Sunday, January 22, 2012

Silver Spring Unveils its Gen4 Smart Grid Networking Platform

Silver Spring Networks unveiled its fourth-generation, IPv6-based networking technology for building Smart Grid utility networks.


Silver Spring, whose utility customers already have connection over 10 million homes and businesses using its systems, said its Gen4 technology is focused on improving the flexibility needed to meet utilities’ demanding requirements across disparate service territories, deployment approaches and application needs. The company is aiming to provide a flexible and upgradable network over the 20-year planning horizon expected by municipal utilities.

The Gen4 technology promises “Any Transport, Any Territory, Any Endpoint, Any Application�?. It leverages an integrated cellular option, the industry’s first Micromesh™ technology and triple the performance of previous Smart Grid connectivity. Some highlights:

The Modular Architecture -- a single Communications Module to support a variety of international cellular transports, such as GPRS, CDMA, EVDO, HSPA and LTE, in conjunction with a standards-based, high-speed RF mesh transport. Utilities may choose to deploy modules with cellular, mesh, or both transports.


The Micromesh Architecture -- a Silver Spring cellular Communications Module normally operates as an ordinary point to point cellular connection, supporting meter reading, remote connect/disconnect, and many other applications directly across public carrier networks to the endpoint. However, with the Micromesh technology enabled, the Communications Module additionally connects to nearby grid devices via RF mesh and acts as their take-out point for the WAN. With this innovative combination, utilities can adapt the number of cellular connections they need based on topology, coverage, density, bandwidth requirements, pace of deployment, and many other complex project drivers.


Endpoints -- Gen4 will support the full range of emerging endpoints for the smart grid, including next-gen line sensors, renewables, and load-control switches.

Increased speeds -- Gen4 Communications Modules continue to support communications options for in-home networking as well.
Gen4’s increased data rates, with support up to 300 kbps, enable the Silver Spring platform to support increasingly demanding smart grid applications.
http://www.silverspringnet.com/gen4

TeraXion Appoints Chaoui as Chief Strategy Officer

Dr. Ghazi Chaoui has joined TeraXion as Chief Strategy Advisor, to lead its future partnership and acquisition activities.


Dr. Chaoui has previously served at companies such as Oclaro, Infinera, Broadwing, Corvis, FiNet, Lucent and AT&T/Bell Laboratories.


TeraXion supplies chromatic dispersion management solutions, including static and tunable dispersion compensators for terrestrial and submarine networks.
http://www.teraxion.com

Panasonic Backs 60 GHz for Gigabit Speed Home Networks

Panasonic published a "Smart ICT" proposal to commercial a 60 Ghz technology based on WiGig and other network standards for ultra-high-speed wireless communications inside the home.


The millimeter wave solution leverages innovations such as "Direct Conversion" radio architecture, "Digital Assist" circuit technique, "Gigabit Packet Processing", and "Low power consumption I/O". Panasonic plans to integrate all of these wireless functions onto a single chip through millimeter wave CMOS technology. The goal is to embed the capabilities into the full range of consumer electronics and home appliances.


Panasonic notes that the 60 GHz band is already designated as license-free in many countries, including Japan, U.S., Canada, South Korea, as well as E.U. countries.http://news.panasonic.net/stories/2012/0119_8703.html

Potential Satellite Interference from Solar Storm

Ions from one of the strongest coronal mass ejections (CME), or solar storms, since 2005 are expected to hit the Earth's atmosphere beginning at about 9am EST (1400 GMT) on Tuesday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC).. The SWPC forecast is for Moderate (G2) level geomagnetic storming with G3 levels possible (the scale tops out at 5). This is expected to make the aurora borealis visible at lower latitudes, and possibly cause interference for satellite communications.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

MRV Announces Leadership Changes

MRV Communications announced a set of management changes, including the appointment of Kenneth Traub as Chairman of the Board and Robert as Vice Chairman. The company has also reached separation & transition agreements with Chris King, MRV’s interim CEO and CFO, and Blima Tuller, MRV’s VP, Finance.
http://www.mrv.com

Actelis Signs KGP Logistics for Distribution

KGP Logistics has signed a new exclusive distribution agreement with Actelis Networks for its new Broadband Accelerator (BBA) product line.


The Actelis BBA helps deliver broadband to residences that are too far from a central office or remote DSLAM. The environmentally unit is line powered by the existing POTS infrastructure and can be used on any ADSL/ADSL2/ADSL2+ line. The unit can boost broadband rates by as much as 100% on typical loops and more than 400% on long loops. This is sufficient for delivering broadband at 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.


Actelis also noted that its Broadband Accelerator (BBA) received the 2011 INTERNET TELEPHONY Product of the Year Award.


"The Actelis BBA product line represents a major paradigm shift in the way telecom carriers address the digital divide," said Vivek Ragavan, president and CEO of Actelis Networks. "No longer is the digital divide a challenge, but an economic opportunity. With the Actelis BBA, carriers now have a pragmatic solution that will drive increased revenues because they can finally deliver on the promise of ubiquitous broadband across their entire customer serving area."http://www.actelis.comwww.kgplogistics.com

Cisco Global Threat Report 4Q11

Enterprise users experienced an average of 339 Web malware encounters per month in 4Q11, a 205% increase compared to a year earlier, according to the newly released Cisco 4Q11 Global Threat Report". The number of Denial of Service attacks increased slightly during the quarter, while global spam continued its gradual decline.


