Freescale Debuts 64-bit ARM-based Processor for SDN/NFV

Freescale introduced a power-efficient, 64-bit ARM-based processor designed for highly virtualized, software-defined networks.

The new QorIQ LS1043A quad-core processor delivers 1.5 GHz of performance and requires power as low as just 6 W to operate. The device integrates four 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 cores, delivering 10+ Gbps and an estimated 16,000+ CoreMarks of CPU performance.

It features advanced virtualization hardware, supports flexible, secure cloud application updates with Freescale’s trust architecture, and offloads latency sensitive applications for optimized local performance with proven classification and traffic management hardware.

Freescale said its design target with this processor includes affordable vCPE products and other next-generation edge networking equipment, such as branch routers, security appliances and SDN/NFV edge platforms.

Freescale's QorIQ LS1043A includes a wide range of high-speed I/O for wired and wireless systems including 10 GbE plus 5x 1GbE, 3x PCI Express, 3x USB 3.0 with PHYs and SATA 3.0. Freescale’s multi-protocol QUICC Engine module is also incorporated for integrated support of legacy wide area and industrial interfaces.

“Freescale is driving affordable virtualized services by delivering outstanding performance, efficiency and intelligence to the network’s edge,” said Tareq Bustami, vice president and general manager of product management for Freescale’s Digital Networking group. “This new QorIQ LS1043A processor reinforces Freescale’s leadership in providing the world’s top equipment OEMs with optimized platforms for broadly deployed, secure and flexible edge services.”

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=LS1043A&tid=LS1043A

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Zayo Signs O2 for Nationwide UK Network

O2 has awarded a 15-year contract to Zayo to provide and manage a fully resilient core fibre network throughout the UK. The nationwide fibre network, which uses the acquired Geo Networks infrastructure, spans from Glasgow to Salisbury, comprises more than 4,500 route km and incorporates 19 connectivity points around the UK.

Under the agreement, O2's underlying infrastructure will shift from SDH and Ethernet-based managed services infrastructure to a dedicated fibre optic network which connects mobile switching sites across the network. The new infrastructure will provide O2 with flexible capacity to accommodate increasing demand for mobile data driven by its 4G rollout and increasingly digital customer base. The national network will incorporate towns and cities around the UK including Slough, Croydon, Newcastle and London.

"With the O2 4G network now covering over 260 towns and cities and half of the UK population, there has been unprecedented growth in the amount of data traffic transmitted across the network,” said Adrian Di Meo, Chief Technology Officer for O2. “A year after the launch of our 4G network, it has already carried a total of 5,400 Terabytes of 4G data, which is the equivalent of eight million hours of HD video.”

http://www.zayo.com

• Earlier this year, Zayo Group acquired Geo Networks, a London-based dark fiber provider, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition added over 2,100 route miles to Zayo’s European network, and connectivity to 587 on-net buildings. Geo owned and operated a high capacity fiber network in the UK, providing managed networks, dark fiber and co-location services to a variety of high-bandwidth sectors including media companies, service providers, financial services, data centers and gaming organizations.
  Geo’s 100-route mile London network is housed in the London sewer system, which minimizes the threat of physical faults, boosting reliability and security, and enabling rapid deployment with minimum disruption.  The network reaches 130 data centers across the UK. Geo also operates a diverse optical fiber subsea system, East-West Ring, providing diverse connectivity to Dublin, a strategic hub for data centers and cloud service providers.

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Nokia Optimizes 3G Signaling and Boosts Smartphone Performance

Nokia Networks announced a High Speed Cell FACH software feature that significantly improves smartphone performance on 3G networks, cutting smartphone-generated network signaling by up to 80%, boosting response time by up to 65% and achieving up to 20% faster browsing.

The figures were obtained from tests run on the commercial 3G/HSPA network of a major European operator using test devices fitted with Qualcomm  Snapdragon™ processors that support High Speed Cell FACH.

Nokia said its High Speed Cell FACH can handle small data packets from popular apps more efficiently to improve the overall customer experience and enable operators to support a higher number of smartphones on their networks.

