ONF Readies Atrium Open SDN Software Release

The Open Networking Foundation (ONF) announced its "Atrium" open SDN software distribution, integrating previously standalone open source components.

Atrium, which will be released by the end of the month, incorporates the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the Open Network Operating System (ONOS), and Open Compute Project (OCP) components. The software elements run in either controllers or switches, communicating via the OpenFlow protocol, and include plugin opportunities for other switching solutions to help foster an open ecosystem of interoperable, hardware-based OpenFlow switches.

Atrium 2015/A components include:

• Documentation for installation, configuration, and operation
• A snapshot of ONOS verified to work with the white-box software stack as well as other vendor switches that have provided a driver for their pipeline
• A BGP peering application that runs on ONOS and includes the Quagga BGP stack
• A collection of OpenFlow v1.3 device drivers in ONOS, meant for talking to vendor equipment with different hardware pipelines
• Indigo OpenFlow client together with Open Network Linux and OFDPA for the OCP white-box switches
• Mininet with the use of Open vSwitch (OVS) to emulate the hardware pipelines of the switches involved; (hardware pipelines represent a sequence of match-action tables in an OpenFlow switch)
• Full testing suite for functionality tests

“ONF is actively creating the ecosystem and the architecture needed to bring open SDN to network operators around the world. Atrium is the first top-to-bottom, soup-to-nuts open source implementation that someone can actually download from GitHub and use to run a real network,” said Dan Pitt, executive director of the Open Networking Foundation. “Atrium’s philosophy is to build on software from many developers that has been community developed and tested to help network operators more easily build custom solutions and allow vendors to take advantage of common building blocks, reducing their development costs and improving interoperability. ONF views open source software as critical to accelerating commercial adoption of open SDN.”

“We have adopted an extensible architecture so that adding features and a variety of forwarding planes will follow easily,” said Saurav Das, principal system architect at the Open Networking Foundation. “With community contribution, this platform should evolve even more rapidly.”

“Atrium is entirely focused on ease of open SDN deployment by lowering barriers to adoption,” said Yatish Kumar, Atrium project lead, member of the ONF Technical Council, director of the ONF Specifications Area, and CTO of Corsa Technology. “We continue to view OpenFlow as key to meeting operator needs for a functional multi-vendor southbound protocol. We will build on Atrium’s offerings not only in the controller and switch spaces but also in the application space, making sure that the OpenSourceSDN.org community has a voice in what is included in future releases.”

Industry Support for Atrium
ONF’s open source software initiatives are built on a collaborative effort to ensure our work is complementary to and interoperable with the work being done by other organizations. Organizations supporting ONF’s efforts have said:

"Transitioning the networking industry to shared development around open source code rather than proprietary protocols is a key part of the ONF Mission,” said Urs Hölzle, chairman and president of the Open Networking Foundation and senior vice president of Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow, Google. “Atrium is an important step toward realizing this direction."

“We are pleased to see OCP adopted for the open source hardware and operating software for the forwarding plane in Atrium,” said Corey Bell, CEO of the Open Compute Project. “Together with ONF and partners we are moving the industry to new models of efficiency and innovation in networking and computing for the benefit of all who operate IT infrastructures.”

“It's great to see more momentum building around open solutions for users,” said Neela Jacques, executive director of OpenDaylight. “ONF is a key partner and we share a common vision and purpose to promote SDN. We look forward to seeing the next release of Atrium running on OpenDaylight offering even more opportunities for operators to adopt open SDN.”

“We value working closely with ONF and pleased to bring Atrium to life and provide ONOS and BGP peering application as the key building blocks,” said Guru Parulkar, co-founder and executive director of ON.Lab. “We look forward to continuing our relationship with ONF and enabling real progress of open source software in achieving mainstream adoption.”

http://www.opensourcesdn.org
https://www.opennetworking.org

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Fujitsu Enhances FLASHWAVE with Integrated OTN Access, Switching, Transport

Fujitsu announced enhancements to Optical Transport Network (OTN) switching and OTN access in its FLASHWAVE 9500 and FLASHWAVE CDS packet optical networking platforms.  Specifically, Fujitsu is extending its FLASHWAVE 9500 by introducing 2.4 Tbps OTN cross-connect grooming and an OTN control plane, enabling cross-connect services through OTN networks. The rollout includes:

A new suite of OTN units provides maximum grooming from ODU0 up to ODU4 and can be used in multiple operational modes, with or without the centralized switch fabric. The new 2 × OTU4 unit also supports coherent CFP modules for highly scalable ROADM deployments. Additional software features include support for ITU G.8032 Ethernet ring protection switching and Y.1731 performance monitoring.

Integrated OTN and ROADM switching in the FLASHWAVE 9500 allows for grooming and rearranging of traffic at intermediate drop sites without the need for additional transponders or muxponders. When used with the FLASHWAVE CDS, direct connection eliminates equipment bookending, providing a complete, lower cost solution. Enhanced OTN performance monitoring (PM) and operations, administration and maintenance (OAM) further strengthen FLASHWAVE 9500 management capabilities versus ROADM-only solutions.

