ONF Launches OpenFlow v1.3 Pilot Testing Program

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) has launched a pilot OpenFlow v1.3 Conformance Testing Program. ONF members currently participating in the program include companies such as: Digital China Networks (DCN), Centec Networks, Extreme Networks, H3C Technologies, HP, Huawei, Meru Networks, NEC, and ZTE Corporation.

“The interest we’ve received from member companies and the momentum we’ve experienced in conformance testing underscore industry demand for conformant SDN solutions and overall interoperability,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “OpenFlow v1.3 builds on the existing testing specification incorporating a more robust feature set and demonstrates our commitment to making OpenFlow v1.3 a stable target for implementers. By supporting OpenFlow v1.3, vendors looking to expand their product lines are able to show customers their long-term commitment to the protocol and the future of networking.”

Since the OpenFlow Conformance Testing Program’s inception in 2013, ONF has certified six products from four member companies for their solutions: DCN, HP, Meru Networks, and NEC. An ONF Certificate of Conformance is the highest level of assurance available in the market today and validates conformance to a particular version of the OpenFlow specification. Vendors can earn an ONF Certificate of Conformance for networking hardware, including switches and routers, as well as network software.

“The companies that have already completed conformance testing have rapidly seen the benefits of the program, including an increase in quality and accelerated product deployment,” said Erica Johnson, director of the University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) and chair of the Open Networking Foundation’s Testing Leadership Council. “By undergoing testing, vendors are able to solidify their commitment to the OpenFlow specification while also building network operators’ confidence in the products they deploy in their networks.”

The ONF OpenFlow Conformance Testing Program has six accredited international testing laboratories, namely Beijing Internet Institute (BII) in Beijing; China Telecommunication Technology Labs (CTTL) in Beijing; Criterion Network Labs (CNLabs) in Bangalore; Indiana Center for Network Translational Research and Education (InCNTRE) at Indiana University; Network Benchmarking Lab (NBL) of National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in Hsinchu, Taiwan; and University of New Hampshire InterOperability Lab (UNH-IOL) at the University of New Hampshire.

https://www.opennetworking.org/sdn-resources/onf-specifications/openflow-conformance

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Interxion Adds Amazon Direct Connect in London

Interxion is now offering AWS Direct Connect from its London data centre campus.

Further deployments for Interxion Cloud Connect are planned in Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

Interxion Cloud Connect is a developing platform providing enterprises, SPs, SIs and carriers, private, secure and high performance connections to multiple clouds from within Interxion data centres enabling them to build complex hybrid IT solutions with the CSPs of their choice over a single connection.

http://www.interxion.com

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Coriant Intros Transcend SDN Orchestrator based on OpenDaylight

Coriant launched its Transcend SDN software suite, providing an advanced programming environment and open interfaces that empower on-demand, application-centric service agility and monetization of network assets.

The solution combines many of Coriant’s SDN and NSV solutions: Coriant Transcend Orchestrator based on the OpenDaylight Project, the Coriant Transcend Transport Controller, the Coriant Transcend Application Suite, and integration of Open Virtual Switch (OVS) functionality for Network Function Virtualization (NFV).

The Coriant Transcend SDN Solution is comprised of two major components:

• An SDN software suite that includes the Coriant TranscendTM Orchestrator based on the OpenDaylight Project, the Coriant Transcend Transport Controller, the Coriant Transcend Application Suite, and integration of Open Virtual Switch (OVS) functionality for Network Function Virtualization (NFV).

• The SDN enablement of the Coriant Dynamic Optical CloudTM product and services portfolio, including industry-leading metro-to-core packet optical transport (mTera
UTP, 7100, hiT 7300, 7090) and smart router (8600, 8800) offerings

“An SDN-based solution transforms today’s rigid transport infrastructure into a highly programmable network, one that is just as flexible, efficient and seamlessly scalable as data center computing and storage resources,” stated Stu Benington, VP of the Cloud and SDN Business Unit for Coriant. “The Coriant TranscendTM SDN Solution enables true SDN capabilities, versus other solutions that fail to fully address the requirements related to multi-
layer, multi-domain and multi-vendor integration.”

In addition, Coriant announced that a tier 1 service provider in Asia is testing its Transcend SDN solution.

http://www.coriant.com/

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Amdocs Rolls Out Network Cloud Service Orchestrator

Amdocs introduced its Network Cloud Service Orchestrator, an open, vendor-agnostic, catalog-driven solution for defining and activating complex services containing virtual network functions (VNFs) from multiple vendors.  The idea is to converge service fulfillment and assurance into a holistic, real-time process.  Amdocs said its solution enables the continuous design, fulfillment and assurance of network services, from any VNF vendor, utilizing existing service catalog and ordering systems, over all mainstream cloud management systems and SDN Controllers in a hybrid  physical and virtual environment.

