U.S. Dept. of Commerce Ruling Hits ZTE and Suppliers

The U.S. Department of Commerce has added ZTE to the list of entities involved in "activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States."

The Export Administration Regulations (EAR) listing, which limits the availability of most license exceptions on U.S. technology sales to ZTE, was driven by a finding that ZTE willingly resold restricted U.S. technology products to Iran during the period of economic sanctions,

The move could block U.S. semiconductor companies from selling to ZTE, potentially impacting a wide range of networking gear and mobile devices.

ZTE said it is working expeditiously towards resolution of this issue and that it is fully committed to compliance with the laws and regulations of the jurisdictions in which it operates.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2016-05104.pdf

FBI Opens Criminal Investigation into ZTE Shipments to Iran

Saturday, July 14, 2012  China, Legal, ZTE  No comments

The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into whether ZTE shipped U.S.-made networking components and surveillance equipment to Iran.  According to various news sources, including Reuters, The Washington Post and The Smoking Gun, various documents have emerged, including a shipping manifest, related to a $130 million sales contract between ZTE and the Telecommunications Company of Iran.  Equipment reportedly includes systems from Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Juniper, Microsoft, Oracle and Symantec.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/fbi-probes-zte-iran-deal-645912
http://www.washingtonpost.com/

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Mellanox Sets Out an Open Composable Network Framework

Mellanox Technologies unveiled its next-generation Open Composable Networks (OCN) platform aimed at helping enterprises and service providers to unlock performance and unleash innovation with predictable application performance and the efficiency of Web-Scale IT.

Mellanox said its OCN framework leverages the network disaggregation model pioneered by the hyperscale cloud operators, where functional independent modules are combined with open, clearly-defined abstraction interfaces.

Some highlights:

• The Mellanox end-to-end 25/50/100 Gb/s Ethernet portfolio includes Spectrum switches, ConnectX adapters, and LinkX cables.
• Mellanox has been a key contributor to the development open networking initiatives including OCP ONIE and SAI, and Linux switchdev, where Spectrum is the first switch supported upstream in Linux
• The Mellanox NEO management package enables network automation and software defined intelligence. Through integration with other cloud management platforms and Software Defined Networking (SDN) controllers, NEO helps to enhance network operational efficiency, and make network infrastructure easy to deploy, manage, and scale.

At this week's Open Compute Project Summit in San Jose, Mellanox will be showcasing OCN with a live demo of end-to-end 10/25, 50, 100 Gb/s network composed of LinkX cables, the new ConnectX-4 Lx based OCP adapter cards, and the flagship Spectrum Ethernet switches capable of running multiple network operating systems (NOS) and applications, including Cumulus Linux, OpenSwitch, Metaswitch IP Routing, and Mellanox MLNX-OS, running on open software interfaces such as OCP Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) and Linux Switchdev.

In addition, Mellanox has added Cumulus Linux support for its Spectrum line of 10/25, 40/50, and 100 Gb/s Ethernet switches.

http://www.mellanox.com

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AT&T Introduces UC Collaboration Service

AT&T introduced a hosted voice and collaboration service aimed at improving employee productivity.

AT&T Collaborate provides a full array of cloud-based voice features and collaboration tools, such as instant messaging and presence, audio, video and web conferencing, and content sharing. The service offers more than 30 calling features, plus a mobile client for use on your smartphone or tablet. Service options include:

• AT&T Collaborate-Enhanced Voice – Includes additional voice features for employees with more advanced requirements such as selective call acceptance, alternate numbers, instant group calls and more.
• AT&T Collaborate-Unified Communications – Includes instant messaging, employee presence, desktop sharing and conferencing features.
• AT&T Collaborate-Contact Center – Includes basic agent and supervisor call center features as well as web client services.

