Orange Goes Global with its Business Together as a Service

Orange Business Services announced a global expansion of its Business Together as a Service, which provides unified communications to large enterprises.  This Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) is hosted in three regional data centers (Atlanta, Frankfurt and Singapore) that Orange Business Services has dedicated to cloud computing infrastructure.

The service provides end users with a unified telephony, email messaging, IM/presence, audio and Web conferencing, contact center service, video and mobility. Orange is provided a pay-as-you-go cloud model.

The service is powered by equipment from Cisco.

3M is using Business Together as a Service to improve collaboration and productivity among its 20,000 employees in 25 countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Orange Business Together as a Service is now available worldwide, including versions in 29 languages.

“Globalization, widely-dispersed teams, increased consumerization of business IT, and greater mobility are all converging, making the ‘new workspace’ essential for multinational companies,” said Vivek Badrinath, CEO, Orange Business Services. “Employees need productivity tools that make it faster and easier to get things done. Business Together as a Service enables them to have boundaryless access to those tools, which helps achieve the desired work-life balance and mobility that is expected from today’s workforce, particularly by Gen-Y talent.”

http://www.orange-business.com/en/ucaas-april23/unified-communications-global-event

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AT&T: Wireless Data Revenue up 21% in Q1

Citing a 21% surge in wireless data revenues, AT&T reported consolidated Q1 2013 revenues of $31.4 billion, down 1.5 percent versus the year-earlier quarter and up 0.9 percent when excluding revenues from the divested Advertising Solutions business unit. Net income totaled $3.7 billion, or $0.67 per diluted share, up from $3.6 billion, or $0.60 per diluted share, in the year-earlier quarter.

“Our wireless network performance continues to be terrific,” said Randall Stephenson, AT&T chairman and CEO. “And that helped drive our best ever first quarter for smartphone sales, improved wireless churn and strong growth in mobile data revenues. We also posted record sales of our U-verse high-speed IP service. Across all of these areas, we’ve built a solid foundation for future growth in mobile Internet and IP broadband, which will only expand as we progress with Project VIP.”

Some highlights for Q1:

• Project VIP is ahead of schedule. Nearly 90 percent of the LTE buildout covering AT&T's 300 million POPs will be completed by year end.
• CAPEX for 2013 is now expected in the $21 billion range. CAPEX for 2014 and 2015 are expected to be in the $20 billion range for each year, with no reduction in the Project Velocity IP (VIP) broadband expansion. Previously, the company expected capital spending of $22 billion annually in 2014 and 2015. AT&T is achieving savings through greater integration efficiencies in Project VIP, accelerating LTE build in 2013 and other ongoing initiatives.

Wireless

• Total wireless revenues, which include equipment sales, were up 3.4 percent year over year to $16.7 billion.
• Wireless service revenues increased 3.4 percent in the first quarter, to $15.1 billion. Wireless data revenues increased 21.0 percent from the year-earlier quarter to $5.1 billion. First-quarter wireless operating expenses totaled $12.0 billion, up 3.2 percent versus the year-earlier quarter, and wireless operating income was $4.7 billion, up 4.1 percent year over year.
• AT&T added 291,000 wireless subscribers in the first quarter. Subscriber additions for the quarter included postpaid net adds of 296,000. Postpaid net adds reflect 365,000 postpaid tablets added in the quarter. Connected device net adds were 431,000.
• Prepaid had a net loss of 184,000 subscribers primarily due to declines in session-based tablets and declines in GoPhone. Reseller had a net loss of 252,000.
• AT&T added 1.2 million postpaid smartphone subscribers in Q1.
• 72 percent, or 48.3 million, of AT&T's postpaid phone subscribers have smartphones, up from 61 percent, or 41.2 million, a year earlier.
• Smartphones represented 81 percent of postpaid device sales and 88 percent of postpaid phone sales in the quarter.
• AT&T’s ARPU for smartphones is about twice that of non-smartphone subscribers, and about 90 percent of postpaid subscribers are on FamilyTalk, Mobile Share or business plans.
• About 60 percent of AT&T’s postpaid smartphone customers now use a 4G-capable device, with more than half of those using LTE devices.

