Infinera Unifies its Long-Haul and Metro Optical Transport Portfolio

Infinera unveiled new hardware and software capabilities that unify its flagship, long-haul DTN-X platforms with the metro packet-optical solutions obtained through its acquisition of Transmode.

The rollout, which comes just weeks after the completion of the Transmode acquisition, is intended to address the surge in demand forecast for metro 100 gigabit per second (Gbps) packet-optical networking solutions in 2016.

Some highlights:

• New hardware modules for the DTN-X XTC Series - enable direct 100 Gbps WDM line-side interworking with the Transmode TM-Series metro packet/optical platforms. The TM-Series offers packet-optical transport for a rich set of metro applications including mobile fronthaul and backhaul, business Ethernet and triple play aggregation for cable and service provider networks. The new PT-Fabric for the TM-Series is designed to extend these capabilities to terabit switching and metro 100 Gbps networking.
• New capabilities for the Infinera Digital Node Administrator (DNA) network management system - enable unified control of the DTN-X Family and the TM-Series from metro access to long-haul core. 
• New Metro DTN-X Platforms - XTC-2 and XTC-2E for metro core and regional network applications. The XTC-2 and XTC-2E converge 100 Gbps coherent WDM transmission with packet-aware OTN switching in a platform with the small footprint and low power consumption demanded by metro and regional networks. All platforms in the XTC Series support the oPIC-100, Infinera's next-generation photonic integrated circuit (PIC) to extend the space, performance and reliability benefits of PICs from the long-haul to the metro.
• New Long-Haul DTN-X Platform XT-500 - a two rack unit, stackable platform based on Infinera's PIC-500, delivering 500 Gbps WDM super-channels and designed for rapid deployment of high bandwidth long-haul data center interconnection. The XT-500 seamlessly integrates with the Infinera FlexILS Line System to support fixed and flexible grid for extended reach and increased fiber efficiency. Applications for the XT-500 include point-to-point interconnect and within optically switched mesh network topologies using reconfigurable optical add drop multiplexers (ROADMs). Managed as a part of a DTN-X node, the XT-500 supports Infinera's Instant Bandwidth to rapidly deploy additional bandwidth in 100 Gbps increments with a few clicks of a mouse.

"Our vision is to enable an infinite pool of intelligent bandwidth that the next communications infrastructure is built upon. Infinera's new unified Intelligent Transport Network portfolio is engineered to provide network operators a precise set of tools to scale long-haul, datacenter interconnect and metro networks," said Tom Fallon, CEO at Infinera. "As network operators transform their networks to 100 Gb/s, Infinera's unified portfolio offers right-sized, application-specific platforms that scale bandwidth, accelerate service innovation and simplify network operations."

The XTC-2, XTC-2E, XT-500, unified portfolio hardware and software features are planned for general availability in Q4 2015.

http://www.infinera.com/infinera-unifies-end-to-end-product-portfolio-and-introduces-new-platforms-for-surging-metro-100g-market/

See video: Transforming Metro Networks

https://youtu.be/MH1uUmNMvnU

See video: Infinera Unified End-to-End
Portfolio in Action

https://youtu.be/BPID3Yh0-g0

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AT&T Plans Virtual Security Functions for Customers

As part of its transition to a software-centric network strategy (NFV), AT&T disclosed plans for virtualizing security functions for its customers.

AT&T said its emerging NFV capabilities will enable it to deploy and updated services, such as security, more rapidly and dynamically.

AT&T will offer a virtualized firewall solution that includes additional layers of security like intrusion detection, application control, antivirus solutions, and web filtering to help protect information stored in the cloud.  The company said its virtualized security functions can be deployed in different cloud environments, including public, private, and hybrid clouds.  Virtualized security is also integrated with AT&T’s threat analysis, customer portal, and contracting/billing systems. Connection to the threat portal means virtualized security functions will be constantly learning from the latest threats and working to adapt and improve security protections to help businesses stay highly secure.

http://networkingexchangeblog.att.com/enterprise-business/att-to-introduce-virtual-security-functions-for-customers/#fbid=lx0M6BPzPks

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AT&T and IBM Team Up on Mobile Cloud Security

AT&T and IBM announced a partnership focused on delivering a scalable mobile cloud solution to help protect corporate data and apps. 

The reference architecture includes:

• IBM MobileFirst Protect: helps organizations manage and control mobile devices, apps and documents.
• AT&T NetBond: provides a highly secure, scalable network connection to IBM's Cloud infrastructure services, SoftLayer.
• IBM Cloud: the SoftLayer infrastructure secures public and private clouds for applications and data storage.
• AT&T Work Platform: enables separate billing of business and personal charges for voice, messaging and data use on an employee's personal handset.

"Balancing employees' need for convenience with security has become a challenge for CISOs and CIOs across the world," said Caleb Barlow, vice president, IBM Security. "To help protect organizations, employees and data, IBM Security and AT&T are delivering a tested and easy to deploy set of complementary tools. We're giving enterprise mobile device users stable, private access to data and apps in the cloud."

"More employees are using mobile devices to be more productive. At the same time, data and apps are moving to the cloud. The changes are exciting, but security needs to be top-of-mind," said Steve McGaw, chief marketing officer, AT&T Business Solutions. "Trusted collaborators like IBM are helping us better address changing business models. Together we're giving options to deliver highly secure mobile access to cloud apps and data."

http://about.att.com/story/att_ibm_mobile_cloud_security.html

http://www.ibm.com

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Cisco Creates DevNet Labs to Foster Innovation

Cisco is expanding its DevNet developer program with the launch of DevNet Labs, a place for developers to share their innovations and co-create with other DevNet developers. The idea is to share ideas and code on how to develop modern applications that integrate with the network infrastructure.

