Actelis Supplies Ethernet-over-Copper in Canada's Northwest Territories

Actelis Networks announced the deployment of its broadband solutions across a 440-thousand-square-mile region in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The rollout across the sparsely populated region connects a community of more than 40 thousand people to schools, health care centers and other public services. The network leverages existing copper-based infrastructure coupled with Actelis' EFMplus technology. Actelis' EFMplus technology served as the foundation for the aggregation switches and Ethernet Access Devices (EADs), which have been engineered to provide high bandwidth and reliable connectivity at very long distances over the copper network. This enabled the Northwest Territories to deliver services reliably and economically to every location almost immediately, regardless of distance.


"In order to construct a network that can provide the necessary bandwidth, reliability and access in such remote locations, satellite, line-of-sight microwave systems or a fiber-based network are often considered to be the only alternatives," said Joe Manuele, executive vice president of worldwide sales and customer service at Actelis. "However, a fiber-based buildout typically require millions of dollars in investment to lay new fiber, plus months, if not years, of effort involving digging trenches, negotiating rights-of-way agreements and so on."http://www.actelis.com

Read More

Meraki: iPad's Generate 400% More Wi-Fi Traffic

iPads use significantly more Wi-Fi data than the average mobile device -- in fact, over 400% more Wi-Fi data than the average Android, iPod, and iPhone -- according to a new study from Meraki, which has over 17,000 Wi-Fi networks in operation.


Meraki anonymously surveyed over 100,000 randomly selected devices accessing general use, public, and educational Wi-Fi networks across the US. The survey looked at bandwidth usage and operating system popularity over selected periods in 2010 and 2011.


Some of the survey results:

• Between 2010 and 2011, mobile platforms overtook desktop platforms in percentage of Wi-Fi devices.



• The average iPad consumes over 400% more Wi-Fi data than the average Android, iPod, and iPhone.



• iOS and Android together now account for 58% of Wi-Fi devices, compared to 33% just one year ago.



• The iPhone is now the single most popular Wi-Fi device with 32% share.

http://www.meraki.com

Read More

Tilera Pushes 64-bit Cloud Processors with 36, 64 or 100 cores @ 1.5G

Tilera, a start-up based in San Jose, California, introduced its "TILE-Gx" 3000 processor family specifically designed to take on Intel's Sandy Bridge as the workhorse for common cloud computing applications.


Tilera's TILE-Gx 3000 processors are optimized for cloud datacenters and promise a "10-fold performance-per-watt advantage over Intel's SandyBridge processor family."


The TILEGx-3000 series includes three processors to address different market segments: 36, 64 or 100 cores. The processors are implemented using the 40 nanometer TSMC fabrication process. Each core features a powerful three-issue, 64-bit ALU with an advanced virtual memory system. Each core includes 32 kilobytes (kB) of L1 I-cache, 32 kB of L1 D-cache and 256 kB L2 cache, with up to 32 megabytes L3 coherent cache across the device.


The first of the TILE-Gx family of processors, the 36-cores device, will be sampling in July of 2011, with the 64 and 100-core devices available early in 2012.
http://www.tilera.com

• In January 2011, Tilera raised $45 million in new funding for its TILE family of many-core processors for cloud computing and communications.
  
  
  Tilera's processors are based on its "iMesh" architecture that scales to hundreds of RISC-based cores on a single chip. Tilera has two product families: TILE64 processors and TILEPro processors, with its latest TILE-Gx family planned for early 2011.
  
  
  The new funding was led by Artis Capital Management, that included investment from WestSummit Capital Management and Comerica Bank in addition to existing investors Walden International, Bessemer Venture Partners and Columbia Capital. Cisco Systems and Samsung Venture Investment Co. also participated, joining Tilera's previous strategic investors: Broadcom, NTT Finance, VentureTech Alliance, and Quanta Computer.



• Tilera was founded in 2004 to bring to market the MIT research of Dr. Anant Agarwal who first created the mesh-based multicore architecture in 1996. The "Raw" project received multi-million dollar DARPA and National Science Foundation grants and spawned the development of the first tiled multicore processor prototype and associated multicore software in 2002.

Read More

SITA and Orange Business to Build a Global Cloud Computing

SITA, the air transport industry IT specialist, and Orange Business Services announced plans to build a global, high performance, managed cloud computing infrastructure. Each partner will use this infrastructure to deliver their cloud services portfolio to their markets with added global reach, reliability and minimum latency.


The cloud computing infrastructure will be based on six seamlessly interconnected Tier III+ and Tier IV data centers in five continents, in Atlanta, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney. Each data center will cover their regional hemispheres and will be interconnected via Orange's high-speed MPLS network.


Orange Business Services and SITA plan to offer their individual portfolio of cloud computing services, encompassing infrastructure as-a-service, platform as-a-service, desktop as-a-service, and software as-a-service. Both Orange Business Services and SITA will continue to own the service relationships with their end customers.