"More than 250 service providers run Amdocs' mission-critical solutions. Of those, over 100 already benefit from Amdocs' network-grade, control-plane solutions, with distributed processing of more than 1 billion low latency events per day in some of our larger deployments. This heritage of service management and orchestration gives Amdocs a unique understanding of the communications market and makes us an ideal partner for service providers seeking to realize the benefit of NFV and cloud-based services," said Rebecca Prudhomme, vice president of product and solutions marketing.

Amdocs is also announcing an NFV Service Partner Program focused on pre-integrating a rich set of VNFs and NFV infrastructure elements in order to simplify the complexity of service orchestration, improve service time-to-market, and address end-to-end Service Level Agreement considerations. The program currently has 21 partners including Juniper Networks, Metaswitch Networks, Red Hat and Connectem.

http://www.amdocs.com

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SK Telecom Hits 300 Mbps with LTE-A Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation

SK Telecom demonstrated live LTE-Advanced Tri-Band Carrier aggregation in its commercial network, achieving downlink speeds of up to 300 Mbps. The demonstration, which was conducted in partnership with Ericsson, combined three separate bands of 10 MHz, 10 MHz and 20 MHz bandwidth.

Park Jin-hyo, Senior Vice President and Head of Network R&D Center, SK Telecom, says: "SK Telecom is pleased to successfully demonstrate Tri-Band Carrier Aggregation on its commercial network and thereby confirm the company's system readiness for commercialization of the technology. SK Telecom believes the demonstration will serve as yet another opportunity for the company to solidify its position as a leader in LTE-Advanced."

http://www.ericsson.com/news/101416-sk-telecom-and-ericsson-successfully-demonstrate-lte-advanced-tri-band-carrier-aggregation-on-commercial-network_244099435_c

• Earlier this year, SK Telecom has successfully tested LTE-Advanced 3 Band Carrier Aggregation (CA) technology in its labs. The technology aggregates 3 bands – 20MHz+10MHz +10MHz – to support speeds of up to 300Mbps. Client devices will need chipsets capable of aggregating 3 bands. SK Telecom said its testing help advance the global standardization process for LTE-Advanced 3 band CA.

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Ericsson Acquires Sentilla for Workload Mgt Software

Ericsson announced the acquisition of Sentilla, a start-up based in Redwood City, California, that develops IT infrastructure intelligence software. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Sentilla develops software for optimal performance, real-time workload management and intelligent deployment decision-making in complex multi-technology environments.

Ericsson said the acquisition enhances its ability to help service providers support IT organizations that are struggling to overcome new network complexities introduced by mobility and the cloud. In particular, Sentilla's capabilities across data gathering, performance monitoring, policy engine and reporting complement Ericsson Cloud Manager and Ericsson Expert Analytics, providing key functionality that supports advanced data center and cloud management solutions.

Mike Kaul, CEO of Sentilla, said, "By combining our capabilities with key Ericsson offerings, we can support dynamic optimization of workloads across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures, including constantly changing data center environments This functionality is imperative for service providers that want to continue to deliver a compelling enterprise offering."

http://www.ericsson.com
http://www.sentilla.com

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Equinix's Planned REIT Convervsion Yields $7.57 Dividend

In conjunction with its previously announced conversion to a real estate investment trust (REIT), Equinix announced a special distribution of $416.0 million, or approximately $7.57 per share based on the number of shares currently outstanding, to its common stockholders.

"Today's announcement marks an important step on our path to becoming a REIT. The declaration of the special distribution aligns with our expectations that we will begin operating as a REIT on January 1, 2015," said Steve Smith, president and CEO of Equinix. "We have finished a major milestone with the completion of the financial system conversion in Q3, and we are in active dialogue with the IRS about our pending Private Letter Ruling request. We are pleased with the current momentum, and we expect to receive a favorable PLR in 2014."  