The latest release of the FLASHWAVE CDS provides higher-capacity OTN access, a new compact chassis, and enhanced protection capabilities. A new OTU2 OTN transponder provides 4 × 10G OTN demarcation, supplementing the high-density OTN switch muxponder and OTU1 OTN transponder units currently available in the FLASHWAVE CDS. A new 1RU, AC-powered chassis for OTN units offers a footprint optimized for customer premises equipment demarcation. Y-cable protection support for OTN modules provides hardware resiliency for high-availability applications.

The FLASHWAVE CDS can operate as a stand-alone, end-to-end solution or as an extension of the FLASHWAVE 9500 and FLASHWAVE 7500 platforms. With 80 Gbps of OTN switching capacity, the FLASHWAVE CDS provides high-density OTN multiplexing and switching to operators requiring fully transparent transport of Ethernet, SONET, SDH and wholesale service extensions.

“Network traffic is growing at an exponential rate, and operators are looking for ways to boost bandwidth and increase network functionality,” said Steve Pelosi, head of the Optical Business Unit at Fujitsu Network Communications. “OTN provides operators a way to support different traffic types in a more cost-effective manner than legacy technologies. As our customers’ networks evolve, we will continue expanding our product portfolio to address their needs.”

http://www.fujitsu.com/us/products/network/news/newsroom/

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Time Warner Cable Wi-Fi Network Tops 100K Hotspots

Time Warner Cable (TWC) now has over 100,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in its national Wi-Fi network.  Through the Cable WiFi partnership, TWC Internet customers now have access to more than 400,000 hotspots.

The latest cities to gain outdoor Wi-Fi coverage on the TWC national network are Dallas and San Antonio, Texas and Raleigh, North Carolina.

“In today’s highly mobile world, one of the biggest benefits of being a TWC Internet customer is access to free WiFi throughout the U.S.,” said Rob Cerbone, VP of Wireless Product Management for Time Warner Cable. “We’re growing our network every day and helping customers stay connected to what matters to them most by offering superfast broadband Internet speeds whether they are at home or away. Most importantly, our customers are noticing. Last year, TWC Internet customers engaged in more than 180 million WiFi sessions on our network, a 327% increase over the previous year.”

TWC Internet customers also can enjoy free WiFi access at more than 100 premium Boingo locations, including 25 of the busiest airports in the U.S., as a result of bilateral roaming announced by the companies last year. Nearly all of the TWC WiFi Hotspots as well as the Boingo locations are Passpoint-enabled so that customers can securely roam and seamlessly connect to the TWC WiFi-Passpoint and Boingo “Passpoint Secure” networks.

http://www.twc.com/wifi

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ZTE Standardizes on Radisys' Virtualized MRF

ZTE will standardize on Radisys’ MediaEngine virtualized Media Resource Function (vMRF) as the media processing solution for its Value-added Services (VAS) and core network offerings in VoLTE, VoWiFi, video and IMS. Solutions based on Radisys’ common media processing platform will help ZTE's customers accelerate the deployment of new interactive HD audio and HD video services.

ZTE is a market leader in value-added service deployment, with 20 percent worldwide market share for voicemail that includes major deployments throughout China, India, Latin America and Europe. China Mobile will leverage ZTE’s IMS core and ring-back tones solutions, all powered by Radisys’ virtualized MRF.

“Mobile operators are deploying Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to bring the benefits of the cloud to their networks, such as scalability, increased efficiencies and reduced costs,” said Yang Wei, chief architect of core network deployment, ZTE Corporation. “To enable our mobile operator customers’ transition to an NFV environment, ZTE is migrating its IMS solutions and VoLTE core network service offerings to a cloud architecture, driving an important requirement for virtualized media processing. Radisys’ vMRF delivers HD audio and HD video media processing and transcoding that are required by today’s increasingly multimedia-intensive applications.”

“ZTE is a long-time customer of Radisys, having deployed Radisys’ hardware MRF portfolio for many years to provide the critical media processing for our value-added services, such as voicemail and ring-back tones, used by more than 600 million subscribers around the world,” said Huang Xiaobing, director of VAS product planning department, ZTE Corporation. “As we looked to transition our VAS service offerings to the cloud, we made the strategic decision to standardize across our IP service delivery solutions on Radisys’ virtualized MRF. This will allow ZTE to rapidly deploy new interactive multimedia services such as VoWiFi and WebRTC, while reducing our customers’ total cost of ownership.”

http://www.radisys.com

• In May 2015, Radisys announced a follow-on order of approximately $11 million for its MediaEngine product from a large Asian carrier in support of its VoLTE network deployment. The order is expected to be fulfilled by Radisys over the course of the second and third quarters of 2015.

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PLUMgrid Names Larry Lang as CEO

PLUMgrid, a start-up offering an Open Networking Suite (ONS) for clouds based on OpenStack, named Larry Lang as chief executive officer. Founder Awais Nemat has been appointed chairman of the board of directors.