A whitepaper is on the Nokia website.

http://networks.nokia.com/news-events/press-room/press-releases/nokia-networks-shows-how-to-make-smartphone-browsing-20-faster-while-reducing-power-consum

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ZTE's Revenue and Profits Soar

ZTE reported that its third-quarter revenue rose 24% to RMB 21.1 billion, as sales of handsets increased more than 40% from a year earlier. ZTE also posted growth in revenue from Carriers’ Networks, including 4G systems, in addition to Telecommunications Software Systems. Net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company increased to RMB 703 million in the quarter ended 30 September -- an increase of 191% increase in third-quarter profit.

In the first nine months, net profit increased 232% to RMB 1.83 billion, while revenue rose 7.8% to RMB 58.8 billion. ZTE forecast that full-year net profit will be between 2.5 billion to 2.8 billion in 2014, representing year-on-year growth of between 84.1% and 106%.

ZTE said it has been consolidating its position as the leading 4G LTE vendor in China.  The rapid rise in handset sales (up over 40% YoY) came from key markets, including China, the United States and Japan

http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/press_center/news/201410/t20141023_428423.html

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HP Intros Moonshots for App Delivery, Transcoding, Web Infrastructure

HP introduced ProLiant Moonshot servers based on Intel silicon and aimed at a number of specific use cases, including:

• Application delivery with Citrix XenApp
• Video transcoding with Harmonic Inc. and Vantrix
• Web infrastructure in-a-box
• Managed web hosting

“A transformative approach to computing is required to enable breakthrough capabilities not possible using traditional servers and move the needle on workload optimization,” said Paul Santeler, vice president and general manager, Moonshot, HP. “The unique architecture of HP Moonshot delivers extreme density and power efficiency. Customers can expand their offerings and prepare for the future, while significantly reducing the complexity of their infrastructure.”

The HP Moonshot solution for application delivery is based on the new HP Moonshot ProLiant m710 server, which features the customized Intel Xeon E3-1284L v3 processor with built-in Intel Iris Pro Graphics P5200. Video transcoding is supported on the HP Moonshot m710 enabled by both Vantrix Media Platform and Harmonic VOS architecture.

The web infrastructure in-a-box solution is based on the HP Moonshot ProLiant m300 server. Companies can  stand up and manage their entire multi-tier web infrastructure within one HP Moonshot chassis or across multiple chassis for maximum scalability and high-availability. The web infrastructure in-a-box features a LAMP stack solution that includes an exclusive Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription model for HP Moonshot servers using Intel Atom processors.

http://www.hp.com

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Amazon Web Services Launches in Germany

Amazon Web Services launched its new AWS EU (Frankfurt) region, its 11th technology infrastructure region globally for AWS and the second region in the European Union (EU).  AWS also operates in Ireland.

AWS said all its data centers are designed, built, and regularly audited to meet rigorous compliance standards, including ISO 27001, SOC 1 (Formerly SAS 70), PCI DSS Level 1, and many more, providing high levels of security for all AWS customers. The new AWS EU (Frankfurt) region consists of two separate Availability Zones at launch. Availability Zones refer to data centers in separate, distinct locations within a single region that are engineered to be operationally independent of other Availability Zones, with independent power, cooling, and physical security, and are connected via a low latency network.

The AWS EU region in Frankfurt operates on carbon neutral electricity.  It also conforms with EU data protection laws, ensuring that data remains within Germany.
“Our European business continues to grow dramatically,” said Andy Jassy, Senior Vice President, Amazon Web Services. “By opening a second European region, and situating it in Germany, we’re enabling German customers to move more workloads to AWS, allowing European customers to architect across multiple EU regions, and better balancing our substantial European growth.”

The new Frankfurt region provides a broad suite of AWS services, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Amazon Redshift, AWS CloudHSM, Amazon Glacier, Auto Scaling, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Storage Gateway, Amazon Elastic Map Reduce (EMR), Amazon Kinesis, Amazon Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS CloudFormation, AWS OpsWorks, AWS CloudSearch, Amazon SWF, Amazon SQS, Amazon SNS, AWS Direct Connect, and Amazon VPC.
  http://aws.amazon.com/

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Huawei Unveils Smart Optical Line Terminal

Huawei introduced a "smart: optical line terminal (OLT) with distributed architecture for next generation passive optical networks (NG-PON).

