University College London carries 120 Terabit/s over a single repeatered fibre with Xtera

University College London (UCL), in collaboration with Xtera, has demonstrated the transmission of 120 Terabit/s over a single repeatered fibre.

The experiment used a hybrid distributed-Raman / EDFA amplifier with a bandwidth of 91 nm. This is an extension of the technology which Xtera currently deploys in its subsea repeaters, with 256QAM and adaptive FEC expertise coming from UCL and Z-PLUS Fiber 150 fibre from Sumitomo. These initial experiments were performed over 630 km with nine broadband amplifiers spaced at 70km.  In the near future, these will be connected to form a loop to allow tests over much longer distances.  The capacity and span achieved today exceeds the previous record of 115 Terabit/s over 100 km by more than six times.

Xtera said conventional approaches can yield bandwidths of approximately 70 nm when using the combination of a C-band and an L-band amplifier. Raman amplification used by Xtera can offer even greater bandwidth, in this case 91nm, while also offering very low noise. 

Dr. Stuart Barnes, Chairman of Xtera, in expressing how pleased he has been with the Xtera / UCL collaboration, states, “This is the start of an exciting period of work where Xtera and UCL will push the limits of this technology even further, a possibility which doesn’t exist for two discrete C+L amplifiers.  I am confident that more bandwidth is not only possible but also practical, and more importantly, commercially viable.  Xtera will continue to push transmission technology further in order to create products which meet the market demands of the future.”

Professor Polina Bayvel, CBE FRS FREng, adds, “I am happy that our state-of-the-art, high-speed WDM transmission testbed, developed through the EPSRC UNLOC programme, could be used to achieve record transmission throughput.  This accomplishment has been enabled by many ground-breaking research developments in digital signal processing and amplifier technology as well as dedicated effort of outstanding researchers from UCL’s Optical Networks Group and Xtera.”

Details of the experiment and findings are available at www.xtera.com/learning/ and www.arxiv.org

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UK kicks off 5G spectrum auction

Ofcom, the official telecoms regulator in the U.K., has commenced an auction to release more airwaves to improve mobile broadband capacity, and help prepare for future 5G services.

A total of 190 MHz of spectrum is being sold across two frequency bands: 40 MHz in the 2.3 GHz band, which will be used to increase mobile broadband capacity for today’s users; and 150 MHz in 3.4GHz, which has been earmarked for 5G.

Five companies have been approved to bid in the auction: Airspan Spectrum Holdings Ltd; EE Limited; Hutchison 3G UK Limited; Telefonica UK Limited and Vodafone Limited.

The length of the auction depends on the level of bidding activity. There is a £70m reserve price, with the value increasing round by round as bids are made.

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NTT Com plans 4th data center campus in Frankfurt

NTT Communications' e-shelter business unit has acquired a new development site in Frankfurt, which will be its 4th location in the city.

The “Frankfurt 4 Data Center” campus is located in Hattersheim in the west of the city and will feature 5 DC buildings built out in phases, with the first building of 9.7MW IT load scheduled to open in early 2019. Once fully built out, the site is capable of housing up to 60MW IT load and 24,000 sqm of IT space, supporting an average power density of 2.5 kW/sqm.

e-shelter, which offers both wholesale and retail colocation services, along with hybrid IT enterprise solutions, currently operates across ten locations in the DACH region and a data center area of around 90,000 sqm. Outside of DACH e-shelter is also expanding to new markets with a new data center campus opening in Amsterdam in early 2019 and development sites secured in both Madrid and London.

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Dell EMC launches Virtual Edge Platform

Dell EMC introduced its enterprise Virtual Edge Platform (VEP) family for SD-WAN.

The Dell EMC VEP4600, which is powered by the new Intel Xeon D-2100 processor, is a universal Customer Premise Equipment (uCPE) meant to displace expensive fixed-function access hardware.

It provides an open Intel architecture-based platform to support multiple simultaneous virtual network functions (VNF). Numerous proprietary physical devices can be consolidated into this single uCPE while maintaining the high-performance levels needed to host many. The modular design includes room to grow with front panel expandability so the platform can be easily upgraded or serviced in the field as needed.