The Cisco report measures web malware risk by sector and finds that the pharmaceutical and chemical industries experience the highest risk, while the banking and financial services sector is experiencing relatively fewer encounters.


One interesting finding: an average of 20,141 unique Web malware hosts were encountered per month in 2011,
compared to a monthly average of 14,217 in 2010.http://blogs.cisco.com/security/cisco-4q11-global-threat-report

Semtech to Acquire Gennum

Semtech, which supplies analog and mixed-signal semiconductors, agreed to acquire Gennum Corp., a supplier of high speed analog and mixed signal solutions the optical market, for approximately CDN$500 million (approximately US$494 million).


Gennum offers optical, analog and mixed-signal solutions supporting high-definition (HD) video, Fibre Channel, InfiniBand, Ethernet, SONET and PCI Express. The company had 2010 revenue of US$128 million. It was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Gennum has approximately 450 employees, including more than 240 engineers, and has offices in Canada, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States.


Semtech said the acquisition will extend its portfolio of infrastructure products to the metro, access and enterprise computing markets.


"We believe Gennum's unique signal integrity solutions and highly differentiated 1 Gbps to 25 Gbps optical products combined with Semtech's leading 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps SerDes portfolio will deliver one of the industry's most complete and robust portfolios to the communications infrastructure, data communications and enterprise computing segments. Additionally, Gennum's strong position in video broadcast and the emerging HD video surveillance market broadens and further diversifies Semtech's portfolio of high-performance analog semiconductors targeted at fast growing markets," stated Mohan Maheswaran, President and Chief Executive Officer of Semtech.
http://www.gennum.com/http://www.semtech.com/

Intel to Acquire QLogic's Infiniband Fabric

Intel agreed to acquire QLogic's InfiniBand business including related product lines and technologies. Financial terms were not disclosed.


This acquisition is designed to enhance Intel’s networking portfolio and provide scalable high- performance computing (HPC) fabric technology as well as support the company’s vision of innovating on fabric architectures to achieve ExaFLOP/s performance by 2018. An ExaFLOP/s is a quintillion computer operations per second, a hundred times more than today's fastest supercomputers.


QLogic's InfiniBand product set includes its 12000 InfiniBand Switch Series for High Performance Computing (HPC) environments. The 12000 series switches are based on the QLogic TrueScale ASIC platform, which enables 40Gb (QDR) performance and scalability from 18 to 864 ports. QLogic also offers its 9000 Series of 20Gbps DDR Directors and Edge Switches for cluster computing interconnects. This line includes 20Gb (SDR) InfiniBand Switch offerings from 24 to 288 ports, with optional support for Ethernet and Fibre Channel.


“At the International Supercomputing Conference 2011, Intel unveiled a bold vision to redefine HPC performance and break the Exascale barrier by 2018,�? said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center and Connected System Group. “The technology and expertise from QLogic provide important assets to provide the scalable system fabric needed to execute on this vision. Adding QLogic’s InfiniBand product line to our networking portfolio will bring increased options and exceptional value to our datacenter customers.�?http://www.intel.com
http://www.qlogic.com

Juniper Enhances its Media Flow CDN with BitGravity

Juniper Networks acquire rights to the service management layer of BitGravity's CDN technology. Financial terms were not disclosed.

BitGravity, which is a subsidiary of Tata Communications, operates a Tier 1 CDN with strategic peering relationships and dedicated routing between its data centers and across its global MPLS backbone.

Juniper said BitGravity's technology complements its own Media Flow Solution, enabling service providers, online media companies and content delivery networks (CDNs) to deliver online content more cost-effectively while simultaneously improving the end-user experience and driving new revenue.

BitGravity has already been integrating Juniper's Media Flow Solution into its service management technology.

http://www.bitgravity.com
  • In January 2011, Tata Communications acquired BitGravity, a start-up based in Burlingame, California that operates a content delivery network (CDN). BitGravity was founded in 2006 with the goal of delivering on-demand and live HD streaming. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Oclaro Samples 20G VCSEL

Oclaro is sampling a 20G VCSEL (Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser) designed for the growing 16G Fiberchannel transceiver market.