Wireline

• Total first-quarter wireline revenues were $14.7 billion, down 1.8 percent versus the year-earlier quarter and down 1.8 percent sequentially.
• Total U-verse revenues grew 31.5 percent year over year and were up 5.0 percent versus the fourth quarter of 2012.
• Total U-verse subscribers (TV and high speed Internet) reached 8.7 million in the first quarter.
• U-verse TV added 232,000 subscribers, its best net gain in nine quarters, to reach 4.8 million in service. U-verse High Speed Internet delivered a best-ever net gain of 731,000 subscribers to reach a total of 8.4 million. Overall, the company added 124,000 wireline broadband subscribers, the best quarterly increase in eight quarters.
• More than 56 percent of U-verse broadband subscribers have a plan delivering speeds up to 10 Mbps or higher — up from 50 percent in the year-ago quarter.
• Total business revenues were $8.9 billion, down 3.4 percent versus the year-earlier quarter, and business service revenues declined 3.5 percent year over year. Both reflected a slow economy and weak government and business spending.
• AT&T's most advanced business solutions — including VPN, Ethernet, hosting and other advanced IP services — grew 10.8 percent versus the year-earlier quarter. These services represent a $7.9 billion annualized revenue stream.

http://www.att.com/gen/landing-pages?pid=5718

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Apple Sells 37.4 million iPhones in Q1

Apple reported sales of 37.4 million iPhones in Q1, compared to 35.1 million in the year-ago quarter. iPad sales reached 19.5 million, compared to 11.8 million in the year-ago quarter. Meanwhile, sales of Macs were just under 4 million Macs, compared to 4 million in the year-ago quarter.

“We are pleased to report record March quarter revenue thanks to continued strong performance of iPhone and iPad,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.

http://www.apple.com

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Vitesse Introduces Serval 2 Switch Engines for MEF CE 2.0 Services

Vitesse Semiconductor expanded its Serval Carrier Ethernet Switch Engine portfolio with new silicon optimized for IP Edge and Ethernet/MPLS access applications, including mobile backhaul, cloud access and business service delivery. The company outlined a new Vitesse Service Aware Architecture (ViSAA) that provides a hardware-based service layer for wirespeed processing needed for QoS, management, and performance monitoring of Carrier Ethernet services.

The new Serval-2 (VSC7438), which leverages the new Vitesse Service Aware Architecture (ViSAA), is designed to simplify carrier delivery of MEF CE 2.0 services in packet-based mobile and cloud access Ethernet networks.  Whereas current solutions typically involve external FPGAs or NPUs to enable Carrier Ethernet features, the Serval-2 silicon executes performance-critical functions including OAM and protection switching, and maintains wirespeed performance for even the most demanding service delivery functions.  It also integrates VeriTime nanosecond-accurate IEEE1588v2 timing technology that meets LTE and LTE-Advanced network requirements, including those of variable-rate and asymmetric millimeter wave and microwave links.

Additional features of the Serval-2 family include:

• MEF CE 2.0 ready with per connection feature control and resource allocation. Each Ethernet Virtual Connection (EVC) can utilize dedicated policers and shapers, statistics, queues, and tagging/marking schemes. Further, each connection may use built-in service activation testing when first provisioned; dedicated OAM functions ensure fault-free and SLA-compliant operation;
• Scalable support of multiple 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GE) and 10 GE ports without the need for additional external components.
• Support of multi-operator OAM&P and Service Level Agreements for Ethernet management, enabling RAN sharing and third-party backhaul ownership;
• Hierarchical QoS (H-QoS) support for high bandwidth, media rich traffic delivery over 4G networks.

Serval-2 is expected to begin sampling in Q3 2013.

"Serval-2 revolutionizes the way in which Carriers can deliver services over Ethernet for high bandwidth mobile backhaul, video distribution, cloud access and more," said Uday Mudoi, product marketing director at Vitesse. "Vitesse Service Aware Architecture enables efficient delivery of these services. Serval-2 represents Vitesse's continued focus on delivering solutions for a new generation of network access equipment for mobile/IP Edge and cloud."

http://investor.vitesse.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=758378
http://investor.vitesse.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=758312

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Akamai's State of the Internet: More Users, Faster Speeds, More Threats

The global average connection speed rose 5 percent to 2.9 Mbps, according to Akamai's newly released Fourth Quarter, 2012 State of the Internet Report.

