Cisco opens its Intent-Based Networking Platform

With a goal of delivering an open, programmable platform that spans the entire network, from campus to data center, branch to edge, Cisco released new developer capabilities across its intent-based networking platform. This includes new developer tools and open APIs into Cisco DNA Center — the command and control center for campus, branch and edge intent-based networks. The network-wide APIs allow developers to program the system, tapping into all of the analytics and insight the network can provide.

"Intent-based networking represents the next generation of open, IP-based systems that we've seen can change the actual fabric of society," said David Goeckeler, executive vice president and general manager of Cisco's Networking and Security Business. "Cisco is building an open architecture that will power an ecosystem to accelerate intent-based networking innovation. Already, our customers and partners are creating value from their networks in ways they thought weren't possible as recently as one year ago."

Cisco is also announcing three new developer initiatives to fuel its innovation ecosystem:

• DevNet Ecosystem Exchange -- an online portal for finding and sharing an application or solution built for Cisco platforms. It contains over 1,300 solutions.
• DevNet Code Exchange gives developers a place to access and share software to quickly build next-generation applications and workflow integrations. A curated list of sample code, adaptors, tools, and SDKs is available on GitHub and written by Cisco and the DevNet community. Code Exchange spans Cisco's entire portfolio and is organized according to Cisco platform and product areas.
• DevNet DNA Developer Center is a one-stop-shop for developers to build applications and integrations on the DNA Center platform. It provides comprehensive resources, capabilities, use cases and learning materials for developers.

A significant milestone -- Cisco's DevNet now has 500,000 developers enrolled.

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Juniper refreshes MX edge routers powered by its Penta silicon

Juniper Networks introduced its new MX Series 5G Universal Routing Platform powered by a new generation of its custom ASICs promising extensive programmability and performance improvements for supporting resource-intensive applications like 5G and secure SD-WAN-based managed services.

The new "Penta" silicon, which leverages 16nm geometry, functions as the packet forwarding engine for the MX series. It delivers a 50 percent power efficiency gain (0.5 watts per gigabit) over the existing Junos Trio chipset, which leads to a 3x bandwidth increase for the MX960, MX480 and MX240. Juniper designed the Penta silicon with native support of both MACsec and an IPsec crypto engine – an industry-first – that can originate and terminate thousands of IPSec sessions without sacrificing performance. Additionally, Juniper Penta supports flexible native Ethernet support (FlexE).

Juniper Penta silicon features:

• 16nm with Integrated 3D HBM Memory reducing packaging by 83% over the 4th Generation Trio silicon 
• 500G Full Duplex / 1T Half Duplex 
• 50Gbps SERDES 
• Fully Programmable Packet Pipeline 
• Fully Fungible Integrated Databases for FIB, ACLs, Tunnels, Telemetry, and more… 
• Built-in FlexEthernet Support 
• Built-in MACSec & IPSec Tunnel Encryption Engine (Industry First)

A second major innovation with the platform is open hardware-accelerated 5G Control and User Plane Separation (CUPS), which enables operators to separate the evolved packet core user plane (GTP-U) and control plane (GTP-C) with a standardized Sx interface. This allows service providers to scale the control plane and the user plane independently as needed for added flexibility and investment protection.

Juniper said its MX Series 5G platform is the first networking platform to support a standard-based hardware accelerated 5G user-plane in both existing and future MX routers to enable converged services (wireless and wireline) on the same platform while also allowing integration with third-party 5G control planes. Juniper expects this will lower total cost of ownership by as much as three to four times over software-based user plane implementations for MXs deployed in the field.

In addition, the rollout expands Juniper Universal Chassis system. The previously announced PTX and QFX Universal Chassis gains two new MX variants: MX10008 and MX10016. The 13-RU MX10008 and 21-RU MX10016 Universal Chassis bring industry-leading and space-saving scale for edge routers at 19.2Tbps and 38.4Tbps, respectively.

The MX10008 and MX100016 will be available during the second half of 2018. Juniper Penta Silicon-powered line cards for the MX960, MX480 and MX240 will be available in Q1 2019. New CUPS support will be available in the first half of 2019.

“Cloud is eating the world, 5G is ramping up, IoT is presenting a host of new challenges and security teams simply can’t keep up with the sheer volume of cyber attacks on today’s network. One thing service providers should not have to worry about among all this is the unknown of what lies ahead. That’s why we’ve continued innovating our flagship MX platform to deliver more speed, flexibility, programmability and security capabilities, giving our customers the peace of mind they need as a variety of demands continue to put pressure on the network,” stated Manoj Leelanivas, Executive Vice President and Chief Product Officer, Juniper Networks.

