Sunday, June 19, 2011

Nicira Develops Hypervisor for OpenFlow

Nicira, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California, is developing an OpenFlow network hypervisor that "virtualizes the network, like VMware did for servers."


Nicira has raised funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners and NEA as well as Diane Greene and Andy Rachleff.


Nicira was founded by Dr. Martin Casado, who previously co-founded Illuminics Systems, an IP analytics company, which was acquired by QuovaThe company is headed by Steve Mullaney, who previously was at Palo Alto Networks, Blue Coat, Force10, Cisco, Growth Networks, ShoreTel, Bay Networks and SynOptics.
http://www.nicira.com

UK Regulator Approves Mobile Spectrum Trading

Ofcom, the official telecom regulator for the UK, has given the go-ahead for mobile phone operators to trade the rights to the radio spectrum they hold. The measure is aimed at helping to increase mobile network capacity and deliver faster and more reliable mobile services for consumers.



By allowing operators to trade their spectrum, Ofcom said it believes that there will be greater opportunity to use it more efficiently. Ultimately, it is believed that this will bring benefits to citizens and consumers in terms of improved mobile services.http://www.ofcom.co.uk

BT Offers Etherflow Across Germany

BT has deployed its Etherflow service across Germany. Corporate customers can now use BT's Ethernet-based WAN service in the country's main business centres. The service may be use to connect data centres and backup facilities, link geographically dispersed sites and build high performance Virtual Private Networks (VPN). For business-critical applications, dedicated bandwidths between 2Mbps and 1Gbps can be booked.http://www.btplc.com

NSN Invests in ClariPhy for 10/40/100G Advanced Signal Processing

Nokia Siemens Networks has invested an undisclosed amount for a stake in ClariPhy, a start-up based in Los Altos, California and Cordoba, Argentina. ClariPhy provides advanced integrated circuits that improve the efficiency and capacity of networks used for transporting vast quantities of information.



Specifically, Nokia Siemens Networks' investment supports ClariPhy's development of highly integrated single chip complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (ICs) for high performance optical networks digital signaling processing (DSP). Essentially, these semiconductor chips integrate the multiple tasks required by transport networks such as conversion of analog signals from optical sensors to digital, digital manipulation, and back to analog form again, faster and more efficiently.



"The rapid processing of digital signals is crucial in high capacity optical networks," said Vesa Tykkyläinen, head of the optical networks business line at Nokia Siemens Networks. "We are investing in a company that is innovative and a forerunner of the coherent chip technology*** with 40nm (nanometer) CMOS for 40G. ClariPhy will also be among the firsts to use 28nm CMOS for 100G, high-gain and low-latency soft-decision****, forward error correction and many other innovations. Together with our leading R&D, ClariPhy will enable us to be at the forefront of high performance and low power consumption next-generation optical platforms capable of 400G and beyond along with reducing equipment footprint".http://www.clariphy.comClariPhy's portfolio includes mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) for 10, 40 and 100 Gbps optical networking and communication applications. The new class of single chip MXSP ICs that significantly increase an optical network's reach and tolerance to impairments (such as chromatic dispersion, polarization mode dispersion and fiber nonlinearity). The company's line of 10G, 40G and 100G networking chips are based on advanced MXSP schemes such as Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation (MLSE) and Coherent Detection that approach the limits of achievable performance. ClariPhy's implementation of these schemes in 40 nm single-chip CMOS enables equipment designers to reduce cost and power by integrating multiple system functions into customized System on Chip (SoC) solutions.

LightSquared Proposes its Solution to GPS Interference

LightSquared proposed a solution to the problem of interference with Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. This solution will permit LightSquared to proceed with its business plan. The company asserts that this plan will protect the public's stake in GPS and lay the foundation for the future co-existence of a variety of wireless broadband services and GPS.



Specifically, LightSquared is proposing to use only a specific block of its allocated frequencies which does not pose interference with GPS. LightSquared will also reduce the maximum authorized power of its base-station transmitters by over 50%.



The company said that "testing has shown that only one of its 10MHz blocks of frequencies poses interference to many GPS receivers. This block happens to be the specific set of frequencies that LightSquared planned to use for the initial launch of its nationwide wireless broadband network.
Based on those same early test results, LightSquared determined that another 10MHz block of the spectrum did not create such an interference risk. This block is lower on the spectrum band and located further away from the GPS frequencies, greatly reducing the risk for interference.
Test results show this lower block of frequencies is largely free of interference issues with the exception of a limited number of high precision GPS receivers that are specifically designed to rely on LightSquared's spectrum. In its original plan, LightSquared planned to move into this other frequency block as its business grew over the next two to three years."



