Sunrise Adds IPv6, 10G SONET/SDH, VoIP and Copper Tests

Sunrise Telecom has enhanced its RxT Smart Productivity Test Platform with the addition of testing capabilities for IPv6, 10G SONET/SDH, VoIP, and copper:


IPv6 testing: The addition of IPv6 testing capabilities to the RxT 10GE module enables customers to migrate their networks from IPv4 to IPv6 and perform the same layer 2/3 service activation tests in IPv6-based networks.

PDH/SDH/SONET testing: The new RxT TEN Module combined with the already successful RxT SDH/SONET module allows the RxT platform to offer full PDH/SDH/SONET functionality, up to 10G from DS1/E1 to STM-64/OC-192 in a single platform.

SIP testing: The RxT platform now includes both a SIP phone client and packet capture application which enables basic end-to-end VoIP testing and analysis.

Copper testing: The RxT 2160 TDR/DMM Module for testing basic copper functions. The new module complements the RxT’s existing DSL test modules which already support ADSL2/2+, VDSL2 and SHDSL.bis testing.
http://www.sunrisetelecom.com

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SOFTBANK MOBILE Awards LTE Contract to Ericsson

Ericsson announced a contract to build an LTE radio access network for SOFTBANK MOBILE. The deployment will cover Japan's major cities - Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya - which together account for 70 percent of the country's total data and voice traffic. SOFTBANK MOBILE is currently Japan's third-largest mobile operator, with more than 29 million subscribers.

In addition, Ericsson will upgrade SOFTBANK MOBILE's packet core network, including systems integration and deployment of an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) solution, and build a new LTE radio access network using RBS 6000 multi-standard base stations. This will allow SOFTBANK MOBILE users to experience the best possible networks in one of the world's most densely populated areas such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya.

http://www.ericsson.com

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Vyatta Debuts Vplane Forwarding Plane Software

Vyatta introduced a highly scalable forwarding plane software solution for next-generation enterprise and cloud network designs.


Vyatta vPlane's fast-path architecture promises far better performance than the company's previous generation software on the same off-the-shelf hardware. Leveraging the new fast-path architecture on an Intel Westmere-class system, Vyatta vPlane is capable of delivering more than 8 million packets per second per core, more than a 10x improvement over Vyatta without vPlane. Additionally, since vPlane scales linearly with the addition of cores, an entire Westmere system can deliver 35 million packets per second in only a single rack-unit of datacenter space.

A key advantage is the physical decoupling of the software forwarding plane from the control plane.

Vyatta said its implementation is able to accommodate new and emerging standards such as OpenFlow.

http://www.vyatta.com

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MegaPath Expands Ethernet Over Copper Footprint Across U.S.

As the result of its latest buildout in central offices across the country, MegaPath, the new local exchange carrier formed through the merger of Speakeasy, Covad Communications and MegaPath, now claims to be the largest provider of on-net Ethernet over Copper (EoC) services in the United States.


MegaPath offers EoC on its network in 19 major markets, including Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Miami and San Francisco, reaching millions of businesses with symmetrical speeds up to 45 Mbpshttp://www.megapath.com/

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Tellabs Appoints CFO

Tellabs appointed Andrew Szafran as its new chief financial officer (CFO), replacing Timothy J. Wiggins, who resigned in December to accept the CFO position at DeVry.


Prior to joining Tellabs, Szafran served as senior vice president and CFO at APAC Customer Services, a leading BPO (business process outsourcing) firm, since 2008. Szafran previously served as vice president and CFO for Communications Supply Corp., a distributor of IP infrastructure products and solutions.
http://www.tellabs.com

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Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Network Rollout Continues

This week, the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network is being activated in 27 new markets and expanded in 44 markets. With these activations, Verizon Wireless will have 4G LTE network coverage in 230 markets across the United States. By the end of 2012, the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network will be available in more than 400 markets, and will be available to more than 260 million people in the United States.


"Verizon Wireless 4G LTE is the premier wireless data service in the nation, with more than six times the geographic coverage of our nearest competitor's 4G LTE network and now available to more than two-thirds of the nation's population," said David Small, chief technical officer of Verizon Wireless. "We will continue to introduce new markets and expand covered markets to ensure even more wireless users across the United States can take advantage of the benefits that 4G LTE brings to consumers, small businesses and enterprises."
http://www.verizonwireless.com

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Verizon Financial Network Cuts Latency for Chicago - NYC

Verizon has implemented a number of network enhancement to cut latency for ultra-fast financial trading along the key Chicago to New York City route. The Verizon Financial Network is now offering speeds as low as 14.5 milliseconds round-trip, one of the fastest speeds in the industry.


The performance gain is achieved in part with Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform. Verizon's premier service features full network monitoring and management for both latency and availability.

CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse financial derivatives marketplace, will be among the first customers for the Verizon Financial Network Premier Low-Latency Service and will use it in its Aurora, Ill., data and colocation center to enable companies in Chicago and New York to trade on CME Group's platforms and exchange market data in a low-latency environment.

http://www.verizonbusiness.com/us/solutions/finance/

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NEC: "SDN is Ready to Go!"