"With AT&T Collaborate, you're able to design a collaboration solution that best fits your business needs – whether you need basic voice capabilities or a full unified communications experience," said Rick Hubbard, senior vice president, Networking Product Management, AT&T Business Solutions. "The solution provides a flexible way for you to connect your employees while helping control costs and complexity."

http://www.att.com/collaborate

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PLUMgrid Partners with Edgecore on OpenStack Cloud

Taiwan-based Edgecore Networks will resell PLUMgrid’s full SDN portfolio of solutions including its Open Networking Suite (ONS) for OpenStack, CloudApex SDN visualization and monitoring platform.

“Partnering with Edgecore brings their extensive networking and integrated solutions experience to our joint clients in Asia,” said PLUMgrid CEO Larry Lang. “Combining their expertise and knowledge of regional markets with our integrated ONS platform and SDN solutions dramatically advances OpenStack networking and delivers significant value to our enterprise and service provider clients.”

http://www.plumgrid.com/press-releases/2016/03/plumgrid-and-edgecore-networks-partner-to-deliver-openstack-cloud-solutions/

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Video: Apps, Virtualization, Security and the Cloud

Art Gilliland, CEO of Skyport Systems, discusses Application, Virtualization, Security and the Cloud at RSA 2016.

When you think about isolating applications or workloads, you want to be able to put security around them. Virtualization gives you a compartment to do that. But companies really need to think about how to manage those environments. Skyport addresses this challenge by bringing the new security perimeter all the way down to the application.

YouTube:  https://youtu.be/ULB7pmxJkRU

 

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Video: Defending the Whole: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS

Mark Nunnikhoven, VP of Cloud Research at Trend Micro, reflects on the Cloud Security Alliance Summit at #RSA2016.  Enterprises are using a lot of cloud services, each of which may have its own security implementation.  Taken together, implementing a consistent security stance becomes a challenge, which the industry is starting to address.  The roadmap is bright.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/uEKIG_CE77g

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Video: Malware Attack Fan-out via Cloud Storage Converge! Network Digest Converge! Network Digest

Cloud storage services are popular but they are becoming a vector for the rapid spread of malware.  Krishna Narayanaswamy, Founder and Chief Scientist at Netskope, describes how malware is the start of a sophisticated attack cycle.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/Cy5Z9AbuHwI

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Video: As Perimeter Defenses Fail, Harden the Interior

Almost all cyber intrusions involve a failure of perimeter defenses, says Leo Taddeo, Chief Security Officer at Cryptzone.  It's time to harden the interior of the corporate network.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/hCMYkMXVqyQ

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Hughes to Provide Satellite Backhaul for Entel Bolivia

Entel Bolivia has selected Hughes Network Systems' JUPITER System to extend cellular and Internet access in remote areas. Entel serves more than 4.5 million users in Bolivia.

Under the deal, Hughes will provide a JUPITER System gateway and approximately 550 terminals to power Entel's delivery of Internet access service in remote areas and for satellite backhaul of 3G and 4G LTE cellular base stations. The services will operate in the Ku-band satellite spectrum over the Túpac Katari 1 satellite.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

The Hughes JUPITER System features a flexible and robust gateway architecture with lights-out operation, enhanced IPoS air interface for bandwidth efficiency, and high-throughput terminals, enabling operators to achieve the highest possible capacity and efficiency for any satellite broadband implementation. The underlying technology is the powerful JUPITER System on a Chip (SoC), a custom–designed microprocessor employing a multi-core architecture and enabling 100 Mbps of throughput on every terminal in the JUPITER family.

"We are proud to have been chosen by Entel Bolivia for this very important initiative to close the digital divide in Bolivia," said Hugo Frega, senior sales director of the Central America and Latin America (CALA) region for Hughes. "Satellite is the ideal technology for extending connectivity to remote areas beyond the reach of traditional terrestrial options, and our JUPITER System is the proven market leader in supplying high-availability and high-performance networks to support cellular and Internet access worldwide."

http://www.hughes.com

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