Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Alcatel-Lucent Integrates Arbor's Threat Management to Stop DDoS

Alcatel-Lucent is integrating Arbor Networks' Threat Management System into its 7750 IP Service Router to provide advanced distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) protection in carrier clouds.



Last year, Arbor Networks documented a single, sustained DDoS attack at up to 100G, making it essential that carrier clouds address this escalating challenge.


The partnership between Alcatel-Lucent and Arbor makes it possible to detect and eliminate DDoS closer to the edge of the network, before infected traffic is carried across the network to its target. By integrating Arbor’s Threat Management System (TMS) software into Alcatel-Lucent’s IP routers - wherever they are located in a given network - attacks can be detected and dealt with at the edge of the cloud, closer to the location of the attack, which is a much more effective and less costly approach.

The capabilities will be delivered either as a standalone appliance or running on an MS-ISA blade for the 7750 Service Router. The solution delivers
60 Gbps+ performance per chassis, which Alcatel-Lucent describes as "industrial strength DDoS scrubbing."

The approach also enables Service Providers to offer a cloud-based service to detect and mitigate DDoS attacks on the networks of their enterprise customers. Effectively, the DDoS scrubbing capability is extended to all customers, services and geographies serviced by the router.

Kevin Macaluso, Vice President and General Manager of the IP Service Router Product Unit at Alcatel-Lucent, said: “Denial-of-service attacks are a rapidly growing problem in service provider and Enterprise networks today. Unchecked, they can bring down large networks and data centers for significant periods of time, which obviously has a detrimental impact on productivity and delivery of services. By integrating Arbor’s TMS into our IP service routers, we’re essentially moving the defensive perimeter further out to the ‘edge’ of the service provider’s network – in effect stopping criminals at the border."

The combined solution is available today and is currently in trials with more than 20 service providers worldwide.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/ddos-protection
http://www.arbornetworks.com/
  • In Novermber 2011, Alcatel-Lucent introduced a new "CloudBand" architecture for delivering "virtual telco" functionality and enterprise services from cloud-enabled data centers rather than dedicated telecom platforms. CloudBand, which will be the foundation for a new class of ‘carrier cloud' services such as IMS or video applications, leverages generic compute resources deployed in regional data centers throughout a carrier's footprint. The goal is to make the carrier infrastructure more agile, elastic, resilient and application-aware.
  • In 2010, Tektronix Communications acquired Arbor Networks, a provider of network security and management solutions, for an undisclosed sum. Arbor Networks, which is headquartered in Chelmsford, Mass., supplies solutions for the detection and mitigation of network security threats based on IP flow-based analysis. Its products include Arbor Peakflow, a carrier-class Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) prevention platform, and its Arbor eSeries platforms for broadband service optimization. Its customers include mobile and fixed-line operators, cable and DSL providers, ISPs and other cloud-based infrastructure and service providers.



PMC's OTN Switching Complies with New OIF Protocol

PMC-Sierra's HyPHY family of OTN processors provide full architectural support of the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF)’s new OTN-over-Packet-Fabric Protocol Implementation Agreement (IA).


The OIF IA defines a method for switching OTN streams, including the newly standardized ODU0 and ODUflex streams, over cell or packet switch fabric technology. This enables Packet Optical Transport Platforms (P-OTPs) to be based on a single fabric, which results in significantly simpler designs that consume less power and shelf space.


PMC said its HyPHY 20G and HyPHY 10G OTN processors provide a fully compliant implementation of the OIF IA via the Constant Bit Rate Interface (CBRI) and OTN Phase Signalling Algorithm (OPSA). CBRI, which is compliant with the Interlaken protocol, enables HyPHY to connect to a centralized packet/cell switch fabric and is capable of supporting hybrid packet/OTN switched line card designs (see Figure 1). OPSA provides for the segmentation, reassembly and frequency/phase encoding/decoding required to support OTN over a packet/cell fabric. The HyPHY 20G handles up to 40Gb/s of multi-service line-side traffic via 16-SFP, 2-XFP/SFP+, and 2-SFI-4.1 interfaces. In addition to P-OTP OTN switching line card applications, HyPHY also enables single-chip, low-power multi-service OTN muxponder and transponder line cards.
http://www.pmc-sierra.com

ETSI Approves Open Smart Grid Protocol (OSGP)

ETSI, the European standards organization, published two specifications aimed at accelerating the deployment of Smart Grid technologies.


