Windstream Launches SD-WAN Wholesale

Windstream launched an all-new Software Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) solution for the reseller community.

The company said its SD-WAN solution relieves the demanding pressures on today's networks by providing agility, visibility and control, as well as performance and operational efficiencies.

"This significant addition of SD-WAN to the current available portfolio of Wholesale solutions - including MEF 2.0 Certified Carrier Ethernet, MPLS and Dedicated Internet Access and more - enables a full-scale, flexible and powerful technology that positions resellers as trusted advisers to their end users," said Jeff Brown, director of product management and marketing for Windstream's Wholesale business unit. "By leveraging the reach of the Internet, Windstream Wholesale's SD-WAN solution combines end-user locations and services through an easy-to-use interface, eliminates the need for manual monitoring and allows our resellers to deliver a fully managed solution to their customers."

http://investor.windstream.com/investors/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=1020923

Windstream Introduces SD-WAN Powered by VeloCloud

Thursday, January 19, 2017  SD-WAN, VeloCloud, Windstream  No Comments

Windstream introduced its software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solution powered by VeloCloud that uses SDN to dynamically route traffic over a combination of private and public access types to reach multiple locations. Windstream said its new service helps customers maintain control over their network from a convenient centralized location rather than requiring them to manage various routers, firewalls and switches. It also simplifies management

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VeloCloud Establishes Security Ecosystem for SD-WAN

VeloCloud Networks, the Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN company, announced the launch of the SD-WAN Security Technology Partner Program and partnerships with security industry players IBM Security, Check Point Software Technologies, Fortinet and Zscaler.

VeloCloud's SD-WAN security technology partner program is designed to integrate its enterprise SD-WAN architecture with leading security solutions. The VeloCloud Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN enables enterprise customers to operate WANs, flexibly support applications and simplify branch office deployments while using their preferred interoperable security products for branch, data centre and cloud environments.

Through the partner program, VeloCloud is working with IBM Security to deliver the Secure SD-WAN service from IBM Managed Security Services, which is designed to enable zero-trust security and improved network performance along with reduced operational and telecom circuit costs.

VeloCloud's SD-WAN security partner program covers the three areas of the SD-WAN security framework, comprising network, cloud and management. This encompasses: network security interoperability in the branch and security VNF integration on the VeloCloud Edge; cloud security via direct connect from branch to cloud and security in IaaS through VeloCloud Edges and Gateways; and interfaces to security operations centres, SIEM solutions and security analytics.

Under the program, technology partners have access to the extensible VeloCloud Technology Partner SD-WAN API (for orchestration, control and data) and SDK, in addition to the VeloCloud VNF framework. Partners are also able to integrate and insert services using the VeloCloud VNF-ready platform development framework, which offers support for an integrated security VNF.

As part of the initiative, VeloCloud has also joined Fortinet's Fabric-Ready Partner Program, through which it has worked with Fortinet to validate technology integration and ensure interoperability with the Fortinet FortiHypervisor platform. Additionally, VeloCloud is a Check Point Open Platform for Security (OPSEC) partner and has created a joint solution with Zscaler that enables secure Internet access to on-premises and cloud hosted services.http://www.velocloud.com/news/2017/velocloud-introduces-comprehensive-sd-wan-security-ecosystem

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Fujitsu Launches Cloud Service for CyrusOne

Fujitsu America announced the launch of secure global connectivity via its Fujitsu Cloud Service K5 offering to customers of CyrusOne, a global data centre operator serving the U.S., Europe and Asia, with K5 currently hosted at CyrusOne's Carrollton, Texas data centre.

Fujitsu Cloud Service K5, part of the ongoing global roll-out of its next-generation IaaS and PaaS cloud service, is claimed to be the first cloud computing platform to enable digital transformation through integrating traditional IT environments into new cloud-based technologies. The service is designed to accelerate application development and integrates enterprise-grade reliability, performance and scalability with the cost efficiency of open source-based cloud technology.

A key element of the Fujitsu Digital Business Platform MetaArc, K5 offers a suite of technologies designed to enable organisations to develop and deploy new cloud-native applications, termed Fast IT, or Systems of Engagement. K5 will also allow CyrusOne customers to leverage their traditional, Robust IT, installations, also termed Systems of Record, through integration into new cloud applications. The Fujitsu solution thereby enables organisations to utilise legacy systems while modernising IT environments.

CyrusOne customers can utilise K5 capabilities in the areas of application integration and development, as well as the wider capabilities of MetaArc to leverage automated multi-cloud delivery and management across all popular cloud platforms.

The Fujitsu MetaArc platform is designed to enable fast-track application development for the digitalisation of existing enterprise IT services, while accelerated release cycles will allow CyrusOne to more quickly test and launch new services. Through K5's open architecture and ability to run and manage workloads on any platform, with MetaArc new systems can run both within the public cloud and in an organisations IT environment.