LightSquared recently reached an agreement with Inmarsat that will allow the rollout of its wireless network in a timeframe that keeps to the original business plan and is in accordance with regulatory requirements. As part of this revised plan, LightSquared will modify its FCC license to reduce the maximum authorized power of its base-station transmitters by over 50%. This action will limit LightSquared to the power it was authorized to use in 2005, which will provide additional protection to GPS.



The company believes this new plan will give it enough spectrum for the next several years,http://www.lightsquared.com

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom Deploys Metaswitch Service Broker.

Taiwan's Chunghwa Telecom is deploying the Metaswitch Service Broker to deliver services across both its legacy and IMS networks. These services will be delivered to subscribers on any network at the same time, without compromising IMS capabilities.



"The evolution of an Intelligent Network service architecture is an important process that we have planned for years," said Dr. Chen, IN services project manager at Chunghwa Telecom Labs. "Metaswitch was selected after evaluation of a number of solution vendors for both their capabilities and cost. Since the award, we have worked closely with the Metaswitch team in proving out the solution and they have been very helpful in all phases of the project."http://www.metaswitch.com

Narus and IBM Netezza Partner on CyberSecurity

Narus is partnering with IBM Netezza to sell cyber security solutions into the federal market. Narus has been an IBM Netezza Complementary Technology Partner since 2010.



The companies noted that advanced persistent threats, zero-day attacks and other sophisticated cyber threats are causing significant disruptions to today's business environment, requiring organizations to evaluate their existing security solutions to determine if they provide adequate protection. Many have concluded that responding quickly to imminent cyber attacks requires maintaining situational awareness of their networks, predicting and detecting anomalous and malicious network traffic, and executing deep-dive forensics on large volumes of data captured over an extended period of time.



The joint solution combines Narus' powerful real-time network traffic monitoring and analytics with IBM Netezza's large-scale data analytics and data warehousing capabilities to identify malicious activities and determine the entire history of the cyber threat. The combined capability enables network and security operators to take appropriate corrective actions quickly, thus drastically improving protection against cyber attacks.http://www.narus.com

Comcast Deploys Juniper, Ciena, and Cisco for Metro Ethernet

Comcast is pursuing a multi-vendor approach for its recently launched Metro Ethernet portfolio for mid-sized businesses. Specifically, Comcast has deployed:



Juniper Networks T Series Core Routers, MX Series Universal Edge Routers and EX Series Ethernet Switches.




Ciena's LE-311v, which is part of a family of service delivery and aggregation platforms that address a wide range of application and service requirements.



Cisco Aggregation Services Router 9000 Series (ASR 9000).http://www.comcast.com

TI Extends its Base Station Architecture for Metro, Pico and Femtos

Texas Instruments has extended its base station silicon architecture with two new chips designed for small cell applications. With this introduction, TI's base station portfolio now scales from enterprise femto cells, to neighborhood pico cells, to high capacity metro cells -- all leveraging the same "Keystone" multicore architecture and common software libraries. These scalable SoCs encompass a mix of processing elements including radio accelerators, network and security coprocessors, combined fixed-and floating-point digital signal processors (DSPs) and an ARM RISC processor, providing the ideal foundation for layers 1, 2 and 3 and transport processing for high performance small cell base stations.



As the mobile market continues to grow, the underlying infrastructure is experiencing greater pressures associated with form factor, performance and power consumption," said Ian Drew, executive vice president of marketing, ARM. "Texas Instruments' use of the ARM Cortex-A8 provides new levels of energy efficiency and higher performance to the small cell base station market."



The TCI6612 and TCI6614's processing elements include two or four TMS320C66x fixed- and floating-point DSP cores, as well as a power efficient ARM Cortex™-A8 RISC processor. The ARM core is typically used for control plane processing. The remaining base station functions, including all baseband and packet processing, are handled by the DSP cores coupled with configurable wireless, network and security coprocessors.



The devices are code compatible with TI's entire KeyStone multicore portfolio, as well the TMS320C64x DSP generation, ensuring all previous software investments made by TI customers can be reused. Sampling is expected in Q3.http://www.ti.com http://www.ti.com/c66multicore