Rollout of the infrastructure has already started with the data centers of Atlanta, Frankfurt and Singapore being fully operational in Q1 2012 and all six data centers in Q3 2012.
http://www.orange.com
http://www.sita.aero/

Read More

Telefonica I+D Tests IP Optical Supercore with Juniper

Telefonica's Research and Development division (Investigación y Desarrollo, I+D) has tested a dynamic IP Optical Multilayer network architecture with Juniper Networks. The aim of the GMPLS-based IP Optical infrastructure is to reduce complexity in the service provider network while improving the economics of supporting the increasingly unpredictable traffic patterns driven by new and emerging network applications.


Telefonica has developed this solution leveraging the Junos control plane running on Juniper Networks core and edge routers and had previously demonstrated this capability at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition (OFC) 2011 in Los Angeles.


"We are working on defining how networks should be built in the next five to ten years, and the coordination of the IP and Optical layers is a fundamental pillar of this next generation architecture," said Enrique Algaba, technology director, Telefonica I+D. "Our collaboration with Juniper Networks to test this architecture model has been very fruitful in demonstrating what the new network of the future could achieve."


"Telefonica I+D has clearly identified a key capability required to build and maintain economical and more efficient core transport networks, namely the intelligence to coordinate resources in the IP and Optical layers," said Luc Ceuppens, vice president of product marketing, Platform Systems Group, Juniper Networks. "The ability to dynamically adapt the network to actual traffic patterns and identify where traffic should be aggregated is essential for service providers to minimize network resource consumption, without compromising service reliability or reducing quality of experience for their end users. This is the philosophy behind Juniper's new Converged Supercore architecture which combines the inherent efficiency of MPLS with the simplicity of switching and integrated optics to deliver unmatched network scale with fewer network elements without compromising service reliability."http://http://www.juniper.nethttp://www.tid.es

• In March 2011, Juniper outlined a new architecture that calls for a single network management system for the entire transport network -- Junos -- for both the optical layer and the packet layer. The aim is to combine the efficiency of MPLS, the simplicity of switching and integrated optics to deliver network scale with fewer network elements.
  
  
  By collapsing the packet and transport network layers, the Converged Supercore would help carriers save money in network management and operations, while taking uncertainty and cost out of core network provisioning. Juniper is forecasting network CAPEX cost savings of 40 to 65 percent compared to traditional architectures and a 35 percent savings versus a pure IP routing solution.
  
  
  The new Converged Supercore switches are based on a new Junos Express chipset that is optimized for high capacity transport and features the on-chip traffic engineering, full delay bandwidth buffers, algorithms optimized for packet transport and embedded error detection required to support differentiated traffic types and patterns without disruption. Junos Express is built in 40 nanometer technology with 3.55 billion transistors. It represent an R&D investment of $40 million. Junos Express is the second chipset in the Junos One family of processors, which the company developed in-house.

Presented by Luc Ceuppenns, VP, Product Marketing, Juniper Networks

Read More

AppliedMicro's Home Networking Chip Offers USB 3.0, SATA-II, QoS, Support for 802.11ac

AppliedMicro introduced a high-performance System-on-a-Chip (SoC) featuring a 1.2GHz PowerPC 465 processing core for advanced Network Attached Storage (NAS), Wireless Access Point (WAP) and media gateway systems for the connected home market.



AppliedMicro's APM86491 offers two USB 3.0 ports, two PCI Express Gen 2 ports, up to two SATA-II ports and two 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports on a single device. It supports line-rate throughput simultaneously on all high-speed interfaces, and it also supports next-generation 802.11ac and advanced 802.11n WLAN compatibility.



AppliedMicro is also providing a hardware-based Queue Manager with Traffic Manager (QM/TM). The QM/TM implements QoS to enable a richer video experience while unaffecting voice and web traffic. The device also implements inline packet acceleration technologies such as statefull TCP offload, hardware NAT and security features. These offloads enable applications such as firewalls, next-generation wireless access points and other connected home appliances such as NAS platforms.



Samples of AppliedMicro's APM86491 will be available in the third quarter and high-volume production pricing is under $20.http://www.apm.com

Read More

ZTE to Build BSS/OSS for Singapore's National Broadband Network

Nucleus Connect, the Operating Company (OpCo) of Singapore's Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN) has selected ZTE to build the BSS (Business Support System) and OSS (Operational Support System) platforms to support various end-to-end services such as business operations, billing, fault management, network management and maintenance.



ZTE said its BSS/OSS solution allows customized configurations which work well with an open access environment. It is expected to provide Nucleus Connect with fast and reliable service provisioning, multi-mode billing and effective network operation. In addition, the BSS/OSS delivers maintenance through flexible process management, overlapped resource modeling, powerful SOA structure and easy-to-scale interfacing models. Financial terms were not disclosed.http://www.zte.com.cnhttp://www.nucleusconnect.com

• Nucleus Connect is responsible for designing, building and operating the active infrastructure of Singapore's Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (Next Gen NBN).