“The rise of next-generation wireless and wireline services is having a profound impact on the underlying networks needed to make them a reality. We’ve been a longtime partner with Juniper Networks since the first MX more than a decade ago and are excited to see the unveiling of its next generation MX platform,” said Mike Altland, Director, Network Infrastructure Planning, Verizon

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AT&T expects to complete Time-Warner acquisition next week

U.S. federal judge Richard Leon ruled in favor of AT&T in the lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice to block its acquisition of Time Warner.

AT&T applauded the ruling saying it now expects to complete the $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner by June 20th.

• The deal was first announced in October 2016.
• President Donald Trump has argued against the deal, saying it represents too much concentration of power.
• Time Warner, which was formed in 1990 through the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications, encompasses a number of premium media properties, including HBO, New Line Cinema, Turner Broadcasting System, The CW Television Network, Warner Bros., CNN, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Adult Swim, DC Comics, Warner Bros. Animation, Castle Rock Entertainment, Cartoon Network Studios, Esporte Interativo, Hanna-Barbera Productions, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. It also owns 10% of Hulu.
• AT&T anticipates annualized cost synergies of $1.5 billion by the end of the third year after close.
• Following the close of the Time Warner deal, AT&T plans to introduce AT&T Watch, a skinny package without local programming or sports-only channels. 
• By the end of the year, the company also expects to launch a premium streaming experience that will compete with traditional linear TV products for in-home use. The product will be app-based with a small device that connects to customers’ TVs and home broadband. 

“This is a perfect match of two companies with complementary strengths who can bring a fresh approach to how the media and communications industry works for customers, content creators, distributors and advertisers,” stated Randall Stephenson, AT&T, on the day the deal was first announced in October 2016. 

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Linux Foundation Networking releases ONAP Beijing

Linux Foundation Networking announced the second release of Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), code named Beijing.

ONAP is positioned as a unified platform for end-to-end, closed-loop network automation. The Beijing release evolves the platform toward container-based implementations and provides robust documentation and training for Virtual Network Functions (VNF) developers, service designers, and operations managers.

"We are delighted to announce the availability of ONAP’s second release, Beijing, which advances the architecture, seven dimensions of deployability, and new automation functionality," said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager of Networking, The Linux Foundation. "As a community, we celebrate the progress the Beijing release brings to the ecosystem and look forward to additional deployments of the platform."

“The Beijing release ushers in the next phase of ONAP,” said Mazin Gilbert, ONAP Technical Steering Committee (TSC) Chair, and Vice President, Advanced Technology, AT&T Labs. “The technical enhancements in this release focus on enhancing the stability and deployability of the platform. In addition, the community has focused on supporting users in their adoption journey with the delivery of several new Getting Started guides as well as online and in-person introductory training options. Together with the community, we are further establishing ONAP as the defacto standard for automation.”

LF Networking cited the following feature enhancements in the Beijing release:

Architecture

• ONAP Operations Manager supports the migration to microservices-based deployments on Kubernetes
• ONAP has collaborated with MEF and TMForum on external APIs, ensuring those frameworks and APIs can communicate seamlessly with the ONAP platform.

Deployability

• Starting with the Beijing release, the ONAP development process measures improvements in seven key operational parameters (Usability, Security, Manageability, Stability, Scalability, Performance and Resiliency) for each platform module.
• The Beijing release brings advanced platform stability and resiliency based on deployment of of the ONAP Operations Manager (OOM) and the Multi-Site State Coordination Service (MUSIC) projects.
• ONAP OOM enables ONAP modules to be run on Kubernetes, contributing to availability, resilience, scalability and more for ONAP deployments and sets the stage for full implementation of a microservices architecture, expected with the third release, Casablanca.
• MUSIC is an optional new solution for state management of ONAP components across geographically distributed sites, ensuring federated active-active operation without degrading performance, reliability and availability.
• As security is a key element of the CI framework, the Project has adopted CII (Core Infrastructure Initiative) badging as part of its release requirements. CII is a project managed by The Linux Foundation that collaboratively works to improve the security and resilience of critical open source projects.

Functional Enhancements – Blueprint Enrichment

The residential vCPE blueprint has been enriched with change management and policy-driven workload placement features that include hardware platform awareness (HPA).
Network service scaling to meet traffic needs is a fundamental NFV value proposition. VNF Manual Scaleout is also supported on vLB via APPC and Policy with LCM based Manual Scale Out.

