Google Cloud suffers widespread outage

Google reported high levels of network congestion in the eastern USA, impacting a wide range of Google services and third-party websites and apps.

The first report on the Google status page was posted at 12:53pm (Pacific) impacting Google Cloud Networking. Google Compute Engine was also impacted

Users across the United States reported slow performance and intermittent outages with Google Cloud, G Suite, Gmail, YouTube and other key services.

At 16:00 (Pacific), Google reported that the network situation was back to nornal for the majority of users.

https://status.cloud.google.com/

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ThousandEyes captures visualization of Google Cloud outage

From its monitoring network of 249 global vantage points, ThousandEyes detected the global outage with Google Cloud Platform beginning around 12-12:15pm PT.

ThousandEyes experienced 100% packet loss trying to reach a service hosted in GCP USwest. All traffic dropped at the edge of Google's network.

Angelique Medina, ThousandEyes product marketing director, stated: “ThousandEyes can confirm Google’s report of network congestion as a likely root cause of Sunday’s massive 4-hour outage, as we started seeing elevated packet loss in Google’s network as early as 12pm PT between sites on the eastern US, including Ashburn, Atlanta and Chicago, and various Google-hosted services. These issues started to impact users globally approximately 20 minutes prior to their public announcement of the issue, showing an early indication of what was to come. For the majority of the duration of the 4+ hour outage, ThousandEyes detected 100% packet loss for certain Google services from 249 of our global vantage points in 170 cities around the world. Starting at around 3:30pm PT, we started to see services slowly become reachable again, and the issue appeared to fully resolve by 4:45pm PT.”

https://www.thousandeyes.com/

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CommScope Advances 10G Broadband Roadmap

CommScope announced several areas of progress on its 10G Broadband roadmap

• A low-latency DOCSIS system deemed crucial to next-generation broadband performance. The company is demonstrating IP video running alongside traditional QAM video over an EPON channel at 10 Gbps. 
• A software-configurable Frequency-Division Duplex (Soft FDD) system with the potential to deliver 10G speeds over traditional coaxial wiring. Soft FDD uses FDX technology and provides a foundation for symmetrical services.
• The E6000 vCore fully virtualized converged cable access platform (CCAP) core. This offers automated provisioning and capacity tools for end-to-end service provisioning and smart capacity additions; and orchestration and intelligence tools to manage multi-access configurations and produce better analytics about network performance.

The three technologies will be demonstrated at the ANGA COM trade show.

CommScope notes that these announcements come fewer than six months after it revealed its role in pioneering the core technologies for 10 Gbps broadband (10G), and just four months after it announced a 8.5 Gbps network trial with Virgin Media.

In addition, Vodafone Germany is underway with a nationwide upgrade to support 1Gbps service. Some 12 million customers will enjoy the high-speed Gigabit service through an ARRIS broadband device when the rollout is complete. Swiss provider Sasag last month became the first European operator to announce upgrading its entire network to use DOCSIS 3.1 (D3.1) for both the upstream and downstream channels.

“As cable operators embark on their far-reaching network transformation, which includes the migration to 10G and virtualization of the CCAP, CommScope is rising to the challenge, delivering the complex solutions they will need such as low latency DOCSIS, soft FDD and virtualized CCAP,” said Liliane Offredo-Zreik, principal digital transformation analyst with consulting and market analysis firm ACG Research. “Operators’ needs in this transformation will be far from homogeneous; they will require a vendor with the depth and breadth of expertise and solutions to meet their evolving needs.”

CommScope completed its acquisition of ARRIS International in April.

Cable industry outlines vision for 10G services

Monday, January 07, 2019  Cable, MSO  

NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, CableLabs and Cable Europe outilined a vision for delivering 10G consumer broadband services in the United States and across the globe in the coming years.

