Thursday, February 13, 2014

Aerohive Files for IPO

Aerohive Networks, which specializes in controller-less Wi-Fi and cloud-managed mobile networking for the enterprise market, filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating for a proposed initial public offering (IPO) of shares.

Aerohive is based in Sunnyvale, California.

http://www.aerohive.com


  • Aerohive is headed by David Flynn, who previously was Vice President of Marketing and Product Management at NetScreen (acquired by Juniper). Later, he was Juniper's Vice President of Products for the Security Products Group.

CEO Interview: 2014 Outlook for DSL

Dr. John Cioffi, CEO of ASSIA, Inc., discusses the outlook for DSL technologies in 2014, including market opportunities, the use of Vectoring to improve performance, G.fast and Phantom Mode.


  • Are there new markets or applications for DSL?
  • What are the prospects for upgrading the existing DSL base with vectoring?
  • Future prospects for DSL in the U.S.?
  • Future prospects for DSL in Europe?
  • Does DSL have a new chance with Australia's NBN?
  • Does DSL make sense in areas with poor copper plants?
  • How has vectoring evolved?
  • How good is nodescale vectoring?
  • How fast can DSL ultimately go?
  • Any more opportunities to enhance DSL?
  • What are the prospects for G.fast?
  • Does FTTH still cost too much?
  • What is Phantom Mode?
What's next for ASSIA?




NSN Extends "Liquid Applications" to Mobile Base Stations

Nokia Solutions and Networks is extending its "Liquid Applications" framework to enable accelerated content delivery and real-time utilization of network information at the base station.

Liquid Applications’ new capabilities focus on three areas:

Building entirely new types of real-time services delivered from the base station.

Examples include instant video replays at sports venues delivered to nearby subscribers, high speed and secure access to corporate intranets, or video surveillance and advanced analytics running in the base station to improve urban transport systems. Liquid Applications’ distributed cloud capabilities coupled with NSNs AppFactory allow for agile application development and deployment in very short cycles.

Accelerating content delivery to improve customer experience

NSN’s Liquid Applications run on its Radio Application Cloud Server (RACS) within the base stations. The company is now extending the software capabilities of RACS with advanced content acceleration and optimization as well as enabling storage of third-party content. Serving content directly from the base station cuts time-to-content by up to 80 percent and reduces backhaul traffic by up to 25 percent.

Improving network operations and gaining new insights into customer behavior

NSN is introducing RACS-based agents in the base station that collect and process network data in real-time. By using tools such as NSN’s Service Quality Manager to analyze this data, operators can gain deeper insight into user actions and preferences. They can pinpoint precisely how to utilize the available network capacity to best effect and tailor services based on user preferences and location.

NSN is also bringing to the market a cloud based IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) aimed at Voice over LTE (VoLTE) services. These will be shown at this month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.


NTT and Partners Demo NFV Service Chaining

NTT, Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, and Hewlett-Packard Japan are testing service chaining based on network functions virtualisation (NFV) principles.  The use case has been approved as an authorized PoC (Proof of Concept) by ETSI's Industry Specification Group for Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV ISG).  This is the first such trial use case in Japan (the second in the world) approved as a PoC.

NTT said interoperability will be crucial for its vision of service chaining, in which virtualized appliances are interconnected in conjunction with networks.

For this PoC, multiple multiple services from multiple vendors are chained together. NTT Network Technology Laboratories is developing a service chaining method in which each packet is assigned an identifier to enable customers to select and apply virtualized functions on demand. The identifier shows a chain of virtualized network functions and forwards packets to them as appropriate.

NTT: Providing service chaining method
Cisco Systems: Providing vDPI
Juniper Networks: Providing vFW
Hewlett-Packard Japan: Providing vCPE

A demonstration is being held this week at the NTT R&D Forum 2014.

http://www.ntt.co.jp/news2014/1402e/140210a.html

IBM Develops Ultra-Fast Analog-to-Digital Converter

IBM Research and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have developed an ultra-fast and energy efficient analog-to-digital converter (ADC) technology to enable complex digital equalization across long-distance fiber channels.

An ADC converts analog signals to digital, approximating the right combination of zeros and ones to digitally represent the data so it can be stored on computers and analyzed for patterns and predictive outcomes.

IBM has awarded a non-exclusive technology license to Semtech, including access to patented designs and technological know-how, to develop the technology for its own family of products ranging from optical and wireline communications to advanced radar systems.

The 64 GS/s (giga-samples per second) chips for Semtech will be manufactured at IBM’s 300mm fab in East Fishkill, New York in a 32 nanometer silicon-on-insulator CMOS process and has an area of 5 mm2. This core includes a wide tuning millimeter wave synthesizer enabling the core to tune from 42 to 68 GS/s per channel with a nominal jitter value of 45 femtoseconds root mean square. The full dual-channel 2x64 GS/s ADC core generates 128 billion analog-to-digital conversions per second, with a total power consumption of 2.1 Watts.

IBM cited a number of Big Data use cases, including radio astronomy projects that are expected to produce 10 times the global internet traffic loads in a few years.

“Our ADC supports IEEE standards for data communication and brings together speed and energy efficiency at 32 nanometers enabling us to start tackling the largest Big Data applications,” said Dr. Martin Schmatz, Systems department manager at IBM Research. “With Semtech as our partner, we are bringing our previous generation of the ADC to market less than 12 months since it was first developed and tested.”

