Comcast Business Builds Direct Connect to Clouds

Comcast Business is building direct connections into cloud exchanges to give its Ethernet customers dynamic and scalable access to a range of cloud service providers. As part of this strategy, Comcast Business has private, high-performance connections with automated provisioning to multiple cloud services through the Equinix Cloud Exchange at 10 Gbps, 1 Gbps and sub-gigabit connections.

Since launching its private Ethernet services in 2011, Comcast Business has extended its fiber-based network and now reaches more than one million Ethernet-enabled buildings. The company has also extended its fiber network and Ethernet services into more than 325 data centers across the United States, ranging from individual Tier I facilities that local businesses use for data back-up to regional, multi-facility Tier IV providers that offer colocation, managed hosting and cloud services with replication across diverse geographies. Beyond just the network connections, Comcast Business is partnering with data center providers in a variety of co-marketing and sales enablement activities as data centers recognize that Comcast Business’ network reach and rapid Ethernet provisioning expand their addressable market.

“For CIOs and IT departments, sourcing their business applications to a multi-tenant data center or cloud is only viable if their business locations have private Ethernet connectivity to ensure application performance would be the same whether the server is on-site or hundreds of miles away,” said Mike Tighe, Executive Director, Data Services, Comcast Business. “Our focus is on being the data center and cloud-neutral transport provider that empowers businesses with a choice in hybrid IT solutions and massive Ethernet network reach to connect data centers and cloud services to more than one million Ethernet-enabled buildings.”

http://business.comcast.com/

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Telefónica Joins Equinix Cloud Exchange

Telefónica announced support for Equinix's Cloud Exchange as a means to provide its enterprise customers with dedicated connectivity to multiple cloud service providers.

Telefónica will offer this connectivity through its global IP MPLS network to Equinix’s ecosystem of cloud service providers in select Equinix IBX data centers across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific via the Equinix Cloud Exchange™ interconnection service.

“By connecting Telefónica IP MPLS services to Equinix’s Cloud Exchange, we are expanding our own cloud services offer giving our customers the ability to choose from the best combination of cloud infrastructure, platform and software service providers to ensure they can put the best possible hybrid cloud solution in place to meet their individual business needs,” stated Jose Luis Gamo, CEO Multinationals Business Unit of Telefónica Global Solutions.

http://www.globalsolutions.telefonica.com

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RapidIO Delivers 16 Gbps Interconnect for NVIDIA-based Clusters

Integrated Device Technology (IDT) and Orange Silicon Valley have co-developed a new compute architecture that leverages massive, highly scalable, low-latency clusters of low-power NVIDIA Tegra K1 mobile processors along with using IDT’s RapidIO technology which can interconnect multiple nodes at up to 16 Gbps. The architecture can scale to more than 2,000 nodes in a rack and enables ultra-high Gflop density and energy efficiency not achievable with PCI Express or Ethernet technologies.

The design essentially interconnects a large number of low-power GPUs in a server rack, enableing tremendous computing horsepower with low latency and low energy consumption. It yields up to 23 Tflops per 1U server, or greater than 800 Tflops of computing per rack.

IDT said its new architecture matches computing cores with 16 Gbps data rate to each node for better computing-to-throughput balance, one of the key limitations in the industry today. The compute to I/O ratio will continue to improve with 40 Gbps IDT RapidIO 10xN technology.

The architecture allows for 60 nodes on a 19-inch 1U board, with more than 2,000 nodes in a rack. Any node can communicate with another node with only 400 ns of fabric latency. Memory-to-memory latency is less than two microseconds. Each node consists of a Tsi721 PCIe to RapidIO NIC and a Tegra K1 Mobile Processor with 384 Gflops per 16 Gbps of data rate, or 24 floating point operations per bit of I/O. This will be valuable at the rack level in data centers and at the individual analytics server level for wireless access networks.

The cluster was achieved with NVIDIA’s Jetson TK1 development kit, which is powered by the NVIDIA Tegra K1 mobile processor.