Cable operators in the U.S., whose networks currently pass 85 percent of U.S. homes, including Comcast, Charter, Cox, Mediacom, Midco and others – plus international operators, including Rogers, Shaw Communications, Vodafone, Taiwan Broadband Communications, Telecom Argentina, Liberty Global and more, are implementing the new 10G initiative, with lab trials already underway, and field trials beginning in 2020. 1 gigabit service is currently available across 80% of the cable footprint in the U.S., up from 5% in 2016.

Intel promises 10G-ready technology from the network infrastructure to home gateways.

“With groundbreaking, scalable capacity and speeds, the 10G platform is the wired network of the future that will power the digital experiences and imaginations of consumers for years to come,” said NCTA President and CEO Michael Powell. “As an industry, we are dedicated to delivering an exceptional national infrastructure that will power digital advancement and propel our innovation economy into the future.”

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China drafts list of "unreliable foreign entities"

In response to the U.S. decision to blacklist Huawei, China's Ministry of Commerce will draft its own list of "unreliable foreign entities," which could be companies or individuals who would be banned from doing business in China. The South China Morning Post, which is published in Hong Kong, reports that this list could include all suppliers to Huawei who halted shipments to Huawei due to the U.S. action. Companies appearing on China's entity list would be restricted in terms of sales, investments and business licenses.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3012740/beyond-tariffs-china-looks-new-ways-hit-back-us-tech-and-trade

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IDC: Switching market grows 7.8%, routing up 8.2%

According to IDC, the Worldwide Ethernet switch (Layer 2/3) market grew revenues 7.8% in Q1 2019 to $6.8 billion, while the worldwide enterprise and service provider (SP) router market saw revenues increase 8.2% year over year to $3.6 billion.

"Organizations across the globe are looking to digitally transform themselves in an effort to meet market and competitive needs and improve user experiences. As they do so, enterprises are realizing the critical role the network plays in their broader IT transformation initiatives," said Rohit Mehra, vice president, Network Infrastructure, at IDC. "This has led to continued, and growing, investment in Ethernet switching, routing, software-defined networks (SDN), and SD-WAN platforms and architectures that support the increasing demands of an always-connected world."



Some highlights of the newly updated IDC Quarterly Ethernet Switch Tracker and IDC Quarterly Router Tracker:

