Infinera Demos Transport SDN at Nissho Labs

Infinera has demonstrated its converged packet-optical technology and Transport Software Defined Network (SDN) on an Infinera DTN-X network at Nissho Labs NETFrontier Center in Tokyo.

Key aspects of the demonstration included Ethernet packet aggregation, VLAN switching, and transport of MPLS pseudo-wires with signaling over 500G super-channel based OTN ODUflex transport.

The demonstration of Transport SDN featured a prototype Open Transport Switch running on the Infinera DTN-X and working in conjunction with an external SDN controller and various network applications. The SDN controller provisioned bandwidth services on demand across a network comprised of DTN-X nodes using the OpenFlow protocol. The demonstration further leveraged service-ready super-channel capacity, flexible Bandwidth Virtualization, and a standards-based control plane to provide an optimal platform to deliver Transport SDN functionality with the DTN-X.

“Infinera’s goal is to converge Ethernet and MPLS technology into the transport layer on the DTN-X to increase the efficiency of core networks for our customers with an Intelligent Transport Network," said Dave Welch, Infinera Co-Founder, Executive Vice President and CTO. "This demonstration is an important step to prove that Ethernet, MPLS, Transport SDN and the Open Transport Switch technologies can be seamlessly integrated within this architecture.”

http://www.infinera.com

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Alcatel-Lucent to Supply ConteXtream’s Session Control to Telenor

Telenor Group awarded a three-year global frame agreement to Alcatel-Lucent to supply mobile Internet optimization for Telenor’s 2G, 3G and 4G networks in Europe and Asia.

The deployment will use ConteXtream’s Session Control to manage end-to-end sessions across the network, automatically directing video traffic to Opera's Skyfire based on rules or policies decided on by the operator.  Opera’sSkyfireRocket Controller and Optimizer optimizes video streams and web in real-time on a per device, user and session basis, thereby improving quality of experience, reducing bandwidth and increasing mobile network capacity.

Alcatel-Lucent is also providing its Velocix 7810 Transparent Caching to temporarily store popular content closer to subscribers, as well as its 9900 Wireless Network Guardian to monitor service quality and provide network analytics.

Alcatel-Lucent said the solution will help Telenor address the challenges caused by mobile users accessing over the top (OTT) video from sites like YouTube or Netflix.

 http://www.alcatel-lucent.com
http://www.contextream.com

• ConteXtream creates a virtualized service abstraction layer, enabling a wireless service provider to more quickly add new applications and network services. ConteXtream’s Service Provider-SDN solution identifies and steers traffic to the specific subset of network functions needed to support each subscriber flow, enabling greater network efficiency, and providing improved network management and subscriber visibility. Existing network functions, as well as the ones being newly introduced, benefit from this deployment. They include content filtering, spam filtering, customized billing, distributed caching, video optimization, TCP optimization, ad insertion, and network and subscriber analytics. 
  In May 2013, ConteXtream announced that a Tier 1 mobile operator in the U.S. had selected its solution.  The company is based in Mountain View, California with R&D in Israel.

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Crehan: Data Center Switching Sales to Soar

The market for 40GbE and 100GbE data center switching equipment will grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 100% over the next five years, with these two technologies comprising the majority of data switching revenues by 2017, according to a new report from Crehan Research.

The report  predicts that 40GbE adoption will initially exceed that of 100GbE, due to factors such as more attractive pricing, broader product offerings, higher port densities and fewer
competing port-interface types. However, 100GbE will have a significant impact in the outer forecast years.

The report also forecasts strong growth for Fibre Channel-over-Ethernet (FCoE) switches as well, an area that has also seen a number of new product introductions and announcements recently, focused on a converged LAN and SAN data-center networking infrastructure.

“Recently-launched data center switches, such as Arista’s 7500E, Brocade’s VDX 8770, Cisco’s Nexus 6004, HP Networking’s FlexFabric 12900 and 11900, Huawei’s CloudEngine 12800, Juniper’s EX9200, and Mellanox’s Virtual Modular Switch, in conjunction with upcoming introductions from new and existing vendors, should drive strong 40GbE and 100GbE revenue growth,” said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. “Many of these switches are not only 40GbE and 100GbE capable, but also incorporate features enabling more openness, programmability and automation to help customers build software defined data-center network fabrics,” Crehan added.

http://www.crehanresearch.com/

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Gigamon Enhances Visibility Fabric for Cisco Cisco Nexus

Gigamon has enhanced its Visibility Fabric architecture by adding support for Cisco’s Nexus 1000V virtual switch and seamless visibility for vMotion events.