“Leading innovators in the ‘Big Data’ arena are increasingly discovering the benefits RapidIO interconnect can bring to their applications,” said Sean Fan, vice president and general manager of IDT’s Interface and Connectivity Division. “Our work with Orange Silicon Valley—connecting massive numbers of low-power NVIDIA mobile processors via RapidIO—demonstrates a breakthrough approach to addressing the tradeoffs between total computing, power and balanced networking interconnect to feed the processors.”

http://www.IDT.com

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California Research & Education Network Upgrades to 100G

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) has completed a 100G upgrade for the core backbone of the California Research & Education Network (CalREN).

CalREN is a 3,800-mile fiber-based advanced network serving the California K-12 System, California’s Community Colleges, the California State University, the University of California, and many private universities including Caltech, Stanford, and USC, as well as a rapidly growing list of other institutions.

The ten campuses of the University of California, the University of Southern California, the California Institute of Technology, and Stanford University will be able to take advantage of 100G connections from their campus research networks into CalREN.

“As with many advanced networks, CalREN backbone traffic is in a constant state of accelerating growth, and we’re always heartened by this since it means that the network is doing the job it was designed to do: encourage innovation of all kinds,” says CENIC President and CEO Louis Fox. “This makes ongoing network upgrades like this absolutely critical to the continued health of California’s spirit of innovation.

“At Stanford, we have recently deployed 100-Gigabit capabilities for our own campus research data center,” states CENIC Board Chair and Associate Vice President of IT at Stanford University Bill Clebsch. “With the CENIC backbone upgrade, we now have an end-to-end high-speed path from our researchers to their partners elsewhere in California and beyond. CENIC’s new capabilities are absolutely necessary to enabling and accelerating the pace of discovery and innovation.”

http://www.cenic.org

In July 2013, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC)  established five new 100 Gbps links between the California Research and Education Network (CalREN) and Internet2.

Two new 100G connections in Los Angeles will support a variety of research purposes, along with a third 100G connection at Sunnyvale that will also connect to Internet2’s Advanced Layer 2 Services. Along with these, two connections between CalREN and Internet2’s TR-CPS national peering infrastructure will be upgraded to 20G and can scale to 100G.

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Fujitsu Intros In-Building LTE Femtocell

Fujitsu introduced its BroadOne LS100 Series LTE Femtocell, a small and lightweight indoor base station for North America.

Fujitsu said its new small cell implements a unique interference avoidance capability that provides the highest signal strength from either the macrocell or the small cell, and provides a smooth handoff between them. Interference is mitigated through four distinct control functions – frequency, power, timing and access - in turn helping to improve user data rates. The self-optimizing feature autonomously monitors the local RF environment and intelligently adjusts to maximize user throughput. In addition, the robust QOS and Scheduler features best support premium 4G services like VoLTE.

“As mobile traffic increases with the growing use of smart devices, network operators must increase coverage and capacity of their networks,” said Tetsuya Takase, Head of Wireless at Fujitsu Network Communications. “The LS100 Series provides operators an affordable solution to improve in-building coverage and add capacity where high-speed data is critical, ultimately improving the overall user experience.”

The LS100 Series is one element of the Fujitsu solution that also includes the LS700 HeNB Gateway and LS800 HeMS Element Management System (EMS). The gateway provides high scalability by expanding processing capacity during increased traffic, while the EMS’s open OSS interface and intuitive GUI design ensure flexible, simplified element management support.

http://us.fujitsu.com/telecom

In this sponsored video, Fujitsu introduces its BroadOne GX4000 Multi-Gigabit Wireless Transport System for the North American market.  This E-band solution operates in the 70 / 80 GHz frequency band and uses Fujitsu's “Impulse Radio” technology to enable an ultra-high data rate of 3 Gbps for a wireless link. It provides wireless CPRI transport for cellular fronthaul.

http://youtu.be/m7daZjhOmfg

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Coriant Supplies its hiT 7300 DWDM to Indonesia's PGASCOM

Indonesia's PGASCOM will deploy Coriant's hiT 7300 Multi-Haul Transport Platform to expand the capacity of its long haul submarine cable network that links Jakarta and Singapore.

Coriant said its hiT 7300 will help PGASCOM improve optical performance in its Jakarta to Singapore long haul link and reliably expand network capacity in a pay-as-you-grow fashion to meet the evolving service demands of its end-user carrier customers. Key benefits of the Coriant solution include reduced latency, simpler operations due to a reduction of equipment at cable landing sites, and higher availability due to advanced optical layer management and mesh restoration.

