ALU Intros Flexible Wavelength Routing on its 1830 PSS

Alcatel-Lucent introduced a wavelength routing solution that can be deployed on its 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS), which the company said brings greater flexibility to the optical transport network while reducing CAPEX compared to electrically-switched alternatives.

The wavelength routing solution consists of specialized Colorless Directionless Contentionless-FlexGrid (CDC-F) hardware and Wave Routing Engine (WRE) software. The WRE software provides end-to-end wavelength routing, deployment, and management capabilities. This includes unique in-band per wavelength OAM capabilities to allow for efficient monitoring of wavelength connectivity and support the rapid diagnosis and troubleshooting of potential wavelength connectivity issues. The solution can be scaled from 100G wavelengths to 200G wavelengths without changing equipment required to route wavelengths.

ALU noted that Verizon has chosen the 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) for its ultra-longhaul, core optical network. The company said Verizon selected its 1830 PSS converged WDM/OTN/Packet based-platform as part of its transition to an optical converged infrastructure to address traffic growth and enable faster and less expensive deployment of new services.

“Operators need unlimited network dynamism and scale. A programmable IP/optical fabric is essential. Our wavelength routing technology is a foundational ingredient in providing the unparalleled flexibility with massive automation and increased efficiency that are needed in the optical layer. This solution provides unconstrained wavelength networking and can be deployed at scale,” stated Brian Fitzgerald, Senior Vice President, Global Solutions, Alcatel-Lucent.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2015/alcatel-lucent-prepares-operators-agile-optical-networking-launching-scalable-wavelength-routing

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NTT Com Launches Arcstar UCaaS Microsoft Type

NTT Communications is preparing to launch a unified-communication cloud service on April 13 called Arcstar UCaaS Microsoft Type.

Arcstar UCaaS Microsoft® Type leverages Microsoft Lync for unified communication on the NTT Com cloud platform and via Arcstar Universal One, NTT Com’s secure, high-quality, extra-reliable VPN. This will be the first deployment in Japan of Microsoft Lync (Skype for Business).

Going forward, NTT Com plans to offer Arcstar UCaaS Microsoft® Type in markets outside Japan, including North America, the EU and Asia-Pacific. The service will be further integrated with functions for remote conferencing, Arcstar Conferencing and unified communications.

http://www.ntt.com/aboutus_e/news/data/20150330.html

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Telefónica NFV reference lab releases OpenMANO NFV

Telefónica posted its OpenMANO NFV orchestration stack on GitHub, making it available to the open source community.

Telefónica’s NFV Reference Lab has been working on the open source OpenMANO project to provide a practical realization of the Management and Orchestration reference architecture (NFV MANO), currently under ETSI’s NFV ISG standardization.  The carrier has successfully validated OpenMANO with the more than 30 VNFs involved in the lab during the past year.

Telefónica NFV Reference Lab said its goal was a real vendor-neutral orchestration environment that provides advanced orchestration capabilities to assure high and predictable performance for the most advanced VNFs. Its aim is to promote interoperability and foster a more open ecosystem.

OpenMANO provides three software modules:

• Openmano (the key component): reference implementation of an NFV-O (Network Functions Virtualisation Orchestrator), which allows the creation of complex virtual network scenarios. It interfaces with an NFV VIM through its API and offers a northbound interface, based on REST (openmano API), where NFV services are offered, including the creation and deletion of Network Services or VNFs.
• Openvim: reference implementation of an NFV VIM (Virtualised Infrastructure Manager), with support for high and predictable performance. It interfaces with the compute nodes in the NFV Infrastructure and an openflow controller to provide computing and networking capabilities and deploy virtual machines. It offers an OpenStack-like northbound interface (openvim API), where enhanced cloud services are offered including the creation, deletion and management of images, flavours, instances and networks. This implementation follows ETSI’s NFV-PER001 recommendations.
• Openmano-gui: web GUI to interact with openmano API in a graphical and user-friendly manner. A command line interface is also provided for the most advanced users.

OpenMANO is available under Apache 2 License

https://github.com/nfvlabs/openmano
http://pressoffice.telefonica.com/j

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NTT and Oki Develop 40 Gbps WDM/TDM-PON

NTT nd Oki Electric Industry Co. have jointly developed a WDM/TDM-PON technology capable of transmission at 40 Gbps over a 40km distance while servicing 1,024 users.

The jointly developed WDM/TDM-PON technology consists of (1) wavelength-tunable burst-mode optical transceivers, (2) a wavelength multiplexed burst-mode optical amplifier and (3) a wavelength tuning protocol. Each Optical Network Unit (ONU) on the customer premises communicates at one of four pre-determined wavelengths. Two types of wavelength-tunable burst-mode optical transceiver have been developed in this project. Each wavelength carries 10 Gbps.  A wavelength tuning protocol has been developed that allows for the switching of the ONU’s wavelength to any one of the other three wavelengths at which there is less traffic.

http://www.ntt.co.jp/news2015/1503e/150327a.html

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AT&T Brings GigaPower Broadband to Cupertino

AT&T launched its GigaPower network in Cupertino, California, offering downlink speeds up to 1 Gbps starting at $110 per month, or 300 Mbps for $80 per month.  U-verse with AT&T GigaPower customers also get an upgraded residential gateway with the latest in Wi-Fi technology. AT&T is offering a number of single, double and triple play bundles.

"We are proud to be the first city on the west coast to launch the AT&T GigaPower network, bringing the speed of fiber to homes and businesses," said Cupertino Mayor Rod Sinks. "People come to Cupertino from around the world, and want to connect with families and culture in their home countries, as well as with work colleagues and customers worldwide. We place high value on education and access to information, and GigaPower enables more and improved services, from remote learning to telemedicine to entertainment. "

http://att.com/gigapower

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Centec Debuts Fourth Generation 1.2 Tbps Switching Silicon

Centec Networks announced its fourth-generation GoldenGate switch silicon, a 1.2 Tbps chip designed to address SDN and virtualization in 10GE, 40GE and 100GE networks by increasing visibility in the forwarding plane.

