fewer networking devices, occupies 90 percent less data center floor space, and delivers a nine fold reduction in operating resources than the nearest competitive offering.



"Data center compute and storage technologies have advanced over the last decade, and the legacy approach to networking has not kept pace," said Kevin Johnson, CEO of Juniper Networks. "As cloud computing and the mobile internet accelerate, demand is intensifying for a quantum leap forward in data center capabilities. With QFabric, Juniper is transforming data center economics by introducing the only network fabric that is able to eliminate multiple layers of cost and complexity."



The first product in the QFabric set is a top-of-rack QFX3500 switch, which is now commercially available. It is also capable of operating as a stand-alone 64-port 10Gigabit Ethernet switch with FCoE and Fiber Channel gateway functionality. The QFX3500 offers the fastest unicast and multicast performance in the industry. The QF/Interconnect and QF/Director will be available for order in Q3.



The New York Stock Exchange has committed to teh QFabric architecture.

Additional Juniper partners include IBM, NetApp, CA Technologies and VMware.http://www.juniper.net
  • In May 2010, Juniper Networks outlined its new "3-2-1" data center network architecture aimed at improving latency, increasing density, boosting security, lowering power requirement and simplifying management. Juniper outlined a plan to leverage a "Virtual Chassis" fabric technology to reduce from three to two layers, and then collapse to one layer via Juniper's "Project Stratus" fabric in the future. Data centers typically have access, aggregation and core switching layers. Juniper currently collapses the aggregation and core layers into a single switch. The Virtual Chassis creates a single, logical switching fabric across multiple racks in the data center, so that a pool of compute resources can be more effectively virtualized. Juniper estimates that its Virtual Chassis will let administrators move virtual machines between 10x faster than current approaches. Ultimately, Juniper's Project Stratus seeks to collapse data center switching into a single, logical layer linking potentially thousands of servers.

Verizon Wireless to Offer Public Safety Roaming over its LTE Network

Motorola Solutions and Verizon Wireless have formed and an alliance focused on mobile broadband for public safety customers across the United States. The alliance allows public safety agencies to supplement their mission critical core platforms with the rich media services and the increased capacity and coverage of Verizon Wireless' 4G LTE network. This will allow first responders who travel off of the Public Safety LTE network, to have interoperability and secure roaming onto the Verizon Wireless public LTE network.



The companies said they will offer public safety agencies access to real-time management and control, enhanced nationwide roaming, and site sharing of existing mobile broadband sites for rapid deployment and economies of scale.



Motorola Public Safety LTE devices will be tested, pre-certified and pre-registered by Motorola Solutions
and Verizon Wireless to provide reliable interoperability between an agency-owned Public Safety LTE system and
the nationwide Verizon Wireless network.



"We are committed to investing in the development of critical innovations -- based on a fully standards-compliant LTE architecture -- to offer economies of scale and meet the unique public safety functionality requirements. Motorola Solutions' Public Safety LTE solution includes innovative multiband LTE devices and real-time device management and control. When combined with the extensive network coverage and site sharing offered through Verizon Wireless, we'll deliver an incomparable solution which will bring tremendous benefits to the public safety community including interoperability and secure public/private roaming," stated Bob Schassler, senior vice president, Radio Solutions, Motorola Solutions.



"Verizon Wireless' advanced wireless networks will complement Motorola's private network solution to help public safety agencies run their operations more efficiently and effectively. The advanced capabilities of 4G LTE, which Verizon Wireless is aggressively deploying across the United States, will allow agencies to leverage more applications and rich media services that were previously unavailable or too cost-prohibitive to implement in a wireless environment. 4G LTE brings a true mobile broadband experience to these public safety agencies -- and allows them to do the same type of work inside a police cruiser as they currently do in an office," said Mike Lanman, president, enterprise and government markets, Verizon Wirelesshttp://www.verizonwireless.com http://www.motorola.com

  • In his recently announced National Broadband Initiative, President Obama called for an investment of $10.7 billion for public safety networking. This would consist of $3.2 billion to reallocate the "D Block" (which is a band of spectrum that would be reserved and prioritized for public safety and not auctioned as called for under existing law); $7 billion to support the deployment of this network; and $500 million from the WIN Fund for R&D and technological development to tailor the network to meet public safety requirements.


