Sunday, March 11, 2018

Corning's RocketRibbon cable packs 3,456 fibers

Corning unveiled a new "RocketRibbon" extreme-density fiber cable for data center and carrier environments.

RocketRibbon cables deliver up to 3,456 fibers in the same diameter as existing central and stranded tube cables. Corning is using a proprietary manufacturing process to create as many as 12 individually protected sub-units, each with 288 closely packed fibers. An extruded color-coded jacket protects and identifies each bundle and allows for direct and easy routing to splice trays, without the need for additional materials, ribboning processes, or furcation kits.

Corning said its new RocketRibbon cable allows operators to quickly install more capacity in the same duct space to accommodate increased bandwidth demand.

“Corning’s industry leadership and unique co-innovation approach mean our customers come to us to help solve their most important problems. RocketRibbon extreme-density cable demonstrates how we work hand-in-hand with our customers, listening to their challenges. In this case, we developed an entirely new system of ribbon protection and sub-units that provide our customers with easier, faster cable access for ribbon identification and splicing,” said Bernhard Deutsch, division vice president and general manager, Corning Optical Fiber and Cable.

Reliance JIO and Cisco collaborate on Multi-Access Edge Computing

Cisco and Reliance Jio are collaborating in multi-access edge computing. The companies are developing a use case to optimize and enhance video experience over the network by building a mobile content delivery network (CDN). In this concept, the CDN is integrated into the mobile LTE network with edge caches in close proximity to the mobile users.

The idea with a mobile CDN is for the mobile operator to deliver content via edge cloudlets to provide a better user experience with lower latency and higher performance.

Cisco said its mobile CDN work with Reliance Jio uses a combination of IP address management techniques based on the mobile core, requiring tight integration between edge cache, mid-tier cache, and the traffic router in the Cisco Open Media Distribution system. The mobile core and the Cisco Open Media Distribution are combined into one system level solution for the CDN embedded in the mobile network.

To solve the problem of user plane selection, the system uses Control/User Plane Separation (CUPS) as defined in 3GPP R14.

Cisco and Reliance Jio also solved the issue of assigning a geographically appropriate IP address to the mobile device and the issue of handover resiliency in the face of IP address changes on the client side and the CDN cache site without change or disturbance to the current services.

VPIphotonics updates Design Suite for coherent M-QAM and PAM-M

VPIphotonics announced the latest release of its VPIphotonics Design Suite for optical components and transmission systems.

Version 9.9 comes with enhancements of the user interface and tools operation, as well as advances in simulation capabilities, such as new design and analysis tools for coherent M-QAM and direct-detection PAM-M systems, new and enhanced DSP and coding functionalities, extended library of PIC elements and instrumentations, to continuously support VPIphotonics’ existing and addressing new applications and markets.

The company said its simulation tool suite provides access to over 850 ready-to-run demonstrations, including new ones
such as probabilistic shaping, PAM-4 for interconnects, multimode VCSEL transmission, nonlinear Volterra filtering.

VPIphotonics Design Suite Version 9.9 is on show at OFC 2018, booth 4513.

IDT develops 64G Linear Driver for Coherent Optical

Integrated Device Technology introduced a 64 Gbaud quad-channel linear optical modulator driver in a 14mm x 9.1mm Surface Mount Technology (SMT) package for 400G/600G coherent applications.

The device can be used in line cards and CFP2 pluggable modules to bring next-generation 400G/600G products to the coherent market.

The IDT GX66473 supports 64Gbaud 16QAM and 64QAM to address the needs of both 400G and 600G systems, and has differential input and single-end output interfaces with a 4.5Vpp output voltage swing, suitable for driving Lithium Niobate Mach-Zehnder Modulators.  The driver features low-power consumption of 1.1W/ch, very high linearity performance with approximately 1.5% Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) and an adequate package size for pluggable modules. A version of the GX66473, the GX66474, operates with two standard supply voltages, making it suitable for the CFP2 form factor modules.

IDT will demonstrate the new device at this week's OFC in San Diego.

ZTE enhances core router with Bit Indexed Explicit Replication

ZTE has enhanced its ZXR10 T8000 core router with the addition of Bit Indexed Explicit Replication (BIER) technology -- an industry first according to the company, and useful for balancing SDN backbone network traffic.

ZTE describes BIER as a simplified multicast packet forwarding technology that does not require complex multicast protocols and multicast forwarding tables. It can efficiently distribute multicast packets only by switching the messages of the multicast senders and receivers instead of maintaining multicast flow status, which perfectly fits the philosophy of SDN centralized control.

The ZXR10 T8000 router supports multiple northbound interfaces. The company's software enables traffic optimization and scheduling based on policies, which can help achieve load balancing, reduce the link congestion ratio, delay network expansion, and improve user experiences.

Netsparker raises $40 million for its web security software

Netsparker, a start-up based in the U.K., raised $40 million in venture funding for its web application security scanning software.

The funding round was led by Turn/River Capital, a San Francisco-based growth and private equity fund focused on enterprise software companies.

Netsparker says its solution can identify security flaws in any type of website, web application and web service. Netsparker’s Proof-Based Scanning Technology automatically verifies security flaws as they are discovered, enabling the scanners to have industry-leading vulnerability detection rates without reporting any false positives.