Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Infinera Unveils Xceed Software for Multi-layer SDN Automation

Infinera unveiled a portfolio of integrated, open and modular software components for software defined networking (SDN) automation of Infinera programmable multi-layer transport networks.

The new Xceed Software Suite (Xceed), which includes the Xceed Multi-layer SDN Platform and Xceed Applications, allows service providers to extend SDN automation to Infinera’s end-to-end Intelligent Transport Network portfolio, spanning long-haul, metro and data center interconnect applications.

Highlights from the release

Purpose-built Platform: The Xceed Multi-layer SDN Platform is built on the OpenDaylight open source SDN controller, incorporates Infinera-developed advanced microservices, such as the Xceed Multi-layer Path Computation Element (PCE) and a rich network abstraction layer incorporating Infinera’s proven Open Transport Switch (OTS) software. With a diverse range of open application programming interfaces (APIs), standards-based information models and open source components, the Xceed Multi-layer SDN Platform sets a new benchmark of openness to enable rapid application development and deployment.

Revenue-ready Applications:
Xceed Applications unleash the scalability, flexibility and programmability of Infinera packet-optical transport networks to improve service delivery and facilitate service providers’ goals of protecting and growing revenue while increasing network efficiency. Xceed Applications available in the initial release include:
  • Xceed Dynamic Bandwidth provides on-demand provisioning of Optical Transport Network (OTN), including ODUFlex and Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) compliant Ethernet services. Xceed Dynamic Bandwidth enables programmable on-demand capacity activation creating an elastic environment that is designed to enable faster service provisioning, more efficient use of resources across packet, digital and optical layers, and improved network utilization.
  • Xceed Instant Virtual Networks facilitates network virtualization to enable service providers to define virtual transport network topologies on a shared physical network infrastructure. With Layer 1 (OTN) Instant Virtual Network (IVN), multiple virtual transport networks can be established, each operating as a standalone transport network with integrated OTN switching, optical routing and protection capabilities tailored to the end-user’s applications.

“As a leading national provider of high-bandwidth wavelength services, Windstream recognizes that our enterprise and wholesale customers demand streamlined service provisioning and more flexible, on-demand connectivity,” said Art Nichols, Windstream’s Vice President of Network Architecture and Technology. “As a strategic vendor, Infinera partners with us to develop pragmatic solutions to meet our customers’ needs. We are actively testing and plan to deploy the Xceed Multi-layer SDN Platform with Dynamic Bandwidth to further our efforts in providing an exceptional customer experience.”

“GÉANT is working in close partnership with Infinera to deploy SDN, most recently validating Open Transport Switch and the Packet Switching Module to pilot multi-layer programmability between our optical and packet networks,” said Mark Johnston, Chief Operations Officer at GÉANT. “By closely collaborating with the SDN development team, led by Afrodite Sevasti, we plan to leverage the power of the Xceed Software Suite to implement multi-layer control and to facilitate multi-domain interoperation to increase network efficiency and deliver on-demand services. This will also ultimately increase the capability and value of the GÉANT network.”

“The introduction of the Xceed Software Suite marks an important milestone in Infinera’s ability to help our customers realize the promise of an infinite pool of intelligent bandwidth,” said David Welch, President and Co-Founder, Infinera. “Now with Xceed, our customers have the automation, multi-layer intelligence and programmability to rapidly deliver new, differentiated SDN applications with an open approach. Service providers can now activate and control pre-deployed terabit scale capacity quickly and easily with minimal operational expense.”

https://www.infinera.com/products/xceed-software-suite/

Ericsson Announces 5G New Radio for Massive MIMO

Ericsson announced shipment of the world's first 5G NR radio for massive MIMO (commercial deployment in not expected until next year).

Ericsson said it now has all the products its portfolio to deliver a 5G access network.  This includes the 5G Plug-Ins announced in June and Ericsson's already commercially available Radio System Baseband 5216, which currently powers Ericsson's Radio Test Bed.