The SmartAX MA5800 is designed for the rapid creation of new network services as fixed broadband increasingly shifts from home access to multi-service access (e.g. enterprise access and Wi-Fi hotspot backhaul), and from simple bandwidth-rental operations to flexible user experience operations.

It leverages a distributed architecture to provide non-blocking access for high-density 10G-PON, 40G-PON, 100G-PON, and WDM-PON. Both the PON and P2P ports on the MA5800 support fixed mobile convergence (FMC) access including home access, enterprise access, mobile backhaul, and Wi-Fi hotspot backhaul. It also supports WDM-PON, which can be used to provide multiple symmetrical P2P channels over one fiber line and features high quality of service (QoS) and high service security.

Huawei also noted SDN-based smart service capability , which enables centralized management on massive ONUs of various types to achieve high O&M efficiency and low OPEX.

"Huawei endeavors to improve the end user's experience and build an intelligent access network with faster broadband, wider coverage, and smarter connection," said Jeff Wang, President of Huawei’s Access Network Product Line. He added, "The new OLT launched by Huawei, the MA5800, supports the FMC service, provides an optimized smart service experience, and unlocks the potential of ultra-broadband enabling carriers to gain an advantage over their competitors."

http://pr.huawei.com/en/news/hw-376658-olt.htm#.VEm5UJPF_Tg

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ADTRAN Enters G.fast Carrier Trials

ADTRAN confirmed that it has G.fast ultra-broadband trials underway with service providers in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific.

The company said G.fast is moving beyond a technology concept toward a commercial reality

“G.fast FTTdp is an ideal solution to offer ultrafast broadband speeds to our customers, reducing installation impacts and costs of FTTH,” said Andrea Calvi, responsible for IP Networks, at Telecom Italia. “We were pleased to have had ADTRAN demonstrate a real-world FTTdp solution based on the G.fast standard.”

“The breadth and geographical reach of our G.fast trials demonstrates the market’s appetite for this technology, as operators look to push toward Gigabit speeds in evolutionary steps with rapid ROI,” said Dr. Eduard Scheiterer, senior vice president and managing director, international markets for ADTRAN. “We expect many of these progressive operators to begin finalizing their G.fast rollout strategies and procedures in readiness for the general availability of commercial G.fast solutions in 2015.”

http://www.adtran.com

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Napatech Delivers Network Appliance Acceleration for Dell OEM

Napatech released a pre-integrated, pre-tested platform for appliance development based on Dell PowerEdge servers.

The Napatech Acceleration Platform optimizes network analysis applications to ensure full throughput with zero packet loss under all conditions. Other key features include:

• Precision time-stamping:  nanosecond-precision time synchronization and time-stamping capabilities.
• Pre-integrated platform available in two configurations: Napatech Acceleration Platform 40G based on Dell PowerEdge R720 with Napatech NT40E3-4-PTP 4 port 10 Gbps accelerator; and Napatech Acceleration Platform 4G based on Dell PowerEdge R620 with Napatech NT4E2-4-PTP 4 port 1 Gbps accelerator.
• Customized Dell solutions: Customization options from Dell OEM. 
• Scalability: Scale beyond four ports with the installation of additional Napatech accelerators without need for changes to application software.

http://www.dell.com/oem
http://www.napatech.com/about/partners/our-solution-partners

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NeoPhotonics Acquires EMCORE’s Narrow Linewidth Tunable Lasers

NeoPhotonics agreed to acquire EMCORE Corporation's tunable laser and transceiver product lines for approximately $17.5 million, which consists of $15.0 million and a working capital and inventory adjustment of approximately $2.5 million.  The deal includes production and development fixed assets, inventory and intellectual property for the ECL-based Integrable Tunable Laser Assembly (ITLA), micro-ITLA, Tunable XFP transceiver, tunable optical sub-assemblies and Integrated Coherent Transmitter (ICT) products for 10, 40, 100 and 400G telecommunications networks.