As a result, leveraging the open source, OpenStack-based architecture of K5 CyrusOne will be able to reduce costs associated with its 35-plus carrier-neutral facilities, and enterprises will be able to reduce vendor lock-in.

Fujitsu's K5 service is available with four delivery models - public cloud, virtual private hosted, dedicated and dedicated on-premise – and applies the same approach across all versions.

Fujitsu noted that it is currently implementing the solution to transition its internal IT environment and migrating its 640 business systems and 13,000-plus servers to K5.

http://www.fujitsu.com/us/about/resources/news/press-releases/2017/fai-20170411.html

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nbn of Australia trials Nokia universal NG-PON fibre technology

Nokia announced that Australia's nbn, which is deploying a national broadband network and recently reported it had passed 4.5 million premises, has tested its universal NG-PON fibre solution at the Nokia lab facility in Melbourne.

Nokia stated that the nbn trial achieved aggregate broadband speeds of 102 Gbit/s on a single fibre and demonstrated the dynamic provisioning of bandwidth to help support increasing data demand from residential and business customers.

Nokia's universal NG-PON technology converges TWDM-PON (also termed NG-PON2), XGS-PON and GPON technology on the same fibre and is designed to enable a straightforward upgrade path from the current technology utilised in FTTP deployments.

Designed to be deployed as an overlay on existing fibre networks, TWDM-PON and XGS-PON is designed to remove the time and cost associated with laying new fibre. TWDM-PON can support four or more wavelengths per fibre, each of which can support asymmetrical or symmetrical bit rates of 2.5 or 10 Gbit/s and delivering total capacity of 40 Gbit/s. XGS-PON utilises a single wavelength to support 10 Gbit/s symmetrical or asymmetrical bit rates.

nbn trialled the different PON technologies using Nokia's universal next-generation PON solution, which includes: TWDM-PON enabling 40 Gbit/s symmetrical bandwidth; XGS-PON providing 10 Gbit/s symmetrical bandwidth; and  GPON, offering 2.5 Gbit/s bandwidth.

Combined, the technologies delivered download and upload speeds of more than 102 Gbit/s in the aggregate over a single, shared fibre.

Nokia noted that the testing of TWDM-PON and XGS-PON technology is the latest in a number of trials nbn has conducted with Nokia using fibre and copper infrastructure. In October last year, Nokia and nbn trialled copper-based XG-FAST technology during which they demonstrated throughput speeds of up to 8 Gbit/s in lab conditions.

Conducted in nbn's North Sydney lab, the test achieved peak aggregate throughput of over 8 Gbit/s over a 30-metre twisted-pair copper cable, with a 5 Gbit/s peak rate achieved over 70 meters of twisted-pair cable.
http://www.nokia.com/en_int/news/releases

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Poland's PSNC deploys ADVA 100G in PIONIER R&E network

ADVA Optical Networking announced that the Poland's Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) has deployed the FSP 3000 equipped with 100 Gbit/s core technology into its PIONIER network for the research and education community.

PIONIER, a major European R&E network, links high-performance computer centres in five cities across Poland, as well as providing onward connectivity to the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.

The new 96-channel 100 Gbit/s coherent long-haul solution provided by ADVA and installed by its local partner Alma is designed to enable Europe's scientific community to share large volume data sets and collaborate using high-bandwidth applications. The ADVA solution provides a new fully redundant GMPLS-based network connecting Polish supercomputing centres located in the cities of Poznań, Gdansk, Warsaw, Krakow and Wroclaw.

The new network offers 96 channels and supports reach of more than 3,466 km without the use of signal regeneration. In addition to ADVA FSP 3000 core transport technology, the solution employs the vendor's colourless, directionless and flexgrid multi-degree ROADMs, which serve to establish remote cross-connections at the optical layer to improve availability and simplify operations.

ADVA noted that PIONIER was one of the first national academic networks in Europe to implement its own 10 Gbit/s dark fibre network, and following the latest upgrade all links in the meshed infrastructure are able to transport 100 Gbit/s capacity. In addition, based on the modular design of the FSP 3000, the network can be scaled to 400 Gbit/s capacity and beyond in the future.

ADVA previously announced in September 2015 that it had partnered with PSNC to trial 400 Gbit/s coherent data centre interconnect (DCI) technology. The trial was conducted over 385 km of fibre between research centres in Poznan and Warsaw and involved the FSP 3000 CloudConnect platform. For the trial, the CloudConnect was configured with two 200 Gbit/s wavelengths operating at 16QAM within an optical super-channel; it also featured ROADMs and hybrid amplifiers.

http://www.advaoptical.com/en/newsroom/press-releases-english/

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Rancher Labs Releases ultra-lightweight Container OS

Rancher Labs, a start-up based in Cupertino, California, released its ultra-lightweight container OS.