"There is a real need among service providers and enterprises to update network operations to address distributed and cloud-based applications and capitalize on changing economics enabled by cloud models," said Tom Burns, senior vice president, Networking & Service Provider Solutions. "By infusing Open Networking into access networks to the cloud with the Virtual Edge Platform family, Dell EMC can help customers modernize infrastructure and transform operations while automating service delivery and processes."

"As network traffic continues to increase, optimized service delivery is required to meet the demands of a broad range of use cases at the network edge," said Sandra Rivera, senior vice president and general manager, Network Platforms Group, Intel. "A programmable and power efficient system-on-a-chip processor is needed to deliver the performance that users and devices require for edge applications. Using the Intel Xeon D-2100 system-on-a-chip in the Dell EMC Virtual Edge Platform provides flexible and power-efficient network edge solutions with high-performance compute and intelligence."

Intel intros Xeon D-2100 for edge

Wednesday, February 07, 2018  Edge, Intel, Silicon  No Comments

Intel introduced a system-on-chip processor in its Xeon line that is architected to address the needs of edge applications and other data center or network applications.

The new Intel Xeon D-2100 processors include up to 18 “Skylake-server” generation Intel Xeon processor cores and integrated Intel QuickAssist Technology with up to 100 Gbps of built-in cryptography, decryption and encryption acceleration.

Intel said this processor will be supported by system software updates to protect against the Spectre and Meltdown security exploits.

In addition to edge deployments in communications service provider networks, other use cases for the Intel Xeon D-2100 processor include:

• Storage: The Intel Xeon D-2100 processor is an option for density-optimized, lightweight hyperscale cloud workloads such as dynamic web serving, memory caching, dedicated hosting and warm storage.
• Content Delivery Networks (CDNs): The processors can bring higher performance to content delivery at the network edge, which is critical to keep latency low for streaming media to viewers and those working in media fields with massive files.
• Enterprise networks: The processor family also targets entry enterprise SAN and NAS storage, midrange routers, network appliances, security appliances, wireless base stations and embedded midrange IoT usages, among others.

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Microsoft signs largest corporate solar deal in U.S. at 315 MW

In what is described as the single largest corporate purchase of solar energy ever in the United States, Microsoft agreed to purchase 315 MW of energy from Pleinmont I and II, two new solar projects in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Microsoft is aiming to power 60% of its operations with renewable energy by 2020.

"Today, we're signing the largest corporate solar agreement in the United States, a 315 megawatt project in Virginia that will move us ahead of schedule in creating a cleaner cloud," said Brad Smith, president, Microsoft. "This project means more than just gigawatts, because our commitment is broader than transforming our own operations; it's also about helping others access more renewable energy."

The project is owned and will be operated by sPower, a leading independent renewable energy power producer based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Once operational, Pleinmont I and II will consist of more than 750,000 solar panels spread across more than 2,000 acres, and produce approximately 715,000 MWh a year. It is the largest solar project in Virginia and the fifth largest solar project in the country.

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Averon raises $13.3 million for mobile identity

Averon, a start-up based in San Francisco, raised $13.3 million in series A funding for its work in mobile identity verification.

Averon's solution leverages mobile carrier data signaling and hardware already in every smartphone combined with Averon's proprietary blockchain technology to positively and instantly authenticate mobile users. The mobile authentication works seamlessly whether users are on Wi-Fi or LTE.
The company says its patented techniques are impervious to man-in-the-middle attacks, social engineering and other forms of digital hijacking.

The funding round was led by Avalon Ventures and Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff.

"Averon provides the fastest, strongest mobile security in the world, and we're proud that our innovations are disrupting the status quo of cybersecurity," said Wendell Brown, Averon co-founder and CEO. "We completely relieve the burden from end users while providing enterprise customers far superior security. Our solutions heal the cyber battle wounds suffered by every sector, from banking and healthcare to e-commerce. Our customers enjoy freedom and peace of mind, because users' logins, purchases and entire digital life are always effortlessly protected while connected with Averon."

http://www.averon.com

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CenturyLink overtakes AT&T on Vertical Systems Group Leaderboard

CenturyLink (including Level 3), AT&T, Verizon (including XO), Windstream and Frontier have gained a position on the 2017 U.S. Incumbent Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD, according to Vertical Systems Group’s latest research.