NeoPhotonics said it intends to add the EMCORE tunable lasers to its current product line and to continue to serve EMCORE’s current customers without interruption. EMCORE has supported these products from its facility in Newark, California and NeoPhotonics expects to integrate this business into in its existing Silicon Valley facilities. EMCORE’s revenue for this product line has been approximately $9 million per quarter. The acquisition is expected to be accretive to NeoPhotonics by the second quarter of 2015.

“EMCORE’s narrow linewidth tunable laser product line is highly complementary to our broad existing portfolio of optical components for 100 Gigabits per second coherent transport systems, and this acquisition significantly expands our footprint in this rapidly growing segment,” said Tim Jenks, Chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics. “EMCORE’s External Cavity Laser tunable laser has the narrowest linewidth in the industry, which we believe will become increasingly important for advanced modulation schemes at 400G and beyond. Combining this business into NeoPhotonics will allow us to provide customers with a full product suite that serves the entire coherent market,” continued Mr. Jenks.

http://www.neophotonics.com/news/newsneo_1980621.aspx

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Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks to acquire Optoplan

Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN) agreed to acquire Optoplan, a leading provider of 4D permanent reservoir monitoring solutions used in offshore oil and gas production. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Optoplan, which is based in Trondheim, Norway, develops 4D PRM technology used in seabed seismic surveys. 4D Permanent reservoir monitoring – 4D PRM – requires the permanent installation of seabed sensors to carry out frequent 4D seismic surveys of oil or gas reservoirs, collecting data that can be used by operators to monitor how oil, water and gas move in a reservoir over time. Once processed, the data helps produce detailed maps of underground geological structures, where wells should be drilled and how reservoirs can be drained to recover as much fuel as possible.

ASN said the acquisition extends its expertise in submarine cable systems.

“While ASN is already a leading player in Oil and Gas platform connectivity, Optoplan will extend our capabilities in the Oil & Gas domain, fully supporting the industrial plan to diversify our presence and capture new segments in this highly promising market,” stated Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

• In July, Alcatel-Lucent revealed that it is exploring a potential IPO for its Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN) business.  The move could help finance an expansion of its telecom submarine systems and its diversification into the Oil & Gas market.  Alcatel-Lucent plans to retain the majority of the ownership. Subject to market 

conditions, this capital opening is targeted to take place in the first half of 2015.

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Riverbed Revenue Rises 6% YoY

Riverbed Technology reported GAAP revenue for Q3'14 was $276 million, compared to $262 million in the third quarter of 2013 (Q3’13), representing 6% year-over-year growth. GAAP net income for Q3'14 was $11.5 million, or $0.07 per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $3.8 million, or $0.02 per diluted share, in Q3'13.

“Our third quarter financial results were in-line with our revised guidance. While we are not satisfied with our top line performance, we are pleased to see steady growth in our SteelFusion and SteelCentral businesses,” said Jerry M. Kennelly, chairman and CEO. “Our ongoing focus to gain increased operating leverage is evident in our Q3 results, delivering earnings per share in-line with our expectations. We’ve started to execute our previously announced restructuring plans to drive further operational improvements and remain committed to delivering profitable growth and enhancing shareholder value,” continued Kennelly.

http://www.riverbed.com

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Gigamon's Sales Rise 13% Sequentially

Gigamon reported Q3 2014 revenues of $39.3 million, up 13% from the second quarter of fiscal 2014 and up 1% year-over-year. GAAP net loss was $3.0 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, compared to GAAP net income of $1.5 million, or $0.05 per diluted share, in the prior-year period.

"We are pleased to have delivered sequential revenue growth of 13% and returned to non-GAAP profitability in the third quarter," said Paul Hooper, chief executive officer of Gigamon. "We achieved solid performance in our Enterprise business, generated strong revenue from North America, and continued to see solid demand for our GigaSMART portfolio. We believe these results reflect a stabilization of our business, and we remain focused on bringing our business back to stronger growth rates as we continue to improve execution across our operations."

http://www.gigamon.com

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