Key features of RancherOS include:

• Minimalist OS: Eliminates the need for unnecessary libraries and services
• Automatic configuration: Simplifies OS configuration by using cloud-init to parse the cloud-config files from multiple data sources
• Simple setup: Runs services inside containers orchestrated using Docker Compose service files, making setup as simple as running a Docker container
• Reduced footprint: Decreases resource requirements with a footprint three times smaller than that of other container operating systems in the market
• Extensive platform support: Supports Amazon EC2, bare metal, Digital Ocean, Docker Machine, GCE, KVM, OpenStack, Packet, Vagrant, VMware (experimental) and VirtualBox

“RancherOS is a minimalist Linux distribution that is perfect for running Docker containers,” said Sheng Liang, co-founder and CEO of Rancher Labs. “By running Docker directly on top of the kernel and delivering Linux services as containers, RancherOS delivers just what you need to build a containerized application environment.”

http://www.rancher.com

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3 Hong Kong Upgrading Mobile Network using Huawei for 5G

Huawei announced an agreement with 3 Hong Kong, the mobile communications division of Hutchison Telecommunications Hong Kong under which it will implement a series of network upgrades designed to increase network capacity and coverage and prepare 3 Hong Kong's network for the 5G era.

Huawei noted that 3 Hong Kong is currently the only mobile operator in Hong Kong with 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz and 2600 MHz spectrum bands in service. 3 Hong Kong is re-farming spectrum to improve bandwidth efficiency as customer data usage patterns change, and having already re-farmed its 900 MHz spectrum for 4G in 2016, plans to complete re-farming of its 2100 MHz spectrum for 4G service in the second half of this year.

By the end of the year, the operator expects to have completed re-farming of its spectrum so that all five bands will be available for 4G service to help meet customer demand for data services.

In addition, 3 Hong Kong plans to utilise CA (carrier aggregation) technology to deliver a network leveraging 5CC (5 component CA), designed to provide customers with improved mobile service.

Specifically, to provide higher bandwidth 3 Hong Kong will combine 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz x2 and 2600 MHz spectrums with FDD and TDD 5CC CA technology, together with 4 x 4 MIMO and 256QAM modulation. This technology upgrade will provide customers with compatible terminals with data download speeds of over 1.2 Gbit/s. 3 Hong Kong plans to launch this network by the end of 2017.

Meanwhile, in tandem with enhancing its 4.5G network, 3 Hong Kong is planning for the deployment of 5G technologies, including network cloudification solutions, to enable the launch of services once the relevant technology standardisation is finalised.

As part of this effort, Huawei enables network cloudification via its CloudEdge, CloudRAN and CloudAIR solutions. CloudEdge implements core network resources in the cloud, allowing flexible network configuration; CloudRAN serves to centralise the management of baseband configurations in the cloud; and CloudAIR 'cloudifies' the air interface enable dynamic adjustment of spectrum formats and allocation of spectrum resources based changing network traffic patterns.

Huawei stated that 3 Hong Kong has already deployed CloudEdge technology on its core network, and is currently applying CloudRAN technology to its wireless access network. The operator is also planning to deploy CloudAIR technology to complete cloudification of its network.

Additionally, 3 Hong Kong is developing massive MIMO technology, and has deployed a massive MIMO base station with 2300 MHz TDD in Causeway Bay that has been utilised in field testing. Huawei noted that the test results indicate that a massive MIMO base station can provide over six times the capacity of a conventional 4G base station with the same spectrum with TDD single carrier of 20 MHz bandwidth.

http://www.huawei.com/en/news/2017/4/Huawei-3HongKong-5G

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NEC partners with K-Opticom to trial vCPE over 10G EPON Internet connections

NEC and Netcracker Technology announced that they have conducted a successful trial in partnership with K-Opticom of Japan of a system combining network functions virtualisation (NFV) and 10 Gigabit Ethernet PON (EPON) technologies.

The companies claim that the trial verified for the first time that virtualised CPE (vCPE) can be successfully operated over 10 Gbit/s Internet connections.

K-Opticom is a provider of telecommunications services in the Kansai region of Japan based on its own fibre network, serving over 1.5 million residential subscribers. The company specifically offers the mineo mobile service through a MVNO arrangement and the eo denki electric power retailing service for residential customers.

NEC noted that vCPE provides CPE and other top-layer functions, such as dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP) and network address translation (NAT), from data centres over Internet connections. vCPE is designed to allow the provision of enhanced home-based communications and to simplify home gateways, and the vCPE trial with K-Opticom delivered the following:

1.         By virtually establishing conventional CPE functions on the K-Opticom network, vCPE can support the provision of a secure communications environment, as well as facilitate the delivery of new services such as VoD, cloud storage and parental control.

2.         Enabled monitoring of communications status on devices such as computers and smartphones remotely at the request of the service user; allowing communications services top be improved and facilitating the prompt identification and resolution of faults.

NEC stated that based on the results of the trial with K-Opticom, the companies plan to conduct further trials in preparation for the full-scale roll-out of vCPE over 10 Gbit/s Internet services.http://www.nec.com/en/press/201704/global_20170411_02.html

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