Sunday, October 1, 2017

The Pacific Wave Peering Exchange continues to expand

Pacific Wave International Exchange and its peering and science DMZ fabrics will be extended to Texas’s Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) and Oklahoma’s OneNet thanks to support from the National Science Foundation.

The Pacific Wave SDX, which is a project of the Corporation for Education Networking in California (CENIC) and Pacific Northwest Gigapop (PNWGP), is an integral component of the international effort to interconnect research and education networks using Software Defined Networking (SDN).  Pacific Wave operates multiple open exchange peering points available at three U.S. Pacific coast locations, including the Bay Area (Sunnyvale and Palo Alto), Los Angeles (three sites), and Seattle; three U.S. interior locations in Denver, Albuquerque, and El Paso; and two sites in Tokyo, Japan. It comprises multiple, geographically diverse 100Gbps connections – in Seattle, Los Angeles and Chicago – to Internet2’s backbone nodes and full range of advanced network capabilities. Pacific Wave also operates an SDX testbed with access points in Los Angeles, Seattle and Sunnyvale, and including teaming relationships with StarLight, WIDE/T-REX and others to pilot more global interoperability of next-generation SDX capabilities.

LEARN and OneNet will connect to Pacific Wave via the Western Regional Network (WRN). WRN is an R&E extension of Pacific Wave, created and supported by a collaboration of the major Western Regional R&E optical networks: Front Range Gigapop (CO and WY), New Mexico Gigapop, University of Hawaii, Pacific Northwest Gigapop (WA, AK, MT, ND) and CENIC (CA). WRN employs a dedicated 100Gbps wavelength-based network infrastructure, including “dark channels” provided by Internet2, that spans the West and also reaches Pacific Wave’s international exchange point collaborator, StarLight, in Chicago, thereby making most European R&E networks directly accessible to WRN participants.

Telia plans 5G in 2018 in Stockholm, Tallinn and Helsinki

Telia wants to be among the first carriers worldwide to deploy commercial 5G and is working with Ericsson and Intel to ensure this happens.

The first use cases, which was tested in September, uses 5G to deliver Internet access to a cruise ship moored in Tallinn harbour.

"We want to be early with 5G and will bring it to life in Stockholm, Tallinn and Helsinki in 2018. We work together with our partners in the whole eco-system to explore the powerful effect it is going to have for our customers and in society. It’s not only about building a new network but it’s also about building a new way of thinking and perceiving what a mobile network can be and can do. High speed, low latency, guaranteed capacity and truly mobile is going to push the boundaries of digitalization and we want to be there pushing it together with our partners,” stated Gabriela Styf Sjöman, Global Head of Networks, Telia Company.

An Ericsson 5G base station consisting of 5G antenna, radio and baseband, in conjunction with the Intel 5G Mobile Trial Platform – provides millimeter wave and extends the Telia mobile network to 5G.

Nokia leads Broadband Access Abstraction project

Nokia is taking a leading role in the Broadband Forum's new Broadband Access Abstraction (BAA) project, which seeks to drive the adoption of software-defined access networks through the contribution of open source software, uniting vendors and operators to ensure they are aligned with industry specifications to meet the needs of operators globally.

Specifically, the BAA project seeks to define a software reference implementation for an open BAA layer, which would eliminate dependencies on vendor-specific equipment and proprietary software functions by providing standardized interfaces and decoupling implementation from the underlying hardware.

Nokia is the first vendor partner to contribute open source code under the BAA project.

"By opening and standardizing the common, generic part of the network software, we avoid the need to re-write that same software for every technology, every vendor and every node. In turn, we can now focus our efforts on developing new applications and capabilities that make the network faster, better, and smarter: for example, converging fixed and mobile networks; fronthauling 5G over fiber-access networks, automating operations and building self-healing and self-optimizing networks," stated Federico Guillén, president of Nokia's Fixed Networks Business Group.