Sunday, September 29, 2019

What's driving SD-WAN?



With hundreds of thousands of SD-WAN connections now active across the globe, it's clear that the technology has moved beyond earlier adopters and into a rapid-growth phase where carriers, vendors and even cloud providers are racing to differentiate themselves with enhanced services.

So, what's driving the next generation of SD-WAN?

In this 4-minute video we present the concise thoughts of the industry's thought leaders: AT&T's Roman Pacewicz,
Nuage Networks' Sunil Khandekar,
Verizon's Shawn Hakl,
Aruba's Kishore Sheshadri,
VeloCloud's Sanjay Uppal,
AvidThink's Roy Chua,
Colt's Mirko Voltolini,
Aryaka's Matt Carter,
Versa Networks' Kelly Ahuja,
and Open Gear's Gary Marks.

https://youtu.be/0koycAPMmGc

Interview by James E. Carroll

Google Cloud region planned for Warsaw

Google is looking to open a new data center region in Warsaw to better serve the enterprise market in Poland and the broader Central and Eastern Europe. The new Google Cloud region will have three zones to protect against service disruptions, and will launch with a portfolio of key products, including Compute Engine, App Engine, Google Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud Spanner, and BigQuery.

Google has formed a strategic partnership with Poland’s Domestic Cloud Provider (DCP), which was founded jointly by PKO Bank Polski and the Polish Development Fund. DCP become a reseller of Google Cloud services.

Google Cloud customers are currently served by 20 cloud regions and 61 availability zones.

“This is an important moment for the Polish economy. We are very proud to partner with Google Cloud and to see them bring a new cloud region to Warsaw. Global enterprises are already building their competitive advantage on Google Cloud and now we will be able to offer customers in Poland the same advanced technology available worldwide,” said MichaÅ‚ Potoczek, CEO of Domestic Cloud Provider. “We believe in a multi-cloud strategy. A Google Cloud region, together with our own infrastructure, will allow us to build hybrid services which will bring even more value to our customers.”

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/infrastructure/accelerating-cloud-adoption-in-poland-with-key-partnership-and-a-new-cloud-region

AT&T contributes Distributed Disaggregated Chassis white box to OCP

AT&T has contributed its specifications for a Distributed Disaggregated Chassis (DDC) white box architecture to the Open Compute Project (OCP). The contributed design aims to define a standard set of configurable building blocks to construct service provider-class routers, ranging from single line card systems, a.k.a. “pizza boxes,” to large, disaggregated chassis clusters.  AT&T said it plans to apply the design to the provider edge (PE) and core routers that comprise its global IP Common Backbone (CBB).

“The release of our DDC specifications to the OCP takes our white box strategy to the next level,” said Chris Rice, SVP of Network Infrastructure and Cloud at AT&T. “We’re entering an era where 100G simply can’t handle all of the new demands on our network. Designing a class of routers that can operate at 400G is critical to supporting the massive bandwidth demands that will come with 5G and fiber-based broadband services. We’re confident these specifications will set an industry standard for DDC white box architecture that other service providers will adopt and embrace.”

AT&T’s DDC white box design, which is based on Broadcom’s Jericho2 chipset, calls for three key building blocks:

  • A line card system that supports 40 x 100G client ports, plus 13 400G fabric-facing ports.
  • A line card system that support 10 x 400G client ports, plus 13 400G fabric-facing ports.
  • A fabric system that supports 48 x 400G ports. A smaller, 24 x 400G fabric systems is also included.

AT&T points out that the line cards and fabric cards are implemented as stand-alone white boxes, each with their own power supplies, fans and controllers, and the backplane connectivity is replaced with external cabling. This approach enables massive horizontal scale-out as the system capacity is no longer limited by the physical dimensions of the chassis or the electrical conductance of the backplane. Cooling is significantly simplified as the components can be physically distributed if required. The strict manufacturing tolerances needed to build the modular chassis and the possibility of bent pins on the backplane are completely avoided.

Four typical DDC configurations include:

  • A single line card system that supports 4 terabytes per second (Tbps) of capacity.
  • A small cluster that consists of 1 plus 1 (added reliability) fabric systems and up to 4 line card systems. This configuration would support 16 Tbps of capacity.
  • A medium cluster that consists of 7 fabric systems and up to 24 line card systems. This configuration supports 96 Tbps of capacity.
  • A large cluster that consists of 13 fabric systems and up to 48 line card systems. This configuration supports 192 Tbps of capacity.
  • The links between the line card systems and the fabric systems operate at 400G and use a cell-based protocol that distributes packets across many links. The design inherently supports redundancy in the event fabric links fail.