Ecosystem Expansion

• The open source community is rapidly organizing to ensure the technology, tools and services are in place to support rapid adoption.
• VNF integration: With the Beijing release, the ONAP community worked closely with the OPNFV Verified Program (OVP), which simplifies adoption in commercial NFV products and establishes an industry threshold based on OPNFV capabilities and test cases, to coordinate integrations via the ONAP VNFSDK and ONAP VNF Validation Program (VVP) components.
• Documentation and training:
• New startup and operations guides for users
• Design guides and API and SDK documentation for service designers and VNF developers
• Online training: Free introductory courses on Open Source Networking Technologies and ONAP as well as more in-depth, paid ONAP Fundamentals training
• Community-led best-practices webinars

Real-World Use

Organizations spanning every aspect of the ecosystem (vendors, telecommunication providers, cable and cloud operators, NFV vendors and solution providers) continue to leverage ONAP for commercial products and services. The Beijing release code is being integrated into new and existing proofs of concept and production deployment plans for large global carriers like AT&T, Bell Canada, China Mobile, China Telecom, Orange, Reliance Jio, Verizon, Vodafone, Turk Telecom, among others. And major leading vendors are building products and solutions on the ONAP platform.

https://onap.readthedocs.io/en/latest/release/index.html

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Intel outlines 5G reference design

Intel outline a new 5G infrastructure reference design developed in collaboration with partners, including Windriver, Radisys, Mavenir, and Amdocs. The design serves as a blueprint for communications service providers (CoSPs) seeking to deploy a software-defined, cloud-enabled, agile 5G-ready network.

The set of pre-integrated solutions includes:

• End-to-end virtualized radio access network (vRAN) stack based on the Intel FlexRAN reference architecture
• Wind River Titanium Cloud software
• Radisys Layer 2 and 3 software
• Mavenir virtualized evolved packet core (vEPC)
• Amdocs network functions virtualization (NFV) technology powered by the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP), with real-time orchestration of the Intel FlexRAN-based vNFs and full visualization of the end-to-end network

"This virtualized, cloud-ready reference design offers the communications industry a path to 5G, allowing CoSPs to speed deployment of new services and jump-start their development of edge computing and services. It reduces the time to market thanks to pre-integrated components for interoperability and proven technology from Intel," stated Caroline Chan, vice president and general manager of the Communications Infrastructure Division in Intel’s Data Center Group.

https://intel.ly/2Jz1Szp

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Advantech launches Intel Select Solutions for NFVI

Advantech unveiled two systems that are verified as Intel Select Solutions for NFVI, enabling developers to gain faster access to advanced configurations that speed the rollout of highly-optimized NFV solutions.

The Advantech FWA-6170 workload-optimized network appliance and the SKY-8201 carrier-grade server are both based on integrated high-performance Intel Xeon Platinum and Gold processors. The configuration complies with specific network, storage, and integrated platform acceleration products from Intel to maximize virtual machine density. The high-performance CPUs, balanced I/O, and onboard acceleration with Intel QuickAssist Technology combined with optimizations through DPDK allow for the achievement of exceptional throughput and latency performance. These technologies improve data and control plane throughput, latency, and jitter performance, and allow virtual network functions (VNFs) to meet their performance requirements.

“Next generation central offices, telecom cloud and edge compute will require a significant boost in performance, network throughput and agility to maximize the opportunities created by 5G at sustainable costs.” said Ben Shen, Director of NFV Infrastructure Division, Advantech Networks & Communications Group.  “Intel Select Solutions for NFVI help close the gap and speed the transformation needed to support the next wave of applications where lower latency, additional bandwidth and increased storage capacities will be essential.”

“Advantech’s systems have been optimized to streamline deployment of new NFV infrastructure for CommSPs.” said Sandy Chen, Director of Enterprise Networking, Advantech Networks & Communications Group. “They both meet, and in some cases exceed Intel Select Solutions for NFVI performance thresholds while providing the flexibility to scale up compute performance, massively scale out network connectivity and experience a throughput boost from Intel® QuickAssist Technology acceleration to fit many NFV workloads.”

http://www.advantech.com/resources/case-study/intel%C2%AE-select-solution-for-nfvi-with-advantech-servers--appliances

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OIF initiates CEI-112G-XSR project

The OIF has launched a CEI-112G-XSR project for Die-to-Die (D2D) and Die-to-Optical Engine (D2OE) Common Electrical Interface, which will enable intra-package interconnects to optical engines or between dies with high throughput density and low normalized power operating in the data rate range of 72-116 Gbps with a reach up to 50 mm.