Lang has held executive positions including president and CEO of Quorum Labs, vice president and general manager of the mobile internet business unit at Cisco Systems, and vice president of product management at Ipsilon Networks, now part of Nokia. His board service includes Violin Memory and previously BelAir Networks, now part of Ericsson.

"Enterprises and service providers are excited by the business transformation made possible by cloud data centers and software-defined networking," said Lang. "PLUMgrid's innovation in secure virtual networking is unmatched in providing customers the scalability and agility they require. It's a privilege to join the PLUMgrid team, and I look forward to leading the company and working with our customers and partners."

PLUMgrid is based in Sunnyvale, California.

http://www.plumgrid.com


PLUMgrid's Open Networking Suite (ONS), which supports OpenStack distributions and network functions, is a software-based network virtualization platform designed for cloud operators and large-scale cloud environments.

Virtual network functions in ONS 2.0 include routing, switching with Private VLAN, security policies, NAT, and DHCP. In addition, ONS 2.0 is introducing tech previews for DNS as a service and end to end data encryption.

In addition, PLUMgrid is announcing support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 5 (RHEL-OSP 5) with ONS 2.0.

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Cisco Collaborates with CERN on Next Gen Computing

Cisco is joining CERN openlab and will collaborate with the European research organization on developing highly secure computing infrastructure technologies capable of handling large and ever increasing amounts of data.

Specifically, Cisco and CERN openlab plan to investigate novel concepts that build on the latest evolution of hardware, heterogeneous system designs and increasing functionality of the network interface hardware.

CERN openlab provides a framework to develop and prototype state-of-the-art technologies in CERN’s highly sophisticated research environment. It also offers an opportunity to train the next generation of engineers and work with a global talent pool, thanks to CERN’s collaboration with the world’s top universities.

CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) research program involves collecting and analyzing data from millions of sensors. Today, these sensors can produce data at a rate of up to a petabyte (equivalent to around 20,000 Blu-ray discs) per second. Over the next decade, CERN expects these rates to grow significantly.

http://www.cisco.com

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IHS: LTE Infrastructure Sales to Peak this Year

The global LTE mobile infrastructure revenue will peak at $23.3 billion in 2015 and then start to decline as a result of diminishing rollouts, according to the latest IHS Infonetics Mobile Infrastructure Equipment report.

“As we anticipated, we’re reaching the peak of LTE rollouts, and LTE is now set to perform at $6 billion a quarter for some time as operators complete their major remaining rollouts,” said Stéphane Téral, research director for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at IHS.

Some highlights:

• LTE revenue totaled $6 billion worldwide in the first quarter of 2015 (1Q15), a 1 percent sequential decline
• LTE rollouts were not strong enough in 1Q15 to fully offset the abyssal year-over-year decline of 2G/3G spending, resulting in an 8 percent sequential decline for the global 2G/3G/4G mobile infrastructure market, which came to $11 billion
• On a year-over-year basis, the 2G/3G/4G mobile infrastructure market was up 4 percent in 1Q15, driven by unabated TDD LTE activity in China

http://www.infonetics.com

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AppFormix Promises Better Orchestration of VMs and Docker Containers

AppFormix, a start-up based in San Jose, California emerged from stealth mode to unveil its platform for managing the physical infrastructure and orchestrating virtual machines and Docker containers by leverating OpenStack, Kubernetes and Mesos.

The company said its goal is to create a fully optimized software-defined data center by bridging the gap between application requirements and the underlying resources. The AppFormix software solution provides developers, operators, and DevOps teams with the ability to monitor, analyze and control how applications consume cloud resources in real-time. AppFormix is currently in beta, and will be generally available in Q3 2015.

AppFormix also announced $7 million in series A funding from top tier venture capital firm, August Capital.

"Siloed tools for different types of infrastructure are yesterday's technology. The future is about real-time infrastructure visibility and the convergence of all tools and teams across the IT department,” said Sumeet Singh, founder and CEO of AppFormix. “Cloud infrastructure is shared infrastructure. By providing application-level visibility of the infrastructure and programmatically controlling how applications use the shared infrastructure AppFormix is enabling a more economical, reliable and agile software defined data center.”

http://www.appformix.com

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IEEE Adopts Baseline for 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Specs

The IEEE P802.3bz 2.5/5GBASE-T Task Force unanimously adopted baseline technology to be used for 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T specifications.

 “There is a great deal of industry support for the development of a single IEEE 802.3™ standard enabling multi-vendor interoperability for 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T Ethernet,” said Dave Chalupsky, chair of the IEEE P802.3bz task force and network architect at Intel Corporation.

“Swift achievement of consensus among participants has enabled the task force to move immediately into the next phase of the project, drafting the initial specifications.” “Ethernet is seeing growth in diversity of rates to address different applications,” said David Law, chair of the IEEE 802.3 Ethernet Working Group and distinguished engineer with HP Networking. “2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T serve this need at the edge of the network for a number of important use cases, such as satisfying the growing bandwidth needs of wireless access points supporting IEEE 802.11ac.”

https://standards.ieee.org/develop/project/802.3bz.html
http://standards.ieee.org

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