Oclaro noted that it has shipped well over 100 million VCSELs to date, including more than 500 thousand 10G VCSELs in the last year alone, making it the world's largest supplier of VCSELs.
http://www.oclaro.com

LSI to Leverage ARM's Cortex-A15 for Networking Apps

LSI has expanded its long-term strategic relationship with ARM and has committed to use ARM's next generation, energy-efficient multicore processors for networking applications. The agreement provides LSI with access to the broad family of ARM processors, including the ARM Cortex-A15 processor with virtualization support and future ARM processors. LSI also gains access to ARM on-chip interconnect technology, including CoreLink cache coherent interconnect system IP, for use in multicore applications.
http://www.arm.com
http://www.lsi.com

Synopsys Acquires ExpertIO for Protocol Verification

Synopsys has acquired ExpertIO,a provider of verification IP (VIP) for industry standard protocols. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Synopsys said it is focused on delivering a broad portfolio of leading standards-based VIP to help engineers address the growing verification challenges associated with creating today's 'smart' electronics. VIP provides functional models of on- and off-chip protocols that verification engineers use to test all of the interfaces on an SoC before manufacturing. It enables the engineer to verify how an interface conforms to published standards and also allows the engineer to verify the interactions among various interfaces on an SoC.
http://www.synopsys.com

Thursday, January 19, 2012

China Mobile Added 65,551,000 Users in 2011

The world's largest mobile operator ended 2011 with 649,568,000 users, up by 65.5 million users for the year. Over 5.2 million users were added during December 2011.
http://www.chinamobileltd.com

NTT Docomo Teams with Accenture for Smartphone Content Testing

Accenture and NTT DOCOMO will begin offering a remote, self-verification operational testing service to DOCOMO-affiliated content providers for content (e.g. applications) developed for smartphones. The service will then be expanded to the broader smartphone market in Japan.


Accenture will establish and operate a remote test center at the University of Aizu in Fukushima Prefecture. Through the center, NTT DOCOMO will provide information on the devices, including the latest models, and a working network environment for the operational testing of software on the devices.


Currently, content providers must purchase the devices themselves in order to test their content under development for debugging purposes. But with the rapid introduction of a wide variety of smartphones and tablets (with different screen sizes, operating system versions, etc.), the cost of development, including the cost of purchasing the actual devices, has become a heavy burden for the developers.
http://www.ntt.co,jp

ADVA Optical Networking Plans European Corporate Structure

ADVA Optical Networking is planning to convert its organizational structure into an SE (Societas Europaea, a public limited-liability company under European law) named ADVA Optical Networking SE. The company is currently structured under German law as ADVA AG Optical Networking.


Shareholders of ADVA AG Optical Networking will automatically become shareholders of ADVA Optical Networking SE. There will be no relevant changes to shareholders’ rights, and there are no changes to the manner or content of financial reporting as a result of the conversion to an SE legal entity.


The company cited several reasons for the change, including the ability to use the same legal form for the incorporation of subsidiaries when expanding business within the European Union. Further, as an SE legal entity, ADVA Optical Networking will be able to opt for a more efficient single tier Board structure, although the Company does not plan to do this immediately following its conversion. The Company’s registered offices and headquarters will remain in Germany for the foreseeable future.
http://www.advaoptical.com/

Huawei Marine Builds Trans-Tasman Undersea Link

Huawei Marine announced the finalization of a survey agreement for the trans-Tasman Optikor Network.


This new trans-Tasman link, which is set to be completed by the end of 2013, will be more than 3,000KM in length and will connect Sydney, Australia with South Island and North Island, New Zealand. Initially designed to provide a capacity of 120G with 1 fiber pair, the link will eventually provide 6.4 Tbps with 2 fibre pairs. This solution will address the large capacity requirements in the region and become the main broadband solution provider between Australia and New Zealand.
http://www.huawei.com

Huawei Cites 100G European Wins with KPN, SFR, TDC

Huawei provided an updated on its sales progress for 100G coherent solutions in Europe, citing deployments by several leading European operators, including KPN international, SFR, and TDC.


Huawei said a key differentiator for its 100G solution is its ability to tolerate extensive dispersion as well as polarization mode dispersion, enabling it to adapt to old fibers, while still achieving excellent performance in long-haul transmission.
http://www.huawei.com

KT to Begin Refarming 1.8 GHz for LTE, NSN Selected

Starting this year, KT plans to meet the fast growing demand for mobile broadband and smartphone data services by re-farming its 1.8GHz band. KT has selected Nokia Siemens Networks as one of its suppliers for its LTE network.


Nokia Siemens Networks is providing its 1.8GHz LTE radio equipment including its Flexi Multiradio Base Stations. The company is also providing services including network integration and commissioning. Nokia Siemens Networks’ NetAct operations support system will enable effective monitoring, management and optimization of KT’s LTE network. Financial terms were not disclosed.


According to KT: “We are happy to partner with Nokia Siemens Networks and are confident of the company’s mobile broadband capabilities and extended support services. Nokia Siemens Networks’ enhanced focus on mobile broadband will certainly help us deliver superior customer experience with the launch of LTE services.�?


“Re-use of spectrum has become all the more vital due to its limited availability and the increasing use of smartphones and rich applications,�? said Paul Tyler, head of Asia Pacific region at Nokia Siemens Networks. “Spectrum re-farming is emerging as a viable option for operators looking to better allocate existing spectrum cost efficiently and provide next-generation LTE services that offer a better customer experience.�?http://www.nsn.com

RIM Replaces its Co-CEOs

Research In Motion (RIM) named Thorsten Heins as President and Chief Executive Officer, replacing its previous co-CEOs. Mike Lazaridis, former Co-Chair and Co-CEO, has become Vice Chair of RIM’s Board and Chair of the Board’s new Innovation Committee. Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO, remains a member of the Board.

http://www.rim.com