Akamai counted nearly 700 million unique IPv4 addresses from 240 countries/regions connecting to its Intelligent Platform in 4Q 2012, representing a 13% growth over 2011.  The company estimates that over 1 billion unique Web users connected to its platform during the quarter.

Some highlights of the report:

• Year-over-year, the global unique IP address count increased by nearly 10 percent, or more than 71 million, compared to the fourth quarter of 2011.
  
• Akamai observed attack traffic from 177 unique countries/regions during the fourth quarter of 2012, down from 180 in the third quarter. China again maintained its position as the single largest volume source of observed traffic at 41 percent of the total, up from 33 percent in the prior quarter. The United States remained in the number two spot despite a drop in observed attack traffic from 13 percent to 10 percent in the fourth quarter. Turkey took over Russia's number three spot with 4.7 percent.
  
• Akamai customers reported 768 DDoS attacks in 2012, up more than 200 percent from 2011.
  
• Year-over-year, average connection speeds grew by 25 percent, with nine of the top 10 countries also demonstrating growth. In fact, only the Netherlands (3.3 percent), Hong Kong (5.4 percent) and Japan (19 percent) reported growth below 20 percent between 2011 and 2012.
  
• Global average peak connection speeds enjoyed a quarter-over-quarter increase of 4.6 percent to 16.6 Mbps. Hong Kong again claimed the highest peak connection speed at 57.5 Mbps, a rise of 6.2 percent from last quarter.
  
• Year-over-year, global average peak connection speeds once again demonstrated significant improvement, rising 35 percent. 

http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2013/press_042313.html

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NTT Opens Largest Tokyo Data Center

NTT Communications (NTT Com) opened its Tokyo No.6 Data Center, a disaster-resistant facility with a total floor area of 22,000 square meters, enough to accommodate approximate 3,000 racks.

The new facility, which ranks as Tokyo’s largest data center, will deliver cloud services, ICT outsourcing, disaster recovery and other ICT-related services

Tokyo No.6 Data Center is the first of several major NTT Com data centers that will combine globally standardized service agreements, service level agreements (SLA) and customer portals with special cost-reducing features, such as advanced air conditioning systems and virtual-network-based global seamless services, including hybrid clouds.

NTT Com is now marketing its data centers worldwide under a new "Nexcenter" brand.  NTT Com operates data centers in more than 140 locations, amounting to a total server room floor area of over 170,000 square meters.

Highlights of the new building:

Located just seven minutes on foot from the JR loop train line, making it highly accessible even during emergencies.

A large rotary UPS. Racks handle equipment up to 1.5 times larger than the conventional racks, helping to lower user costs by as much as the half compared to previous rates.

Aseismic isolation structure can reduce the impact of earthquakes by at most 80%. Resistance is rated to withstand forces as powerful as those generated by the unprecedented Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. An extra-strong ground helps to prevent liquefaction, and the building foundation is 1.4m higher than ground level to avoid flooding.

Redundant major power supply and air conditioning systems strengthen reliability, and the facility has a direct connection to a large aseismic cable tunnel that protects lead-in cables from damage by earthquakes or drilling.

Power usage effectiveness (PUE) is designed to rated at 1.2, the highest level among data centers in Japan.

The facility features energy-efficient water-cooled air conditioning, low-power-loss rotary UPS, reduced-power air conditioning system through use of cooler outdoor air and efficient air-flow management to prevent the circulation of server-generated heat.

http://www.ntt.co.jp

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Juniper Posts Q1 Revenue of $1.059 Billion, up 3% YoY

Juniper Networks reported preliminary revenue for Q1 2013 of $1,059 million, down 7% from Q4'12 and up 3% from Q1'12.  The company posted GAAP net income of $91 million, or $0.18 per diluted share for the first quarter of 2013. GAAP diluted net income per share includes a $0.05 tax benefit related to a tax settlement, a $0.02 pre-tax impact from a litigation charge as well as a $0.01 pre-tax impact from restructuring.