• From a geographic perspective, the 1Q19 Ethernet switch market had a strong quarter across the globe. The Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) (APeJ) region grew 8.6% year over year. Notable gains in the region included China, which grew 11.7% year over year, and Taiwan, which increased 15.3%. Meanwhile, Japan's Ethernet switch market rose 1.3%.
• The Middle East and Africa (MEA) region saw growth of 9.5% year over year, led by Egypt, which rose 17.3%. Europe saw more modest growth with Western Europe growing 3.5% and Central and Eastern Europe remaining stagnant with 0.3% year-over-year growth. Notable markets in Western Europe included the United Kingdom, which was down 1.2% from a year earlier, while Germany was up 2.3% and Italy grew 15.5% year over year. In Central and Eastern Europe, Russia declined 13.4% year over year. In the Americas, the United States grew 11.9% while Canada increased 2.6% year over year. Latin America was down 4.5% overall with Brazil's 8.5% year-over-year decline offset by 11.0% growth in Mexico.
• Port shipments for 100Gb switches rose 85.3% year over year to 3.6 million. 100Gb revenues grew 59.0% year over year in 1Q19 to $1.2 billion, making up 17.3% of the market's revenue. 
• 25Gb ports also saw impressive growth, increasing 133.3% to $304.0 million, with port shipments growing 104.8% year over year. 
• 40Gb switches continue to be falling out of favor with revenues declining 21.3% year over year. 
• Lower-speed campus switches, a more mature part of the market, showed moderate growth. 10Gb port shipments rose 8.6% year over year to make up 28.7% of the market's revenue. 
• The worldwide enterprise and service provider router market grew 8.2% on a year-over-year basis in 1Q19 with the major service provider segment, which accounts for 75.3% of revenues, increasing 7.1% and the enterprise segment of the market growing 11.9%. 
• From a regional perspective, the combined service provider and enterprise router market increased 12.0% in APeJ with the enterprise segment up 17.7%. Japan's total market grew 27.1% year over year. Central and Eastern Europe regional revenues rose 19.7% year over year, while the Western Europe combined enterprise and service provider market grew 3.7% year over year. The Middle East & Africa region was up 12.6% fueled by a 15.7% increase in service provider revenues. In the U.S., the enterprise segment was up 15.7% but the service provider revenues fell 5.8%, causing the total market to decline 0.5% year over year. Canada's market rose 28.5% year over year and the Latin American market grew 9.0%.
• Cisco finished 1Q19 with an 8.3% year-over-year increase in overall Ethernet switch revenues and market share of 53.7%. In the hotly contested 25Gb/100Gb segment, Cisco is the market leader with 39.4% of the market's revenue. Cisco's combined service provider and enterprise router revenue rose 15.3% year over year, with enterprise router revenue increasing 16.1% and service provider revenues growing 14.8%. Cisco's combined SP and enterprise router market share increased to 42.4%, up from 37.4% in 4Q18.
• Huawei's Ethernet switch revenue rose 18.9% on an annualized basis, giving the company market share of 8.9%, up from 8.1% a year earlier. The company's combined service provider and enterprise router revenue rose 5.7% year over year with a market share of 24.5%.
• Arista Networks saw Ethernet switch revenues increase 24.0% in 1Q19, bringing its share to 7.5% of the total market, up from 6.5% a year earlier. The company continues to cater to the higher end of Ethernet switch speeds, with 100Gb revenues accounting for 67.6% of the company's total revenue, indicating the company's focus on hyperscale and cloud providers.
• HPE's Ethernet switch revenue declined 5.6% year over year, giving the company a market share of 5.3%.
• Juniper's Ethernet switch revenue declined 23.4% in 1Q19, bringing its market share to 2.6%. Juniper saw an 8.2% decline in combined enterprise and service provider router sales, bringing its market share in the router market to 10.4%.

https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS45119319

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DOCOMO develops 5G glass antenna for 28 GHz

NTT DOCOMO, in partnership with AGC Inc. and Ericsson, has developed an antenna embedded in synthetic fused silica glass for transmitting and receiving 28 GHz 5G radio signals.

The antenna was used to verify 28 GHz 5G mobile communication with downlink speeds averaging 1.3 Gbps within a 100-meter range and reaching a maximum of 3.8 Gbps at 400 MHz.

The verification tests, which used a vehicle fitted with multiple antennas and traveling about 30 km/h, were conducted in the Sumida area of Tokyo between April 22 and May 28.

https://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/info/media_center/pr/2019/0529_00.html

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IEEE lifts peer review restrictions on Huawei

Upon further consideration, IEEE updated its policy regarding export control restrictions against Huawei and its affiliates.

IEEE said employees of Huawei and its affiliates may participate as peer reviewers and editors in the publication process.  All IEEE members, regardless of employer, can continue to participate in all of the activities of the IEEE.

"IEEE recognizes that science and technology are a global activity. We are proud of the work our members do around the world and we are dedicated to advancing technological excellence for the benefit of humanity."

https://www.ieee.org/about/news/2019/statement-update-ieee-lifts-restrictions-on-editorial-and-peer-review-activities.html

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Blackberry Messenger shuts down

The consumer version of Blackberry Messenger (BBM) was officially deactivated as of 31-May-2019. Blackberry Messenger was launched in 2005. In 2016, Indonesia-based Emtek Group acquired the licensing rights for BBM.

Meanwhile, Blackberry Limited (formerly Research in Motion) has launched an enterprise-grade messaging platform that promises end-to-end security and privacy in its place.

https://blog.bbm.com/2019/04/18/time-to-say-goodbye-english-version/

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