"We are pleased to be chosen as PGASCOM's strategic partner as they expand their network," said Stefan Voll, Vice President, Product Management, Packet Optical & NMS, Coriant. "Submarine networks are critical for international broadband connectivity in Southeast Asia, and these networks can be a potential bottleneck due to the time, expense, and environmental challenges associated with capacity upgrades. Our solution meets these challenges with virtually unlimited capacity, system upgrade simplicity, and unparalleled resiliency."

http://www.coriant.com

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Primary Data Appoints Steve Wozniak as Chief Scientist

Primary Data, a start-up based in Los Altos, California, announced that Steve Wozniak has joined the company as Chief Scientist.

Primary Data is developing data virtualization technology that aligns applications, servers and storage systems in a single, global dataspace.

The comapny's solution is to separate the metadata that describes files from the actual file data to allow universal access to data across all types and tiers of storage. An intelligent policy engine provides on-demand data placement, agnostic storage protocols deliver access across file, block and object stores, and a full complement of data services enable seamless linear scalability of both performance and capacity.

Elements of the Primary Data virtualization platform include:

• Data Hypervisor: Virtualizes data by decoupling the access channel from the control channel. The Data Hypervisor makes clients protocol-agnostic and allows data to be transparently placed across third-party storage under a global dataspace.
• Data Director: A central management system that acts as a metadata server for the Data Hypervisor clients and provides policy definitions for data movement and placement.
• Policy Engine: Enables organizations to manage data independently of storage. User-defined policies automate data movement across all storage types based on the data’s current performance, price, and protection needs.
• Global Dataspace: The Primary Data platform gives data administrators global visibility into all storage resources in the enterprise. Real-time policies dynamically migrate data between storage tiers as application and data demands change.

“Innovations like wearables, digital assistants, and the Internet of Things are making computing more and more transparent in our lives, and for technology to remain accessible, we need to ensure data remains seamless as it serves us information,” said Wozniak. “Primary Data uses data virtualization to dynamically place data anywhere as applications demand. I’m excited to share our data virtualization platform with the world.”

Most recently, Wozniak served as Chief Scientist of flash memory innovator Fusion-io, where he worked closely with Lance Smith, David Flynn, and Rick White -- the team behind Primary Data.

“Working to develop disruptive technology is always exciting, but it’s even more exciting when you can team up with a talented group of friends to achieve those goals together,” said Rick White, Primary Data co-founder and chief marketing officer. “With Woz on the team along with Lance and David, we now have the band back together, and I’m amped to be reunited at Primary Data.”

http://www.primarydata.com

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OIF Launches New Project to Identify APIs for Transport SDN

The OIF has launched a new project to develop implementation agreements (IAs) for the application programming interfaces (APIs) used between application and network controller.

The new initiative will build on the Service Request and Topology APIs prototyped in the recent Transport SDN demonstration held with the Open Networking Foundation (ONF) last month.

The new initiative will also create IAs for Service Request, Path Computation, Topology and Link Resource Manager interfaces that have been
identified as part of the OIF’s upcoming SDN Framework document. The APIs to be delivered by the new project are based on REST and JSON principles enabling rapid and flexible application development.

“The prototype Transport SDN demonstration revealed a lack of definition for how user applications interact with transport network applications and resource functions,” said Jonathan Sadler, of Coriant and the OIF technical committee vice chair. “The programmability of Transport SDN requires some of the internal interfaces used by ASON to become open.”

http://www.oiforum.com/

• In October, nine vendors and several global conducted an interoperability test and demonstration of Transport SDN. The demo, which was organized by the Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) and the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), included participation of ADVA Optical Networking, Alcatel-Lucent, Ciena, Coriant, Fiberhome, Fujitsu, Huawei, NEC Corporation of America and ZTE. China Mobile, China Telecom, TELUS and Verizon are hosting the testing in their labs.OpenFlow extensions developed in the ONF Optical Transport Working Group were tested in the demo in both CDPI and CVNI forms. Vendors are also testing prototypes of Controller Northbound interfaces for Service Request and Topology functions developed as an OIF activity. The framework of the demo is cloud-bursting or application-based bandwidth-on-demand between data center sites. Testing based on this real-world use case illustrates potential deployment of Transport SDN technology, common interfaces required, needs for interoperability and any operational challenges. 

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