“We are excited to see AT&T's white box vision and leadership resulting in growing merchant silicon use across their next generation network, while influencing the entire industry,” said Ram Velaga, SVP and GM of Switch Products at Broadcom. “AT&T's work toward the standardization of the Jericho2 based DDC is an important step in the creation of a thriving eco-system for cost effective and highly scalable routers.”   

“Our early lab testing of Jericho2 DDC white boxes has been extremely encouraging,” said Michael Satterlee, vice president of Network Infrastructure and Services at AT&T. “We chose the Broadcom Jericho2 chip because it has the deep buffers, route scale, and port density service providers require. The Ramon fabric chip enables the flexible horizontal scale-out of the DDC design. We anticipate extensive applications in our network for this very modular hardware design.”

https://about.att.com/story/2019/open_compute_project.html

Broadcom's Jericho2 switch-routing chip boasts 10 Tbps capacity

Broadcom announced commercial availability of its Jericho2 and FE9600 chips, the next generation of its StrataDNX family of system-on-chip (SoC) Switch-Routers.

The Jericho2 silicon boasts 10 Terabits per second of Switch-Router performance and is designed for high-density, industry standard 400GbE, 200GbE, and 100GbE interfaces. Key features include the company's "Elastic Pipe" packet processing, along with large-scale buffering with integrated High Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

The new device is shipping within 24 months from its predecessor Jericho+., Jericho2 delivers 5X higher bandwidth at 70% lower power per gigabit.

In addition to Jericho2, Broadcom is shipping FE9600, the new fabric switch device with 192 links of the industry's best performing and longest-reach 50G PAM-4 SerDes. This device offers 9.6 Terabits per second fabric capacity, a delivers 50% reduction in power per gigabit compared to its predecessor FE3600.

“The Jericho franchise is the industry’s most innovative and scalable silicon used today in various Switch-Routers by leading carriers,” said Ram Velaga, Broadcom senior vice president and general manager, Switch Products. “I am thrilled with the 5X increase in performance Jericho2 was able to achieve over a single generation. Jericho2 will accelerate the transition of carrier-grade networks to merchant silicon-based systems with best-in-class cost/performance.”

Arrcus scales out with Broadcom's Jericho2, raises $30m 

Arrcus, a start-up that offers a hardware-agnostic network operating system for white boxes switches, announced multiple high-density 100GbE and 400GbE routing solutions for hyperscale cloud, edge, and 5G networks.

The company says its ArcOS software architecture has the foundational attributes to scale-out to an open aggregated routing solution, enabling operators to design, deploy, operationalize, and manage their infrastructure across multiple domains in the network.

"Our mission is to democratize the networking industry by providing best-in-class software, the most flexible consumption model, and the lowest total cost of ownership for our customers; we are now extending this by providing leading-edge open integration solutions for routing. ArcOS is the essential link to fully realize the unparalleled advancements in the 10Tbps Jericho2 SoC family and the resulting systems," Devesh Garg, co-founder and CEO of Arrcus.


The new ArcOS-based platforms, based on Broadcom’s 10Tbps, highly-flexible and programmable StrataDNX Jericho2 switch-router system-on-a-chip (SoC), include:

  • 24 ports of 100G + 6 ports of 400G
  • 40 ports of 100G
  • 80 ports of 100G
  • 96 ports of 100G

Edgecore contributes Cell Site Gateways work to OCP and TIP

Edgecore Networks announced a series of cross-contributions of Cell Site Gateways across the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) and the Open Compute Project (OCP) communities.

The AS7316-26XB cell site gateway design and specification, that was contributed to OCP in October 2018, has now been contributed to TIP’s Open Optical & Packet Transport project group. The AS7315-27X-DCSG cell site gateway specification, which was developed as part of TIP’s Disaggregated Cell Site Gateways (DCSG) initiative and contributed to TIP, is now also being contributed to the OCP community. This family of contributed designs will accelerate service provider adoption of open networking options to meet the increasing bandwidth and service demand in the upcoming 5G rollouts.