• In September 2009, Nucleus Connect selected Huawei Technologies and Alcatel-Lucent as primary vendors.
  Huawei was awarded a seven year contract to provide the end-to-end full turn-key active network solution and professional EOT (Establish, Operate, Transfer) services for the entire Next Gen NBN. The offering includes 80-Tbps IP core Clustering Router, Next Generation DWDM optical transmission, Aggregation Service Router, Terabit GPON access platform, Carrier Ethernet Switch, Multi-service ONTs and the Unified network management system for the entire active network. Alcatel-Lucent was selected as the systems integrator for its business and operations support systems (BSS/OSS). Alcatel-Lucent's solution is built using strategic partners' off-the-shelf best of breed software products using service-oriented architecture (SOA) and data modeling is in accordance to the TM Forum SID (shared information data) model.

Read More

Rep. Eschoo Proposes 4G Consumer Disclosure Bill

U.S. Representative Anna Eshoo (D-Palo Alto), top Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, introduced a "Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act" that would require mobile operators to disclose accurate information about the performance of their 4G services.



"Consumers deserve to know exactly what they're getting for their money when they sign-up for a 4G data plan," said Rep. Eshoo. "The wireless industry has invested billions to improve service coverage, reliability and data speeds, and consumers demand for 4G is expected to explode. But consumers need to know the truth about the speeds they're actually getting. My legislation is simple – it will establish guidelines for understanding what 4G speed really is, and ensure that consumers have all the information they need to make an informed decision."



Specifically, the legislation would provide consumers with the following information at the point of sale and in all billing materials:

• Guaranteed minimum data speed


• Network reliability


• Coverage area maps


• Pricing


• Technology used to provide 4G service


• Network conditions that can impact the speed of applications and services used on the network.

In response, CTIA-The Wireless Association issued the following statement:



"We are concerned that the bill proposes to add a new layer of regulation to a new and exciting set of services, while ignoring the fact that wireless is an inherently complex and dynamic environment in which network speeds can vary depending on a wide variety of factors. Congress should resist calls to impose new regulations and instead focus on the real issue, which is making sure that America's wireless carriers have sufficient spectrum to lead the world in the race to deploy 4G services."http://eshoo.house.gov/http://www.ctia.org

Read More

AT&T Promotes New Cloud-based CDN

AT&T announced a new, cloud-based Content Delivery Network (CDN) platform to help businesses ensure "lightning like" fast delivery of digital content, such as videos and graphics, on their websites.



The new AT&T Content Delivery Network is now being offered to customers on a limited basis and is expected to be generally available by the end of 3Q 2011. It includes a set of sophisticated analytics and tools designed to help companies understand what their Web audiences are looking for in an online retail or service experience.



"More and more businesses are relying on video, pictures and animation to get consumers excited about their products and services," said Sam Farraj, Assistant Vice President of AT&T Digital Media Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions. "Our CDN technology not only delivers videos and other attention grabbers at 'lightning like' speed, but it delivers them efficiently and at low cost."

http://www.business.att.com/enterprise/portfolio/content-delivery

• In April 2011, Cotendo confirmed that AT&T is leveraging its newly announced "Cloudlet" capabilities in the AT&T Content Acceleration suite, which provides for the faster delivery of dynamic content, such as social media and shopping cart data. Specifically, AT&T is teaming with Cotendo to add their Search Engine Optimization and Cloudlet offerings to the AT&T Content Acceleration suite. Cotendo said its Cloudlet paradigm will solve the challenge of quickly and efficiently delivering personalized web pages and device-specific content. This type of highly customized content typically cannot leverage the power of traditional content delivery network and site acceleration feature because each page must be generated individually.
  
  
  
  Cotendo's Cloudlet offers the capability to generate and deliver intelligent and real-time adaptive locally cached dynamic assets that can be content-aware (e.g. cookies), device specific, and selective by context (e.g. user's location). This includes the ability for granular authentication and contextual, personalized application delivery, which enterprises could leverage for serving content to employees and partners around the globe.

Read More

China Telecom Deploys Huawei's 100 Gbps DWDM

China Telecom has installed an end-to-end 100G WDM system linking the cities of Nanjing and Wuxi in the Jiangsu province. The deployment uses Huawei's optical transport platform.



Huawei noted that its solution enables bandwidth pooling and hybrid 100G and 40G services to be transmitted from Nanjing to Wuxi over hundreds of kilometers without having to use an electrical regenerator. Huawei's 80-channel system with 40 Gbps per channel solution and Tbit-level OptiX OSN 8800 are adopted in this OTN network.



"The successful deployment of this 100G system with our strategic partner China Telecom has launched China into the ultra-broadband era," said Christian Chua, President of Transport, Huawei. "100G is key to satisfying the growing demand for high-bandwidth services and enabling rapid telecommunications development to continue in China and around the world. We look forward to working with our global partners to continue providing high-quality, cost-effective solutions for the ultra-broadband era."http://www.huawei.com

Read More