Some highlights of the portfolio:

  • Three new radios support Gigabit speeds for LTE and provide further flexibility in design: Radio 4407 and Radio 4412 enable 4x4 MIMO in one radio unit for FDD and TDD mode respectively, and Radio 8808 for advanced TDD beamforming applications
  • Addressing both the need for unlicensed spectrum options and the growing emphasis on small cells is the Radio 2205, a micro solution on unlicensed spectrum that is fully integrated in Ericsson Radio System, using the same baseband and network management
  • Two new baseband units support the growing need for densification: the outdoor micro Baseband 6502 and macro Baseband 6303 with Ericsson Rail System mounting for flexible site builds
  • Addressing interference issues in dense builds, Baseband P614 enables new band activation on challenging sites by mitigating Passive Inter Modulation, referred to as PIM mitigation, from static and dynamic sources both inside and outside the antenna system
  • Spectrum optimization is a growing need and Uplink Spectrum Analyzer is an Ericsson-unique software solution to remotely identify external interference without the need for costly measurement equipment and site visits
  • Exclusive to Ericsson is instant power sharing, used in the wideband Radio 2242. This capability allows power to be instantly shared between carriers, standards and bands, optimizing the use of radio resources
  • Cloud RAN will be an important 5G network architecture and Baseband C608 provides high-performance switching in Elastic RAN deployments

Arun Bansal, Head of Business Unit Network Products, Ericsson, says: "Ericsson has driven innovation in every generation of mobile technology and now we are set to over-deliver on an aggressive promise. We are introducing the new hardware that 5G Plug-Ins, announced in June, will run on, so that the first operators can start to deploy 5G infrastructure.  And, we are also launching innovations that improve both the performance and efficiency of today's networks using concepts that will evolve into 5G."

http://www.ericsson.com

Ericsson's 5G Software Plug-ins Extend LTE


Ericsson announced a number of 5G Plug-Ins, software-driven innovations that bring essential 5G technology concepts to existing LTE networks. Ericsson said LTE will continue to expand and evolve, addressing both an increased number of subscribers and their growing demands for extreme app coverage for data and video, as well as new low power wide area (LPWA) applications for the Internet of Things (IoT).  These include: Massive MIMO Plug-In:...

"5G for Switzerland" Backed by Swisscom and Ericsson


Swisscom, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Ericsson are launching a "5G for Switzerland" program that aims to understand to how 5G can play a transformative role in areas such as smart transportation, autonomous driving, automated traffic control systems, smart grid, IoT, and virtual reality. Heinz Herren, CTO and CIO Swisscom said: “5G is still in the early stages of development. For Swisscom it is essential to be in on the...

Sprint Shows Three-Channel Carrier Aggregation LTE Plus in Kansas City

Sprint and Nokia kicked-off the launch of three-channel carrier aggregation in Kansas City’s LTE Plus Network with a live demonstration at Kauffman Stadium just prior to the Royals vs Yankees game.

Sprint is hitting peak speeds as high of 230 Mbps using its 2.5Ghz spectrum with three-channel carrier aggregation inside the stadium using the Samsung Note7, Galaxy S7, S7 edge, HTC 10 and LG G5. Nokia supplied its Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station for LTE TDD, including TD-LTE-Advanced 8-pipe radio (8T8R) that can deliver all three carriers from a single unit on 8T8R configuration for better performance and coverage.

“Kansas City is our hometown and it’s also one of the most tech savvy cities in the country, so it’s fitting that it would be one of our first markets to receive this advanced capability,” said Dr. John Saw, Sprint CTO. “4K streaming and powerful virtual reality systems are on the rise and we’re excited to take our LTE Plus network to the next level increasing our speed and capacity 50% more with three-channel carrier aggregation.”

http://www.sprint.com

Australia's nbn Satellite Readied for Launch

The second high performance satellite designed and built by SSL for Australia's national broadband network (nbn) has arrived at the European Spaceport in Kourou,French Guiana, where it will be launched aboard an Ariane 5 launch vehicle by Arianespace.

The Ka-band satellite, called Sky Muster II, will be used in conjunction with the first Sky Muster satellite, to provide high-speed broadband service to more than 200,000 Australians.

"It has been very gratifying to work together with our colleagues in Australia to help establish a satellite service that brings high speed internet to underserved users anywhere in Australia," said John Celli, president of SSL. "SSL is a leader in building broadband satellites that are used for services that improve people's lives and open new opportunities for education, healthcare and economic development, and we commend the government ofAustralia for assuring that all of its citizens have this type of access."

http://www.sslmda.com

Red Hat Revs OpenStack Platform 9

Red Hat announced its OpenStack Platform 9 release, its open Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform designed to deploy, scale and manage private cloud, public cloud, and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) environments.

Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9 is based on the OpenStack cCommunity "Mitaka" release. Key additions include:

• Automated updates and upgrades with Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director - Red Hat enables users to upgrade their OpenStack deployments through the automation and validation mechanisms of the Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director, based on the upstream community project TripleO (OpenStack on OpenStack). This in-place upgrade tool offers a simplified means to take advantage of the latest OpenStack advancements, while preventing downtime for production environments.

• Live migration improvements and selectable CPU pinning from OpenStack Compute (Nova) -- The Compute component now offers a faster and enhanced instance of the live migration process, helping system administrators to observe its progress and even pause and resume the migration task. A new CPU pinning feature can dynamically change the hypervisor behavior with latency-sensitive workloads such as NFV, enabling more fine-grained performance control.

• Tech Preview of Google Cloud Storage backup driver in OpenStack Block Storage (Cinder) -- As part of Red Hat’s continued collaboration with Google, new disaster recovery policies in Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9 now extend to the public cloud using integrated drivers created for Google Cloud Storage. This new feature enables more secure backups of critical data across the hybrid cloud.
Management for OpenStack

“The adoption of OpenStack in production environments has grown and with that, comes increased requirements for enhanced management and seamlessly integrated enterprise capabilities. Dell and Red Hat’s continued close collaboration and joint engineering has both advanced and integrated these capabilities to automate OpenStack updates and upgrades with Red Hat OpenStack Platform 9 and Red Hat OpenStack Platform Director to help our customers achieve their business goals more quickly and easily on their OpenStack powered clouds,” stated Jonathan Donaldson, vice president, Software Defined Infrastructure, Intel.

Box Posts Q2 Revenue of $95.7 Million, Up 30% Year-Over-Year

Box posted Q2 2017 revenue of $95.7 million, an increase of 30% from the second quarter of fiscal 2016. GAAP operating loss in the second quarter of fiscal 2017 was $37.9 million, or 40% of revenue. This compares to GAAP operating loss of $49.8 million, or 68% of revenue, in the second quarter of fiscal 2016.

"Our strong second quarter results, with revenue growth of 30 percent and billings growth of 34 percent year-over-year, reflect our clear differentiation as the leading enterprise content platform," said Aaron Levie, co-founder and CEO of Box. "Our excellent sales execution and traction with new products drove deals with 4,000 new customers and expanded deployments with leaders such as Pfizer, Electronic Arts and Uber.”

During Q2, Box added over 4,000 paying new customers, and added or significantly expanded deployments with leading enterprises like Pfizer, Autodesk, Electronic Arts, the Federal Communications Commission, London Met University, Perkins+Will Global, Telegraaf Media Groep, Western Union, Uber, and more.  

Box grew its paying customer base to 66,000 businesses.

http://www.box.net

Equinix Completes London Data Center Expansion

Equinix completed the second phase expansion of its LD6 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Slough, London.

The $42M of capital investment adds 1,385 cabinets, bringing the total operational capacity of the data center to 2,770 cabinets. Following this latest investment, Equinix's LD6 London Slough campus will provide more than 408,000 square feet (38,000 square meters) of net premium colocation space interconnected by more than 1,000 diverse dark fiber links, increasing scale and resilience.

Equinix said LD6 is one of the busiest network nodes in the UK,

LD6 hosts more than 90 network service providers and provides access to a range of transatlantic sub-sea cables.

It offers latency in the region of 30 milliseconds to New York and 4 milliseconds to Frankfurt.

The facility also houses LINX, one of the world's largest Internet Exchanges, and serves as a virtual financial center for more than 170 financial services companies. A quarter of European equities trades flow through Equinix data centers.

http://www.equinix.com

Sequans Delivers LTE Cat 1 for IoT for T-Mobile

Sequans Communications will deliver LTE Cat 1 technology and products to T-Mobile’s (NASDAQ: TMUS) machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) customers.

Sequans’ Calliope LTE Cat 1 chipset platform, which uniquely supports VoLTE and enables a wide range of industrial and consumer IoT applications, including asset tracking, alarm systems, telematics devices, retail applications, smart utility meters and more, is now certified and available for use on T-Mobile’s network.

“We are very happy to support T-Mobile’s IoT network strategy as an LTE Cat 1 technology provider,” said Georges Karam, Sequans CEO. “LTE Cat 1 enables 4G solutions to rival 2G/3G in cost while providing much greater longevity. This means T-Mobile’s customers have access to a leading wireless network that is scalable and secure with broad coverage, along with affordable, long-lived connectivity solutions for successful IoT and M2M business models.”

http://www.sequans.com