In addition to the already existing CEI-112G-MCM OIF project, which is dedicated to wide, high bandwidth CMOS-to-CMOS interconnects, the new CEI-112G-XSR project proposes to support technology mix, in particular CMOS-to-SiGe (Silicon Germanium), which is frequently used to build optical engines. System-in-package (SIP) leads to a requirement of supporting up to 50 mm trace length between the multiple chips on a common (organic) package substrate.

The working group for the CEI-112G-XSR project has identified the following benefits for OIF members:

• allow lower normalized power, double shoreline throughput density and provide a multi-source 72-116 Gbps D2D and D2OE electrical I/O interface. This will enhance the integration, normalized power reduction, and cost reduction for integrated OE, multiple-die SIPs.
• enable 1 to N lanes of 72-116 Gbps electrical I/Os (e.g. on ASIC/FPGA/OE).

“We jointly designed this project to address the problem of integrating multiple dies, including driver devices for optical engines on non-CMOS technologies, onto a common substrate within a large multi-chip-package design. Supporting this mix of technology allows combining the high logic density of CMOS devices with the high drive strength of analog components,” explained Klaus-Holger Otto of Nokia and OIF Technical Committee Chair.

http://www.oiforum.com/

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Kaiam releases enhanced 100G “CWDM4+" transceivers

Kaiam is releasing an enhanced series of 100G “CWDM4+” transceivers.

Kaiam said its enhanced transceivers offer substantially higher performance than the CWDM4 standard. Specifically, the enhanced CWDM4+ transceivers provide -1dBm minimum Tx OMA, 3dB more than required by the CWDM4 standard. This, in turn, supports 3dB more link budget than the CWDM4 standard requires, supporting more robust links in the face of various real-world data center link impairments.

“Kaiam is uniquely positioned to address the data center deployment issues encountered by our customers,” stated Jeremy Dietz, VP of Global Sales & Marketing. “By enabling more link budget and delivering higher reliability than standard products, many of these issues can be avoided. We have moved the technology needle considerably, proving that the CWDM4 standard specs are overly conservative in today’s world. Our recently expanded production capacity in Livingston, UK combined with that from our partnership with Broadex provides customers with quick access to improved value.”

Kaim also noted that it is able to exceed MSA specifications without additional cost.

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Dell:Oro: 802.11ax product delays slow enterprise WLAN market

Delays with the introduction of 802.11ax products is expected to slow the Enterprise Class-WLAN market growth in 2018, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group.

"Several manufacturers of Enterprise-class products are postponing general availability of 802.11ax access points as they wait for more advanced chipsets and further development of the standard," said Trent Dell’Oro, Business Analyst at Dell’Oro Group. “In light of this news, we lowered our Enterprise-class access point forecast for 2018 by over six percent. We imagine the market may come in lower than we predicted, depending on the degree to which customers push out projects as they wait for the new technology. In addition, the delay in 802.11ax WLAN Access Points may affect the campus switching market refresh cycle,” added Dell’Oro.

Additional highlights from the 1Q18 Wireless LAN Quarterly Report:

• Enterprise-class Wireless LAN market revenue rose five percent year-over-year on nine percent unit growth.
• Some vendors plan to move forward with lower featured 802.11ax products as early as 3Q18 with full-featured, higher-priced products following in early-to-mid 2019.
• The transition to Wave 2 picked up during the quarter following a three quarter lull. We expect this migration will extend through 2019.

http://www.delloro.com/

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MACOM intros new RF switch portfolio

MACOM Technology Solutions introduced its latest high-performance RF switch portfolio for SATCOM, 5G wireless, test and measurement (T&M), EW and microwave radio applications.

MACOM's new GaAs-based SPDT MASW Series switch covers the 17.7 – 31 GHz frequency range, with low insertion loss of 1.6 dB, high isolation at 30dB and switching speed of 12 ns. It is offered in a lead-free 3 mm, 14-lead QFN surface mount plastic package.

MACOM's new MASW-011107 SPDT non-reflective switch, offered in bare die format, covers the DC – 26.5 GHz frequency range, with low insertion loss of 1.3 dB and high isolation at 46 dB when operating at 20 GHz. Both devices are fabricated via robust processes with full surface passivation aimed at ensuring high-performance and high reliability.

“MACOM’s heritage in high-performance RF switching is unassailable,” said Graham Board, Senior Director of Product Marketing, MACOM. “We have lead the industry for decades by leveraging our proprietary AlGaAs, HMIC and GaAs technologies to deliver technically superior switch solutions. These new switches leverage our patented low gate-lag GaAs process. This technology will not only allow us to deliver best-in-class RF performance but also fast switching speeds, which is critical in TDD systems.”

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