NEC has made an early bet on OpenFlow and software defined networking (SDN), said Kaoru Yano, Chairman of the Board of NEC Corporation, in a keynote address at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California. The company has been involved in SDN since its early days at Stanford and has played a leading role in many OpenFlow projects in Japan and around the world. This pioneering effort is really an extension of the company's long term research in computers and communications.


Some key points from his presentation:

• The value proposition of SDN can be summed up as follows: simple, fast, scalable, and open.


• SDN's key function is to automatically manage network traffic and distribute it as needed.


• SDN enables network traffic t0 be scaled and managed because network control is separated from network hardware.


• SDN allows users to upgrade the network independently of the hardware.


• NEC's OpenFlow formula is: Simplification + Virtualization + Visualization.


• NEC's unique SDN proposition is a logical abstraction called the Virtual Tenant Network -- this enables the complete separation of the logical plane from the physical plane. Users can design the Layer 2/3 network as they wish and then this design will be automatically mapped to the physical hardware.


• NEC's ProgrammableFlow enables drag-and-drop configuration of virtual tenants in a data center.


• NEC currently has 100+ SDN system trials underway.


• Current SDN applications will include academic networks, data centers, enterprise networks and the backbone infrastructure of telecom carriers.


• Geneis Hosting Solutions is using SDN to provide flexible global IP address assignment. The deployment has achieved a 60% reduction in global IP address and saved 100 hours per week of service support. The network has achieved 99.999% availability.


• Nippon Express using NEC's ProgrammableFlow to achieve virtualization flexibility and reduce service delivery time. The deployment reduced tithe rack space required for core switches by 70% and reduced power consumption by 80%.


• NEC is using Programmable Flow for its own multi-purpose data center. Following last year's earthquake and tsunami, NEC needed to relocate data center facilities to western Japan due to power restrictions. ProgrammableFlow simplified this transfer process.


• Software-defined networking can provide much smarter congestion control and recovery following a major disaster as experienced last year.

The Open Networking Summit is planning to post a video of their conference following the event.
http://www.convergedigest.com

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Google Links Data Centers with Software-defined Networking

WAN economics to date have not made Google happy, said Urs Hoelzle, SVP of Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow, speaking at the Open Networking Summit 2012 in Santa Clara, California. Ideally, the cost per bit should go down as the network scales, but this is not really true in a really massive backbone like Google's. This scale requires more expensive hardware and manual management of very complex software. The goal should be to manage the WAN as a fabric and not as a collection of individual boxes. Current equipment and protocols do not allow this. Google's ambition is to build a WAN that is higher performance, more fault tolerant and cheaper.


Some notes from his presentation:

• Google currently operates two WAN backbones. I-Scale is the Internet facing backbone that carries user traffic. It must have bulletproof performance. G-Scale is the internal backbone that carries traffic between Google's data centers worldwide. The G-Scale network has been used to experiment with SDN.


• Google chose to pursue SDN in order to separate hardware from software. This enables it to choose hardware based on necessary features and to choose software based on protocol requirements.


• SDN provides logically, centralized network control. The goal is to be more deterministic, more efficient and more fault-tolerant.


• SDN enables better centralized traffic engineering, such as an ability for the network to converge quickly to target optimum on a link failure.


• Deterministic behavior should simplify planning vs over provisioning for worst case variability.


• The SDN controller uses modern server hardware, giving it more flexibility than conventional routers.


• Switches are virtualized with real OpenFlow and the company can attach real monitoring and alerting servers. Testing is vastly simplified.


• The move to SDN is really about picking the right tool for the right job.


• Google's OpenFlow WAN activity really started moving in 2010. Less than two years later, Google is now running the G-Scale network on OpenFlow-controlled switches. 100% of its production data center to data center traffic is now on this new SDN-powered network.


• Google built their own OpenFlow switch because none were commercially available. The switch was built from merchant silicon. It has scaled to hundred of nonblocking 10GE ports.


• Google's practice is to simplify every software stack and hardware element as much as possible, removing anything that is not absolutely necessary.


• Multiple switch chassis are used in each domain.


• Google is using open source routing stacks for BGP and ISIS.


• The OpenFlow-controlled switches look like regular routers. BGP/ISIS/OSPF now interfaces with OpenFlow controller to program the switch state.


• All data center backbone traffic is now carried by the new network. The old network is turned off.


• Google started rolling out centralized traffic engineering in January.


• Google is already seeing higher network utilization and gaining the benefit of flexible management of end-to-end paths for maintenance.


• Over the past six months, the new network has seen a high degree of stability with minimal outages.


• The new SDN-powered network is meeting the company's SLAs.


• It is still too early to quantify the economics.


• A key benefit is the unified view of the network fabric -- higher QoS awareness and predictability.


• The OpenFlow protocol is really barebones at this point, but it is good enough for real world networks at Google scale.
• 
  
• 100% of traffic carried on the new network.

The Open Networking Summit is planning to post a video of their conference following the event.

http://www.opennetsummit.org/

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