The AS7316-26XB and AS7315-27X-DCSG are temperature hardened and optimized for deployment in outside plant enclosures and support base stations with full IEEE 1588 timing and GPS functions, provide backhaul uplinks at 25G or 100G Ethernet, and airflow and stacking port options. The gateways incorporate Broadcom® StrataDNX™ switch silicon, deep packet buffer memory, and offer Intel® Xeon® and Atom® Processor options. Both models support both commercial and open source network operating system options.

Edgecore said the contributed products enable service providers to deploy 4G and 5G services with the economics of disaggregated open network technology.

“With the latest cell site gateway contributions, Edgecore continues to expand our leadership position in both the OCP and TIP communities, building upon previous contributions of open network leaf/spine switches, disaggregated OLTs, and optical transport systems. We fully support the recent announcement of further collaboration between TIP and OCP and the path for solutions within their communities to be made readily available across both organizations. This collaboration will ultimately provide operators with more choice and flexibility,” said George Tchaparian, President and CEO of Edgecore.

“TIP is creating a new approach to building and deploying telecom network infrastructure, and we thank Edgecore Networks’ for their continuous contributions to TIP, including the Cassini open packet transponder, and now the family of disaggregated cell site gateways. These open innovative new designs will provide flexibility and choice to network operators," said Attilio Zani, Executive Director, TIP Foundation.

ONF partners with Edgecore on SEBA,ODTN and Trellis projects

ONF reached an agreement with Edgecore Networks to dedicate significant engineering resources to accelerate and ensure the success of the ONF projects SEBA, ODTN and Trellis.

Specifically, ONF and Edgecore have jointly created the new Onsite Immersion Engineering program (ONF-OIE) to embed engineers within the ONF lab team. Edgecore engineers will work closely with the ONF and its community of developers to help mature the functionality, robustness, scalability, and reliability of these platforms so they are ready for production deployments. Edgecore is the first ONF Partner Member to be making use of the new ONF-OIE program, building a dedicated team of engineers to work at ONF’s facilities under ONF’s direction.

“Edgecore Networks and the ONF are now harnessing a significant opportunity with operators that have fully embraced open source to power their edge networks,” said George Tchaparian, president and CEO for Edgecore. “Edgecore Networks is committed to the vision of open platforms, and is ensuring that a SEBA, VOLTHA and Trellis run seamlessly on our Edgecore hardware.”

“We are very pleased to strengthen our collaboration with Edgecore Networks with the launch of the ONF-OIE program, especially as our exemplar platforms based on open source and white box hardware are gaining significant traction worldwide,” said Guru Parulkar, executive director for the ONF.  “This group of developers will play an important role maturing SEBA, VOLTHA and Trellisand readying these platforms for production; first on Edgecore Networks hardware, followed by others, and with deployment by operators around the globe.

https://www.opennetworking.org/news-and-events/press-releases/onf-and-edgecore-networks-enter-key-agreement-to-invest-in-success-of-open-source-deployments/

Bharti deploys Huawei's microwave for 1 Gbps backhaul links

Bharti India is deploying enhanced MIMO microwave links from Huawei.

The enhanced MIMO solution of 5G microwave will deliver 1Gbps capacity over a single 28Mhz channel.

Bharti India has deployed more than 100 hops of the enhanced MIMO microwave links.

Huawei said that by adding carrier aggregation technology to the enhanced MIMO link can increase capacity to 2Gbps MIMO link with additional 28Mhz spectrum.

Bharti relies heavily on microwave transmission for its network in India.

Keysight and OPPO open 5G lab in Shenzhen

Keysight Technologies and OPPO, one of the world's top five mobile device manufacturers, have established a joint 5G test laboratory in Shenzhen, China.

The new lab uses Keysight’s 5G platform to help verify the performance of new 5G new radio (NR) designs, a key activity that will help the Chinese-based smartphone manufacturer expand its global market presence. Keysight’s solutions, which are widely adopted by leading chipset and device makers, enable OPPO to comprehensively test their 5G multi-mode devices in different form factors.

“By setting up a joint 5G test lab with Keysight, we’re strengthening our ability to successfully launch 5G devices for deployment in a wide range of 5G use cases,” said Donny Peng, assistant vice president of Software Product Engineering in OPPO. “The extended collaboration with Keysight reflects the confidence we have in the company’s 5G test solutions and the expertise they offer in helping us develop reliable 5G technology.”