"This was a quarter of modest year-on-year growth driven by renewed demand from service providers and offset slightly by softness in enterprise sectors, including federal and financial services," said Kevin Johnson, chief executive officer of Juniper Networks. "We are seeing increased momentum with our new product offerings as we continue our strategy of innovating in the domain of high-performance networking. We believe Juniper has a strong position in the service provider market and has opportunity in the enterprise business as we continue to grow switching as well as revitalize our security business. We continue to focus on delivering great products, improving operational execution, and managing our costs carefully." 

http://www.juniper.net

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GENBAND Announces Software-based SBC for Branch Offices

GENBAND introduced a new session border controller optimized for branch offices and small to mid-sized businesses.

The new QUANTiX QFlex is an on-premise, software-based SBC that is deployable on common off the shelf (COTS) hardware or can be virtualized together with other applications on a platform.  It enable carrier-grade security, interoperability and session control with support for more than 60 built-in IP PBX vendor profiles.

GENBAND said it uses a unique and modular approach to solve multi-vendor interoperability issues, helping to reduce the deployment time of SIP Trunking services from months to weeks.  GENBAND’s QUANTiX QFlex resolves IP-PBX-related interoperability challenges by providing a demarcation point that protects both the service provider and enterprise sides of the connection by utilizing flexible adaptors to secure and normalize traffic. For enterprises, QFlex allows for seamless interworking of multi-vendor PBXs across different branch offices, routes traffic in IP-enabled call centers, and allows remote users and satellite offices to securely connect to corporate IP communication systems.

"Issues relating to IP communications security, interoperability, system complexity and service assurance are commonplace for operators and enterprises alike. They demand intelligent SBCs and border gateways that ensure a seamless communications experience," said BG Kumar, President of GENBAND’s Multimedia Business Unit. "Our new QFlex Enterprise SBC creates a SMART EDGE for the enterprise, providing unique interoperability technology to manage multi-vendor PBX environments – while ensuring security and session management."

http://www.GENBAND.com/products/quantix/sbc/esbc

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Xtera Selected for Festoon Subsea Cable Upgrade in Caribbean

Eastern Caribbean Fiber System (ECFS) Consortium has selected Xtera Communications' Nu-Wave Optima equipment for the upgrade of its festoon subsea cable system.  ECFS subsea cable system is made of 10 segments, connecting Tortola in the British Virgin Islands to Trinidad at the south of the Caribbean arc.

The upgrade offers the possibility to mix 10G and 100G channel rates to support existing and emerging high-capacity services.  Reconfigurable Optical Add Drop Multiplexers (ROADMs) are used in cable landing stations to avoid or minimize the number of regeneration points for island-to-island connectivity.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

http://www.xtera.com/

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VMware Posts Q1 Revenue of $1.19 Billion, up 13%, Lower Outlook

VMware reported Q1 revenue of $1.19 billion, an increase of 13% from the first quarter of 2012. Net income for the first quarter was $174 million, or $0.40 per diluted share, down 9% compared to $191 million, or $0.44 per diluted share, for the first quarter of 2012.

Company executives said Q2 revenue should be in the range of $1.21 billion to $1.24 billion.

"We're very pleased with our performance this quarter, particularly in light of recent results from many of our industry peers," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. "VMware is the virtualization software infrastructure leader and the company most capable of providing an end-to-end infrastructure solution designed to bridge our customers' legacy client/server applications and desktops to next-generation applications for the mobile/cloud era. "

http://www.vmware.com

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China Mobile Tops 726 Million Mobile Lines as ARPU Falls

As of 31-March-2013, China Mobile was serving 726.31 million customers, up by about 16 million customers over the past three months.  However, ARPU fell to RMB 63 (US$10.19) compared to RMB 71 during the preceding quarter. The number of 3G customers reached 114 million. The carrier said it continues to observe and increasing trend of "one customer with multiple SIM cards."

 
The company reported Q1 2013 revenue of RMB134.7 billion (US$21.6 billion), up by 5.7% over the same period of last year.  EBITDA came in at RMB61.2 billion, up by 0.8% over the same period of last year.

China Mobile said Q1 was characterized by "difficulties and challenges arising from the increasing mobile penetration rate, unprecedentedly intense market competition and more apparent substitution of
traditional communication business by new technologies and new businesses.