DevNet was established one and a half years ago in Cisco’s CTO Office under Dave Ward. The program is now moving under Rowan Trollope.

Cisco is seeding DevNet Labs with a number of innovation projects developed inside Cisco but now ready for the open community:

• DevIoT: DevIoT is an extensible integrated developer environment for writing IoT apps. DevIoT helps design, deploy, and operate IoT apps.
• Glance: Glance is a cloud application that uses indoor location information to find experts and track devices and assets. It is built on Cisco’s CMX platform, which exposes indoor location information through APIs on Cisco’s 802.11 access points and Mobility Services Engine.
• NeXt: NeXt is an HTML/javascript UI toolkit that allows developers to easily visualize network topologies in network web applications. The NeXt SDK was released on DevNet last spring and will be released as an open source project in Open Daylight.
• Open Daylight BGP apps: We are sharing the source code for a number of BGP apps we built on top of Open Daylight. These apps draw topologies using NeXt with information from BGP-LS topology information and program MPLS traffic engineering paths using PCEP.

https://communities.cisco.com/community/developer/devnetlabs/blog

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IEEE Introduces 802.1AX Link Aggregation Standard

IEEE introduced its 802.1AX-2014 standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks – Link Aggregation.

IEEE 802.1AX has two new key features: Conversation Sensitive Traffic Distribution and Distributed Resilient Network Interconnect (DRNI).

• Conversation sensitive traffic distribution allows for the association of individual conversations to physical links in a priority order. This enables control of the physical link a conversation utilizes, and ensures that the same link is also used in both the forward and the reverse directions.
• Distributed Resilient Network Interconnect (DRNI) enables up to three nodes on each side of a Link Aggregation (LAG), further enhancing interconnectivity by adding node redundancy and protection. In effect, IEEE 802.1AX-2014 provides a standardized version of multi-chassis LAG, the common nomenclature for current proprietary solutions. DRNI provides isolation, independence, and rapid recovery even below 50ms. With DRNI, interconnected network domains can be independently administered and managed and can use different technologies. Failure events are isolated so that a failure in one network domain is not propagated to the other, and failure in the DRNI is not propagated to either network domain.

“The new standard revision IEEE 802.1AX-2014 marks yet another milestone in ongoing efforts to improve the performance and reliability of the link aggregation standard,” said Glenn Parsons, chair, IEEE 802.1 Working Group. “In a growing world economy where connectivity is key, the 802.1 working group is committed to supporting broader deployment of the standard to ensure the latest technology is being applied to enhance link aggregation solutions.”

http://www.ieee.org

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Sysdig Delivers Monitoring for Amazon’s EC2 Container Service

Sysdig, a start-up based in San Francisco, is now providing "container native" monitoring for Amazon’s EC2 Container Service (ECS).

The service is delivered in Sysdig Cloud, which is a monitoring solution built from the ground up to support microservices and containers.

Sysdig said it is able to provide deep, application­-level visibility into ECS containers, while respecting the independence and isolation of each container. Sysdig Cloud now offers alerts and dashboards that integrate tasks and other ECS tags and metadata directly with all the hundreds of metrics pulled from the customer's environment.

“Like many leaders in the market, Amazon continues to invest heavily in a container­ driven future for cloud computing. Here at Sysdig, we’re excited to support this vision and the thousands of companies making the move to containers and microservices,” said Loris Degioanni, CEO and Founder of Sysdig. “No other monitoring technology can come close to the level of visibility into AWS and ECS that Sysdig can offer with ContainerVision.”

http://www.sysdig.com

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Aquantia Raises $37 Million for 10GBASE-T and 5GbE Silicon

Aquantia, a start-up based in San Jose, California, announced $37 million in Series H funding for its 10GBASE-T Ethernet silicon solutions for data centers.

Aquantia's 10GBASE-T and AQrate PHY product lines lead the market with low-power, high-performance, and high-density silicon solutions.  Aquantia developed AQrate, a unique technology capable of increasing network speeds to 5 Gbps at lengths up to 100m on existing Cat 5e/Cat 6 cables. The products were first sampled in late 2013 and are currently in mass production. The company currently employs over 160 people. Since its first round of funding in 2005, Aquantia has become a market leader in high-speed Ethernet copper connectivity solutions in data center and enterprise.

New investors participating in this round include Credit Suisse's Direct Equity Partners, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and Walden Riverwood along with existing investor Cisco Investments. Previous investors include Intel Capital, Cisco Investments, Xilinx, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and Venture Tech Alliance. Aquantia has raised a total of $199 million to date.

"We feel very fortunate to be leading in a market with significant sustaining revenues from design wins that enjoy very long product life-cycles," said Faraj Aalaei, president, and CEO. "Aquantia's success comes from a strong focus on turning technology differentiation into business success. Our driving ambition to take partnership opportunities with our customers to the next level consistently results in expanded opportunity and a secure trust between us and our customers."

http://www.aquantia.com

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NTT Com Launches Disaster Recovery Service in Europe

NTT Communications launched its Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) solution across Europe.

This managed cloud service, in partnership with industry-leading DRaaS platform provider Geminare, helps organizations adapt and evolve their disaster recovery programs to a secure NTT Com Enterprise Cloud platform. NTT Com offers its DRaaS solution from four secure Enterprise Cloud locations in Europe and 14 worldwide, that customers can choose from to place their recovery environments, assisting in their data localization requirements when needed. If customers wish to move their primary infrastructure to an NTT Com data center for operational ease, they can choose from over 130 secure data centers worldwide.

NTT Com's Recovery as a Service (RaaS) solution has been available in the United States since 2012.

http://www.ntt.com/index-e.html

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