“Through leveraging the IBM 32nm SOI process with its unique feature set, we are developing products that are well-suited for meeting the challenge presented by the next step in high performance  communications systems such as 400 Gb/s Optical systems and Advanced Radar systems. We are also seeing an expanding range of applications in the existing radio frequency communications marketplace where high-speed digital logic is replacing functions that have been traditionally performed by less flexible analog circuitry,” said Craig Hornbuckle, Chief Systems Architect, Semtech.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/43171.wss

Gigamon Partners with Vistapointe on Big Data Monitoring + Network Intelligence

Gigamon and Vistapointe announced a partnership to provide mobile network operators with deep visibility and insight into the operations and transactions occurring on their network.

Vistapointe delivers data extraction, analysis and insight generation technologies for mobile traffic.  Its product portfolio, following the NFV architecture, is completely software-based, runs on COTS and ATCA platforms, and provides a 360°visibility around Subscriber, Applications, Networks, Roaming, Tethering and Device proliferation. The solution passively taps into the data, session and signaling layers of 3G, 4G LTE and Wi-Fi networks non-intrusively. It complies with the 3GPP, IETF & IEEE standard protocols, without requiring any integration with the existing vendors.

Gigamon provides an intelligent Visibility Fabric architecture for enterprises, data centers and service providers. Its GigaVUE portfolio of high availability and high density products intelligently delivers the appropriate network traffic to management, analysis, compliance and security tools.

Under the partnership, Vistapointe becomes part of Gigamon's Visibility Fabric Ecosystem Partner Program, which offers visibility solutions for network security, troubleshooting, application analysis, forensics review and SOX compliance.

"There are significant changes occurring within carrier networks as a result of various forms of virtualization and Big Data," said Andy Huckridge, Director of Service Provider Solutions at Gigamon. "The associated business impacts are also changing the way these operators deliver services and generate revenue. The Gigamon Visibility Fabric and a new class of tool vendor, like Vistapointe, are addressing the needs of these mobile service providers. We look forward to working with Vistapointe to truly deliver greater value to our carrier customers."

"Vistapointe is excited to partner with Gigamon to bring new and valuable solutions to mobile operators," said Ravi Medikonda, CEO, Vistapointe Inc. "Mobile providers are looking for ways to deal with the explosion in the amount and variety of traffic flowing through their networks. They need to enhance subscriber experience, while reducing churn and revenue erosion. The combined Vistapointe and Gigamon solution can support this new Big Data business model, while working towards delivering enhanced value in increasingly virtualized environments."

http://www.gigamon.com/
http://vistapointe.net/

NEC Launches E-band Radio for Small Cells and Cloud-RAN

NEC introduced an all-outdoor, E-band radio unit designed for small cell backhaul aggregation and wireless extensions to fiber broadband networks.

The iPASOLINK EX leverages E-band millimeter wave spectrum, which typically offers lower licensing costs than any other radio solution.

NEC also noted that new addition of a Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) enables the unit to provide wireless fronthaul in a Cloud RAN (C-RAN) environment. This ensures high data transmission speeds and capacity to connect baseband processors and Remote Radio Heads (RRH) wirelessly in a distributed RAN.

Ichiro Kaneko, Senior Manager of NEC's Mobile Wireless Solutions Division, commented:  "NEC engineered iPASOLINK EX to provide an even higher level of upgradeable data capacity in a small, exceptionally reliable radio unit. With this latest product launch, NEC aims to continue to provide the most advanced and most comprehensive range of mobile backhaul and fronthaul solutions on the market."

NEC has already deployed over two million microwave transmission systems across 147 countries to support LTE, digital broadcast, Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), 3G and other types of communication networks.

http://www.nec.co.jp

Ericsson Offers Telecom Cloud Transformation Consulting

Ericsson is launching a Telecom Cloud Transformation consulting practice to help network operators add value by either improving the quality of existing services or launching services of their own.

The unit combines Ericsson's professional services experience and technology insights across business, IT and telecom with the latest developments in SDN and NFV.

Paolo Colella, Vice President and Head of Consulting and Systems Integration, Ericsson, says: "The cloud offers operators advantages such as efficiency gains in operations as well as improved time to market. With our professional services leadership and data center experience, we can help operators identify how best to transform their existing technology and process environments to take advantage of the cloud opportunity."

http://www.ericsson.com

Comcast to Acquire Time Warner Cable

In a deal that combines the No.1 and No.2 cable operators, Comcast has agreed to acquire Time Warner Cable for $159 per share, representing a enterprise value of about $45 billion.

Comcast is the largest U.S. cable operator with approximately 23 million subscribers.  Time Warner Cable has about 12 million subscribers.  The combined company would have $86.8 billion in annual revenue.

The proposed merger is expected to face regulatory reviews. Comcast and Time Warner said they are prepared to shed 3 million subscribers if needed to gain approvals.

Previously, Charter offered $132 per share to acquire Time Warner - a bid that was rejected by the company as below value.

The companies believe they will be able to achieve $1.5 billion in ongoing operational efficiences, including $400 million in capital savings through the merger.

http://www.comcast.com
http://www.timewarnercable.com/