Wireless data traffic in Q1 2013 increased by 1.6 times compared to the same period of last year.

http://www.chinamobileltd.com

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Xtera Introduces Next Gen Optical Repeater for Undersea Cables

Xtera Communications introduced a next-generation optical repeater for extending high-capacity reach on subsea cable systems.

Xtera is leveraging a modular optical design to allow the amplifiers to be tailored to different system requirements, with variants covering both short regional systems and very long transoceanic systems.  One variant offers an optical bandwidth extending well beyond the normal EDFA C-band.

Xtera said its new repeater is constructed from marine grade titanium, resulting in a very light and exceptionally strong unit that can be deployed to water depths of 8 km. It is also sufficiently small that it can pass directly through a plough during burial operations – making it easier to handle during laying and assembling.

“With this modular product Xtera can better optimize the design of subsea cable systems and address the need for higher capacity per fiber with wider optical bandwidth,” said Stuart Barnes, CTO Submarine Systems of Xtera. “We had the advantage of not having to evolve an existing design and have been able to find modern solutions to old problems, for example improving electrical to optical power conversion. The new repeater adds nicely to Xtera’s turnkey solutions for building new subsea cable systems or upgrading the wet plant of existing systems.”

http://www.xtera.com

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CommScope Simplifies Distributed Antenna System (DAS)

CommScope introduced a version of its ION platform aimed at reducing the complexity out of integrating a distributed antenna system (DAS) into a macro wireless network.

The new ION-U guides the design, planning, installation, setup, commissioning and optimization of a DAS. The platform offers built-in monitoring for measuring network quality, monitoring interference and passive intermodulation (PIM) and conducting detailed uplink/downlink spectrum analysis

“The ION-U has built-in intelligence that greatly simplifies installation, transforming a job that required considerable expertise into a relatively easy task,” said Matt Melester, senior vice president and general manager, Distributed Coverage and Capacity Solutions, CommScope.

http://www.commscope.com

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GlobeNet Boosts Bermuda Undersea Cable

GlobeNet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Oi (formerly Brasil Telecom), completed construction on its new high capacity subsea cable system (Segment 5), which connects Bermuda to New Jersey.  The new subsea cable system has a total design capacity of 30 Tbps.  It is designed to support 150 wavelengths per fiber-pair at 100 Gbps per wavelength.

As an integral part of GlobeNet’s dual-ring subsea cable system, Segment 5 has the largest cross-sectional capacity per fiber pair of any system built or contracted to date.

The Segment 5 system includes the use of TE SubCom Submarine Line Terminating Equipment (SLTE), which allows transmission of multiple high-quality, high-bandwidth optical signals over ultra-long distances.

http://www.globenet.net

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Ixia Upgrades its Anue Net Tool Optimizer for 100GbE

Ixia introduced an upgraded version of its Anue Net Tool Optimizer for providing network visibility into physical and virtual networks. The upgrade enables large enterprises and mobile carriers to monitor the increasing number of 100GbE network ports with existing 1, 10 and 40GbE monitoring tools.  

Up to four of the new 100GbE interface modules can be supported on one high-density Anue NTO device, or may be combined with 1, 10 or 40GbE ports in a single 2RU chassis.

In addition, the release of the Network Visibility Operating System (NVOS) v3.8 and the 100GbE Interface Module supports new capabilities that improve forensic analysis capabilities, advance application performance monitoring and simplify security monitoring of 100GbE networks.  Ixia said this multi-speed monitoring capability helps companies preserve their previous investments in network visibility tools.

http://www.ixiacom.com

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OFS Debuts Single-Mode Fiber for 100G with 12,000km Reach

OFS introduced a new single-mode fiber designed for 100 Gbps coherent transport in submarine systems for distances up to 12,000 km.

The new TeraWave ULA Ocean Fiber boasts the industry’s largest effective area, excellent cabling performance, and significantly reduced attenuation for reliable coherent transmission at 100 Gbps over trans-oceanic distances. OFS said its fiber’s very large effective area (153 µm2) reduces nonlinearities, enabling the launch of higher signal power into the span, and improves signal loss (0.176 dB/km at 1550 nm). When used in shorter length applications, the fiber can provide even better nonlinearity performance for increased spectral efficiency.