For Equinix to be eligible to qualify for taxation as a REIT for federal income tax purposes effective for its taxable year commencing January 1, 2015, Equinix must distribute, on or before December 31, 2015, its previously undistributed accumulated earnings and profits attributable to all taxable periods ending prior to January 1, 2015 (the "Pre-2015 Accumulated E&P"). Equinix expects that the value of the 2014 Special Distribution, plus the expected value of the deemed distribution on account of the adjustment to the conversion rate relating to Equinix's outstanding 4.75% Convertible Subordinated Notes due June 15, 2016 (the "2016 Convertible Notes") that will be made as a result of the 2014 Special Distribution (the "2014 Conversion Rate Adjustment"), will exceed Equinix's Pre-2015 Accumulated E&P.

http://www.equinix.com

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Intel Intros Data Protection Tech for Point-of-Sale Terminals

Intel introduced an end-to-end encryption technologyt that can be built into point of sale (POS) platforms powered by Intel silicon, including Intel Core and select Intel Atom processors.  The Intel Data Protection Technology for Transactions, which was developed in collaboration with NCR, adds an extra layer of software to protect the payment process, complementing current retail investments in EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) credit card authorization, tokenization and other data protection technologies.

The software resides and runs on the Intel chipset for enhanced security and helps close the gaps between data transmitted between POS devices and the data center. The client software is available now. The full solution based on Intel Data Protection Technology for Transactions will be available to retailers in the first half of next year.

"It’s never been more important, or more difficult, for retailers to manage and protect data across the payment ecosystem,” said Karen Webster, CEO, Market Platform Dynamics. “Intel’s Data Protection Technology for Transactions security architecture does the obvious thing – it separates transaction processing from the POS – making that data less accessible and therefore more likely to be out of the reach of hackers. That can only help give both retailers and consumers more confidence that their POS experience is secure.”

http://www.intel.com

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Qualcomm to Acquire CSR for Bluetooth Silicon

Qualcomm agreed to acquire CSR plc, a developer of connectivity, audio, imaging and location chips, for at approximately £1.6 billion (about $2.5 billion).

CSR's areas of expertise include silicon chips for voice & Music; Bluetooth Smart; Automotive Infotainment; Indoor Location\.

“The addition of CSR’s technology leadership in Bluetooth, Bluetooth Smart1 and audio processing will strengthen Qualcomm’s position in providing critical solutions that drive the rapid growth of the Internet of Everything, including business areas such as portable audio, automotive and wearable devices,” said Steve Mollenkopf, chief executive officer of Qualcomm Incorporated. “Combining CSR’s highly advanced offering of connectivity technologies with a strong track record of success in these areas will unlock new opportunities for growth. We look forward to working with the innovative CSR team globally and further strengthening our technology presence in Cambridge and the UK.”

http://www.qualcomm.com

• In September, CSR introduced dual mode Bluetooth 4.1 compliant chips designed for low latency and ultra low-power wireless gaming controllers.

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Verizon Adds Aerohive Secure Enterprise Wi-Fi Router With Embedded LTE

Aerohive Networks introduced an enterprise Wi-Fi router optimized for branch offices and retail locations and featuring embedded LTE for the Verizon network.

The Aerohive BR200-LTE-VZ Router provides embedded Verizon 4G LTE capabilities, along with centralized cloud management and easy deployment features. It combines Aerohive’s and LTE technologies to equip retail and branch locations with integrated Wi-Fi, switching, routing, and firewall for employee and guest access along with high-speed WAN connectivity to headquarters.

Since Aerohive’s HiveManager Network Management System has the ability to manage devices from the cloud, a central administrator can control wireless access remotely, regardless of where the BR200-LTE-VZ routers are physically located. The integrated solution’s built-in identity-based access control, network-based mobile device management and simplified client health statistics empower IT administrators to control the network edge based on identity and device type.

Aerohive’s BR200-LTE-VZ router is available today and starts at $1,199 US list.

http://www.aerohive.com
http://www.aerohive.com/pdfs/Aerohive_Datasheet_BR200-LTE-VZ.pdf

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Xilinx Posts Flat Quarterly Sales but Profitability Exceeds Guidance

Xilinx posted second quarter fiscal 2015 sales of $604 million, down 1% from the prior quarter and up 1% from the same quarter of the prior fiscal year.  Second quarter fiscal 2015 net income was $172 million or $0.62 per diluted share.

"September quarter sales were in line with our guidance, but our profitability surpassed our expectations.  Operating margin was 33% in the September quarter, up from 27% in the same quarter a year ago," said Moshe Gavrielov, Xilinx President and Chief Executive Officer.  "For the December quarter, we are forecasting a strong recovery in 28nm sales driven by a broad base of applications.  We continue to target approximately $600 million in 28nm sales for fiscal year 2015, up nearly 60% from the prior fiscal year."

http://www.xilinx.com

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