The company said it was able to incorporate a number of unique features to solve SDN challenges for elephant flow detection, flow completion time, and flow visibility and control, while also supporting network virtualization with diverse overlay technology including the latest GENEVE protocol.

Highlights:

• 1.2Tbps/1200Mpps switching capacity in small, 45x45mm FCPBGA 1825 package:  GoldenGate provides 20 percent lower power consumption in a small footprint at half the cost of today’s dominant alternative silicon.
• Native 100GE uplink:  GoldenGate supports the latest 10GE requirements with a 100GE uplink that is optimally configured for cost and power in a native 4x25G configuration, eliminating the need for an external 10x10G to 4x25G gearbox.
• Improved application-centric flow completion time and a better user experience for real-life environments including data centers with a diverse mix of short and long flows;
• Improved support for versatile network virtualization use cases, with diverse tunneling overlay technology to support VXLAN, NVGRE and the newest GENEVE protocol;
• Improved flow-level visibility and control in a solution that is VM-aware and supports detection of large (a.k.a. elephant) flows, uses enhanced Internet Protocol Flow Information eXport (IPFIX) technology to improve flow visibility, and includes software-defined counters with N-flow technology  that support three stages of general OpenFlow processing with up to 64k flow tables; 
• Improved fault protection mechanisms including hardware flow self-healing for equal-cost multi-path (ECMP) and link aggregation protocol (LAG) routing, and packet loss minimization on link failures; and 
• Improved trouble-shooting, monitoring and analytics capabilities, ranging from active buffering and latency monitoring and logging, to the use of buffer and latency watermarks, microburst detection and logging, and enhanced Switch Port Analyzer (SPAN) for remote monitoring.

“With GoldenGate, Centec is extending its TransWarp™ product line to bring next-generation Ethernet switching silicon costs toward the same small premium over legacy industry solutions as was the case prior to the massive worldwide transition from 10/100Mbps Ethernet to 1GE networking,” said Tao Gu, vice president of business development for Centec Networks. “Centec is also taking 10GE switching silicon to lower power levels made possible using IBM process technology, while providing a key missing piece in switching silicon that the industry has needed in order for SDN to deliver on its value proposition.”

GoldenGate is available now with volume production scheduled for the third quarter of 2015.

http://www.centecnetworks.com

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Spirent Launches Landslide Diameter Testing

Spirent introduced its Landslide Diameter solution for testing network signaling protocols at scale.  Peak events known as signaling storms can degrade and disrupt network services. Sprint said the use of IP networks for signaling and the move to “always on” Internet of Things (IoT) and other connected devices is driving huge levels of signaling traffic in the mobile network, necessitating the need for testing at scale.

Landslide Diameter lets carriers and their vendors emulate specific Diameter applications to test specific nodes or test the network from end-to-end to ensure that the management and monetization functions operate at extreme scale. The test system can be used to simulate real-world traffic scenarios or call models at scale so carriers can see what happens on a node-by-node basis. The call models can be adapted to test the impact new services and devices will have on the control network. These tests remove the guesswork out of predicting signaling traffic loads so they can adequately and effectively architect their networks. Carriers and vendors worldwide use Spirent Landslide in the design, optimization, monetization, and maintenance of their broadband and mobile network.

Landslide Diameter is a key component of Spirent Landslide, a suite of advanced test tools for mobile networks and services that emulates millions of mobile subscribers simultaneously accessing wireless networks using various mobile devices.

http://www.spirent.com/About-Us/News_Room/Press-Releases/2015/3_30_15_Spirent_Adds_Diameter_AAA_Testing

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China Telecom Picks ALU as a Supplier for LTE Ultra-broadband

China Telecom has selected Alcatel-Lucent as one of its top three suppliers for the rollout of mobile ultra-broadband services across China. This agreement follows an initial trial deployment contract awarded in December 2013. Financial terms were not disclosed.

China Telecom – which currently has approximately 186 million mobile subscribers – is preparing to expand LTE services in both new and existing regions of China, following the award of full FDD-LTE licences by the Chinese Government, an expansion that will address exploding demand for high-performance data and video content.

Under the contract, Alcatel-Lucent will supply its 9926 eNodeB radio access network (RAN) portfolio and services during the first half of 2015.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2015/alcatel-lucent-help-china-telecom-expand-lte-ultra-broadband-services

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Sprint to Showcase Network Upgrades in Chicago

Sprint plans to make Chicago into the showcase city of its upgraded network.  Over the next two year, the carrier plans to invest $45 million in its LTE Advanced infrastructure in Chicago.

Hundreds of new cell sites will be located in neighborhoods throughout the city and include the areas around Rush University Medical Center, along Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) subway routes as part of the project to upgrade the wireless network in the City’s system, and areas surrounding Garfield Park.

“Sprint’s investment means more jobs in our neighborhoods today, and supports Chicago’s continued economic growth,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “From the new storefronts to making us the first in the nation to upgrade to faster service, Sprint is helping to bring both the jobs and the technology to power Chicago’s neighborhoods and communities for the 21st century.”

“Chicago is the perfect city for Sprint to expand its operations – diverse, innovative and on the path to becoming a world-class technology leader,” said Marcelo Claure, Sprint CEO. “New stores mean more jobs, and a first-class network means loyal and satisfied customers ready to use faster and more reliable connections.” Chicago has long been Sprint’s city of choice for introducing new technologies and the company continues that commitment with the support of the Mayor’s office.

http://www.sprint.com

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