  • In January 2011, the FCC adopted new rules that requires all 700 MHz public safety mobile broadband networks to use a common air interface, specifically LTE, to support roaming and interoperable communications. The action builds on the technical requirements that state and local 700 MHz broadband waiver recipients are already subject to in the early buildout of their regional public safety broadband networks. The FCC is also seeking public comment on additional rules to enable nationwide interoperability.


  • In November 2010, Motorola demonstrated live over-the-air (OTA) broadband video in the 700MHz Public Safety spectrum band. The exercise, which was conducted at the 2010 Motorola Digital Users Group Conference, showcased a compact USB device based on commercial silicon supporting the Band Class 14 Public Safety spectrum band. The demonstration also highlighted dynamic prioritization and preemption for safeguarding LTE capacity for critical resources during an emergency response.



    Motorola's portfolio of LTE devices will include portable data adaptors, vehicular modems and multimedia handhelds among others. Motorola has also developed real-time video intelligence that adjusts video to best match real-time wireless LTE bandwidth capabilities with the device screen size.

3 Minute Video: Rethinking Data Center Switching







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Andy Ingram discusses key innovations behind Juniper's QFabrichttp://www.juniper.net

Calix Completes Acquisition of Occam Networks

Calix completed its previously-announced acquisition of Occam Networks. The merger consolidates two leading suppliers of broadband access equipment in the North American market.




The combined company claims over 900 customers globally, including 72% of the U.S. local exchange carriers. It has over 600 fiber access customers and 400 commercial video customers. It is also a major player in Broadband Stimulus projects.



"The combination of Occam and Calix can be summed up in one word: Acceleration," said Carl Russo, president and chief executive officer of Calix. "By combining Occam Networks' expertise in IP and Ethernet, Calix's strength in fiber access, and both companies' experience in copper access, we believe this merger will accelerate our pace of innovation within the now expanded Calix Unified Access portfolio. We expect that our innovation will in turn accelerate our customers' ability to meet the emerging needs of the broadband subscriber, while also making communications service providers more efficient. We are extremely excited about this combination, and look forward to extending a warm welcome to the hundreds of new customers who are now joining the Calix family."http://www.calix.com

Blue Coat: Social Networking Becomes Malware Vector

Social networking has become a leading source of malware, according to a newly released 2011 Blue Coat Web Security Report. In particular, social network phishing and click-jacking attacks were the two most common types of attacks through social networks in 2010.



Blue Coat said this shift of phishing attacks to social networks is particularly driven by the attempt to obtain user credentials that can also provide access to banking, financial and other online accounts that use shared passwords.



"Today, dynamic Web links are the most powerful tool cybercrime has, and static Web ratings that require update cycles are too slow when the bad guys can harvest users within minutes," said Steve Daheb, chief marketing officer and senior vice president at Blue Coat Systems.



Blue Coat develops its security reports by analyzing data from its WebPulse service, which weekly rates nearly three billion requests in real-time, to provide a comprehensive overview of the changing ways in which people are using the Internet and the new methods cybercrime is using to target their attacks.http://www.bluecoat.com





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Vertical Systems: Global Provider Ethernet Leaderboard

The leading global providers of Ethernet services are Orange (France), Colt (U.K.), Verizon (U.S.), NTT (Japan), AT&T (U.S.) and Global Crossing (U.S.), according to Vertical Systems' bi-annual Global Provider Leaderboard. The report ranks companies with four percent or more of retail Business Ethernet ports installed at sites outside of the provider's primary home country.



Key results of Vertical's latest Global Provider share analysis:

  • The Global Provider Leaderboard expanded to a total of six companies in 2010, up from five at the end of 2009.


  • Global Crossing joined the Leaderboard for the first time in 2010 at the number six position.


  • Use of Ethernet Exchanges for multinational enterprise connections was negligible in 2010.


  • Companies not represented on the Leaderboard account for 47% of total Ethernet ports delivered by Global Providers in 2010.



    "Enterprises that depend on global IP/MPLS VPNs are hitting the bandwidth limits of T1/E1 connections. Global Ethernet providers are responding with E-Access services that provide native Ethernet access to IP/MPLS VPNs at speeds ranging up to 100 Mbps and higher," said Rick Malone, principal at Vertical Systems Group. "During 2010, many Ethernet service providers expanded their metro fiber footprints, both domestically and out-of-county. What sets the Global Provider Ethernet Leaderboard companies apart is first, their commitment to the multinational business market, and second, the rollout of Layer 2/Layer 3 connection capabilities across all country markets served."
    http://www.verticalsystems.com