The two OSGP specifications that originated with ESNA and were published by ETSI for global use are:


Group specification GS OSG 001: Open Smart Grid Protocol. Produced by the ETSI Open Smart Grid Industry Specification Group, this application layer protocol can be used with multiple communication media.


Technical specification TS 103 908: Powerline Telecommunications (PLT); BPSK Narrow Band Power Line Channel for Smart Metering Applications. This specification defines a high-performance narrow band powerline channel for control networking in the smart grid that can be used with multiple smart grid devices. It was produced by the ETSI Technical Committee for Powerline Telecommunications (TC PLT).
http://www.etsi.org

Redpine Signals Release Wi-Fi Module for M2M

Redpine Signals, a start-up based in San Jose, California with offices in Hyderabad, India, released a low-power Wi-Fi module for M2M markets.


The new "WiSeConnect" module implements advanced features like Wi-Fi Direct and Enterprise security required for 802.11n Wi-Fi based machine-to-machine (M2M) connectivity. The new module includes an embedded processor along with Redpine's ultra low power 802.11n Wi-Fi subsystem, as well as an antenna and frequency reference to be fully contained. Apart from SDIO and SPI interfaces, the module provides Ethernet and USB interfaces for universal applicability. The module provides Wi-Fi Direct functionality – that allows other Wi-Fi Direct devices as well as standard clients to connect to it. It includes a full implementation of the SEP 2.0 software stack that enables emerging smart energy applications. In addition, it supports embedded AP functionality and in both client and access point modes, it offers WLAN enterprise security features.
Evaluation boards are available now.
http://www.redpinesignals.com

Government Agencies Report GPS Interference by LightSquared

Last Friday, a committee of nine federal agencies and Cabinet level departments submitted a letter to the NTIA concluding that LightSquared’s proposed network would cause harmful interference to GPS. Critically, the FAA has found that interference from LightSquared would impact aircraft safety systems. In conclusion, the government investigators state "there is no practical solutions or mitigations that would permit the LightSquared broadband service, as proposed, to operate in the next few months or years without significantly interfering with GPS.�?


For its part, LightSquared issued a press release condemning the report and saying the testing "was rigged by manufacturers of GPS receivers and government end users to produce bogus results, and revealed details of the testing to document its accusations." LightSquared believes the GPS industry insiders and government end users manipulated the latest round of tests to generate biased results. Among the questions that LightSquared raises concerning the transparency and independence of the testing:


Why did the government choose to ignore LightSquared's proposed power levels?

Why did the government choose a power level 32 times greater than the level at which LightSquared will operate?

Why did the test protocol select the 1dB degradation to noise as the interference standard, since it does not apply to general purpose GPS receivers and GPS units are typically designed with an 8dB level of tolerance?

Who determined what acceptable interference is for the current round of testing? What is that standard?http://www.lightsquared.com
http://www.pnt.gov/

Verizon Extends LTE to 5 More Markets

Verizon Wireless is launching LTE in five new markets and expanding the network in three others on Jan. 19. The new markets are Glens Falls and Utica, N.Y.; Lawton, Okla.; and Brownsville and McAllen, Texas. The company is also expanding its network on in Atlanta, Houston and Spokane, Washington. This extends the network to a total of 195 markets covering 200 million people.
http://www.verizonwireless.com

AT&T Increases Mobile Data Prices

Citing rapidly rising mobile traffic, AT&T is increasing the price of its mobile data plans for new customers, effective January 22.


The new smartphone plans include:


AT&T DataPlus 300MB: $20 for 300MB

AT&T DataPro 3GB: $30 for 3GB

AT&T DataPro 5GB: $50 for 5GB, with mobile hotspot / tethering

Smartphone customers needing additional data can pay $10 per additional gigabyte on the AT&T DataPro 3GB and DataPro 5GB plans; AT&T DataPlus users will receive an extra 300MB for $20.


The new tablet plans* include:

AT&T DataConnect 3GB: $30 for 3GB

AT&T DataConnect 5GB: $50 for 5GB


Wi-Fi usage does not count against these caps.


"Customers are using more data than ever before," said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "Our new plans are driven by this increasing demand in a highly competitive environment, and continue to deliver a great value to customers, especially as we continue our 4G LTE deployment."http://www.att.com/dataplans

Huawei Selected for Western Africa's First LTE TDD Network

Nigeria's ZODA FONES has selected Huawei for the deployment of a TDD LTE network -- the first such commercial deployment in Western Africa. The initial rollout will cover Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, and its surrounding areas using Huawei's end-to-end SingleRAN LTE TDD solution. Financial terms were not disclosed. http://www.huawei.com