The Incumbent Carrier LEADERBOARD, which ranks incumbents in order based on U.S. retail Ethernet port share for this segment, is an industry benchmark for measuring Ethernet market presence.

CenturyLink jumps to the first position on the 2017 Incumbent Carrier LEADERBOARD based on Ethernet ports from its Level 3 merger, up from the third position in the previous year. As a result, AT&T moves into the second position from first, where it had been perennially ranked in the incumbent segment. Verizon (including ports from its acquisition of XO) is in the third position, followed by Windstream at the fourth position. Frontier gains the fifth position for its initial entry to the Incumbent Carrier benchmark ranking.

Other companies in the Incumbent Carrier segment selling retail Ethernet services in the U.S. market include the following (in alphabetical order): Alaska Communications, Cincinnati Bell, Hawaiian Telecom, TDS Telecom and other incumbents.

To qualify for the 2017 U.S. Incumbent Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD, companies must achieve either a top rank or a Challenge Tier citation on the 2017 U.S. Carrier Ethernet LEADERBOARD. Incumbent Carrier is one of three U.S. provider segments, along with the Competitive Provider and Cable MSO segments.

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ETSI and OPNFV announce co-located testing

ETSI and OPNFV announced plans to co-locate their next community testing events in Sophia Antipolis, France.

The third ETSI NFV PlugtestsTM event will be held between 29 May and 8 June 2018, and the OPNFV Fraser Plugfest will be held from 4 to 8 June.

“Effective interoperability is the goal of any standards activity, and ETSI NFV adopted an approach oriented towards actually exercising and demonstrating interoperability from its start in 2012, evolving from Proofs of Concepts to Plugtests activities,” says Diego Lopez, chairman of ETSI ISG NFV. “This event is a new opportunity to strengthen the current cooperation with relevant open-source communities in the NFV landscape.”

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ZTE touts cloud native container platform for NFV

ZTE announced an end-to-end container networking solution for open-source NFV .

ZTE’s unified ICT PaaS platform, TECS OpenPalette, is based on container and Kubernetes cluster management technologies.

The company said that in order to address telecom application requirements such as high concurrency, large throughput, and multiple network planes, its platform employs the Knitter container networking solution.

In addition to supporting the native Kubernetes network, it offers multiple network planes, static application IP addressing, IP address migration, configurable IP resources, and high-performance forwarding.

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Samsung posts specs on its 10nm Exynos 7 Series 9610

Samsung Electronics Co. posted key specifications on its latest application processor (AP), the Exynos 7 Series 9610, for high-end smartphones.

The Exynos 9610 is built on Samsung’s 10-nanometer (nm) FinFET process. The CPU is comprised of four Cortex-A73 cores running at 2.3 gigahertz (GHz), and four 1.6GHz Cortex-A53 cores to load apps quickly and run multiple tasks simultaneously.

The GPU is a second-generation Bifrost-based ARM Mali-G72.

There is an embedded Cortex-M4F-based low-power sensor hub, which efficiently manages the sensors in real-time without waking the main processor.

The embedded all-network LTE modem supports Cat.12 3CA (carrier aggregation) at 600 Mbps for downlink and Cat.13 2CA at 150Mbps for uplink.

The processor also features 802.11ac 2x2 MIMO Wi-Fi, faster and longer range Bluetooth 5.0, and FM for radio. In addition, for global location positioning coverage, it embeds a 4-mode Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver that includes GPS (Global Positioning System), GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo.

The Exynos 7 Series 9610 is expected to be mass produced in the second half of this year.

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Seagate shows 14TB helium-based Exos HDD

Seagate Technology introduced its 14TB helium-based Exos X14 enterprise drive at the OCP U.S. Summit 2018 in San Jose, California.

The Seagate Exos X14, which is aimed at hyperscale data centers, boasts enhanced areal density for higher capacity storage in a smaller package. It offers built-in encryption with the United States government’s Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2, Level 2 certification and the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (CC) - an international computer security certification standard (ISO/EIC 15408). Other key features include 40 percent more petabytes per rack versus Exos 10TB drives, a 10 percent weight reduction versus air nearline drives, and a flexible design that delivers wider integration options and support for a greater number of workloads.

The drive is currently sampling to select customers and will be followed by production availability this summer.

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