OFS said the new fiber is optimized for ultra long haul networks that use advanced modulation formats and coherent detection, such as transoceanic networks where extreme distances between shore end terminals limit the per-channel launch power in DWDM transmission.

http://www.ofsoptics.com/press_room/view_press_release.php?txtID=361

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NASA Launches Lowest Cost PhoneSats

NASA has successfully launched a trio of "PhoneSats" to determine whether a consumer-grade smartphone can be used as the main flight avionics of a capable, yet very inexpensive, satellite.

NASA's PhoneSats are currently in orbit and successfully transmitting information about their health to multiple ground stations on Earth.  The satellites, which are expected to remain in orbit for as long as two weeks, are being monitored by a team at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.


NASA said the three PhoneSat satellites are emitting packets over the amateur radio band at 437.425 MHz using AFSK (1200 bps) modulation, AX.25 packet coding and with vertical linear polarization.

"Smartphones offer a wealth of potential capabilities for flying small, low-cost, powerful satellites for atmospheric or Earth science, communications, or other space-born applications. They also may open space to a whole new generation of commercial, academic and citizen-space users," said Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for space technology in Washington.

http://www.phonesat.org/

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Reporter Notes from ONS 2013: NTT Com, Internet 2, Google

By James E. Carroll, Editor
NTT Communications was among the first Service Providers to see the potential of OpenFlow and SDN for transforming its operations, said Yukio Ito, Senior VP Service Infrastructure, NTT Communications.  Some notes from his keynote at the Open Networking Summit 2013 in Santa Clara, California:

• NTT Com's reasons for pursuing SDN include shorter time to market, service differentiation, and reduced CAPEX/OPEX.
• NTT Communications has a Global Cloud Vision encompassing many of its enterprise services and all self-managed under an integrated cloud portal.
• The company launched its SDN-enabled Enterprise Service in 2012, including the self-provisioning portal website.
• OpenFlow is being used for inter-data center back-ups between NTT Communications' Global Data Centers.  The service allows bandwidth can be boosted on-demand using the OpenFlow controller.
• The results of using OpenFlow/SDN for the Enterprise Cloud service have been good, including better service automation, a topology-free design, an the overcoming the 4K VLAN limitation that the network would otherwise face.  There have been some issues.  The OpenFlow v1.0 specification did not meet requirements for redundancy, current silicon has meant a "flow table shortage", and the network has generally been less programmable than NTT Communications expects.  The company is working to overcome these issues.
• NTT Com is working on its SDN architecture that will provide a common framework for northbound and southbound interfaces.  The company will use vendors and/or open source if they meet its criteria.
• NTT Com is very interested in extending SDN to the optical transport layer. The ONF's Optical Transport WG is expected to accelerate this discussion.
• One additional challenge is that the interconnection between a data center network and an MPLS-VPN is not currently automated.  The company is developing a "Big Boss" SDN controller to address this challenge.

INTERNET2

The experimentation with Software Defined Networking underway in Internet2 in many ways parallels the birth of the commercial Internet, said Dave Lambert, President and CEO of Internet2.  Many U.S. companies, in fact, have their roots in academia, such as Cisco (Stanford), Sun (Berkeley and Stanford), Google (Stanford), Arbor ( U.of Michigan), Akamai (MIT), etc.

Some notes from his presentation:

• It's time for a change. Most of the network paradigm was created 35 to 40 years ago, when Ethernet and IP emerged despite strong technical objections.
• Will we fight re-centralization of an open control plane and hybridization to a potentially post-IP, SDN-based packet environment? This is like the packet-circuit debate with IBM's SNA group back in the day.
• Getting bandwidth limitations out of the way for the academic community is a key objective.
• Bandwidth and openness are imagination enablers.  An open networking stack is risky but is among the most exciting things.
• Data intensive science in genomics and physics really do demand flexibility to handle massive data flows.
• 29 major universities are committed to the Innovation Platform Program.  This entails (1) 100 GigE connectivity to their campus and across their campus (2) support and access Intenet2's Layer 2 OpenFlow-based service (3) Invest in developing applications that run across this network.
• The U.S. academic is admittedly on the cutting edge. 

SDN @ GOOGLE

Google's software defined WAN, which is the basis its internal network between data centers, is real, it works, and has met the company's expectations in terms of scalability and reliability, said Amin Vahdat, Distinguished Engineer at Google.  Some notes from his presentation:

• It's been a year since Google announced that its internal backbone had been migrated to SDN.
• Growth in bandwidth continues unabated.   Google's internal backbone actually carries more traffic than its public-facing network.
• Planning, building and provisioning bandwidth at Google scale had been a major headache, hence the interest in SDN. Over-provisioning costs were also a major driver to adopt SDN.  Slow convergence time in the event on an outage was another factor.
• Google wanted to go with  logically centralized network control instead of the decentralized paradigm of the Internet.  This centralized approach leads to a network that is more deterministic, more efficient and more fault tolerant, according to Vahdat.
• B4 is the name of Google's software defined WAN.  Vahdat describes it as a warehouse-scale-computer (WSC) network.  It links data centers around the world  (a map shows 12 nodes across Asia, North America and Europe) . So far this network is successful, so the next step may be to run some Internet user-facing traffic across this same backbone.
  
• The B4 network runs OpenFlow. Google built its own network hardware using merchant silicon. The are 100s of ports of non-blocking 10GE.
• Google uses Quagga for BGP and IS-IS.  A hybrid SDN architecture is used to bridge sites that are fully under SDN control and legacy sites. This means that SDN can be deployed incrementally.  You don't have it deploy it everyone on Day 1.
• Traffic engineering is the first application on the SDN WAN. This was implemented about a year ago.  It takes into account current network demand and application priority.
• Google has been adding capabilities pretty quickly through frequent software releases. 

http://www.opennetsummit.org

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Symantec Tracks Growing Phishing and Watering Hole Attacks

Targeted cyber attacks, such as spear phishing, rose 42% in 2012 compared to a year earlier, according to Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report, Volume 18 (ISTR), released last week.

Over the past year, Symantec noted an increase in cyberespionage attacks targeted at the manufacturing sector as well as small businesses, which now constitute 31 percent of these attacks. This could be due to more sophisticated defenses in place at larger enterprises, or simply that the criminals have extended their reach to more organization.

Two significant attack vectors, according to the report, remain unpatched but legitimate websites (nearly 53% of legitimate websites were found to have unpatched vulnerabilities that hackers could potentially exploit to place malware) and mobile malware.

"This year’s ISTR shows that cybercriminals aren’t slowing down, and they continue to devise new ways to steal information from organizations of all sizes," said Stephen Trilling, chief technology officer, Symantec. "The sophistication of attacks coupled with today’s IT complexities, such as virtualization, mobility and cloud, require organizations to remain proactive and use ‘defense in depth’ security measures to stay ahead of attacks."

Some highlights of the report:

• Watering hole attacks, where a legitimate website is poisoned and the hackers then wait for a victim to arrive, emerged as a rising threat in 2012. A large number of victims can be compromised in a short period of time.
  
• Symantec estimates that 61% of websites serving malware are in fact legitimate website and unaware they have been compromised.
  
• Global spam rates declined slightly in 2012.  Spam represented about 69% of all email sent in October 2012 compared to 79% in January 2011.
  
• Symantec estimates that 1 in 414 emails is a phishing attack.
  
• Symantec estimates that 1 in 283 emails is a malware attack.
  
• Symantec found that Apple’s iOS had the most documented vulnerabilities in 2012, but that there was only one threat created for the platform. On the other hand, the Android OS only had 13 vulnerabilities reported, but led all mobile operating systems in the amount of malware written for the platform. 

http://www.symantec.com/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20130415_01

http://www.slideshare.net/symantec/istr-volume-18

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Google Expands North Carolina Data Center

Google announced an expansion of its data center in Lenoir, North Carolina and an agreement with Duke Energy to pursue renewal electricity sources.

Google also confirmed that is has invested over $1 billion to date in renewable energy projects.  The company has agreements in place for over 260 megawatts (MW) of wind power near its data centers.  Google also has 1.7 MW of solar panels in place at its headquarters in Mountain View, California.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

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