Gigamon's architecture delivers visibility and simplified management and provisioning of monitoring policies across all network topologies including physical, virtual and software-defined networks (SDN). Specifically, the GigaVUE-VM exposes inter-VM traffic flowing in a physical host and across physical hosts with intelligent filtering and forwarding capabilities for monitoring and troubleshooting virtual environments.

Gigamon said its latest GigaVUE-VM 2.0 release now provides visibility into VMware virtual infrastructures that utilize the Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch. The 2.0 update also provides automatic re-configuration of the Visibility Fabric architecture by migrating monitoring policies to maintain continuous visibility when a vMotion event occurs.

“GigaVUE-VM 2.0 automates the ‘tuning’ of monitoring policies in response to real-time network events such as the migration of a virtual machine from one host to another,” said Huy Nguyen, Sr. Director of Product Management at Gigamon. “In addition, traffic between virtual machines on the same host is switched locally without ever hitting the physical network, thus rendering the existing analysis tools blind to that virtual traffic.  Now, GigaVUE-VM bridges the gap between the physical and virtual worlds and allows complete visibility to monitoring and management tools.”

The GigaVUE-VM 2.0 upgrade is available immediately and pricing starts at $14,995 for 10 GigaVUE-VM Visibility Fabric nodes.

http://www.gigamon.com/traffic-visibility-fabric

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AIMS Innovation Offers Monitoring for Microsoft BizTalk

AIMS Innovation, a start-up with offices in the United States and Oslo, Norway, introduced its intelligent monitoring solution for system integration projects based on Microsoft BizTalk.

AIMS, which is partnering with Microsoft, can dynamically determine monitoring thresholds and then, proactively send "early warnings" before problems arise that may lead to costly, disruptive downtime.  The software learns the enterprise systems’ normal behaviour and modifies alerts over time.  The company supports a multi-tenant capability for AIMS for BizTalk, giving partners the ability to monitor client BizTalk deployments through a web-based dashboard.

“Enterprises are failing to monitor the most critical component in the IT architecture - the integration platform,” said Ivar Sagemo, CEO of AIMS Innovation. “AIMS Innovations’ solution will completely change the way companies monitor this critical part of enterprise infrastructure and essentially eliminate all downtime related to the integration platform.  This keeps productivity high and saves companies substantial money.”

http://www.aimsinnovation.com/

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DragonWave Joins Cisco's Small Cell Wireless Backhaul Ecosystem

DragonWave's Avenue product line and complementary e-band solutions have been added to the Cisco Small Cell Wireless Backhaul Ecosystem, which pairs the Cisco ASR 901 Series Aggregation Services Routers with wireless backhaul vendors.

DragonWave’s product line provides line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) solutions utilizing 2-80 GHz licensed and unlicensed backhaul spectrum.  DragonWave offers solutions targeted at all-outdoor small cell backhaul, with extremely compact, simple-to-deploy solutions.  With solutions covering sub-6 GHz, 24-60 GHz, and 70/80 GHz, and offering bandwidths from 100Mbps to >1 Gbps full duplex capacity, DragonWave’s products are optimized for 3G/LTE small cell deployments.

http://www.dragonwaveinc.com/

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U.S. Cellular Appoints New CEO

U.S. Cellular named Kenneth R. Meyers as its new president and CEO, replacing Mary N. Dillon who resigned to take a position with ULTA Beauty.

Meyers joined U.S. Cellular in 1987 and held several senior management positions, including executive vice president and CFO. Meyers became executive vice president and CFO of TDS in 2007.

Dillon joined U.S. Cellular as president and CEO in June 2010, and was previously global chief marketing officer and executive vice president for McDonald's Corporation.

http://www.uscellular.com/about/press-room/2013/USCellular-and-TDS-announce-CEO-transition.html

• U.S. Cellular currently serves about 5.1 million mobile customers.

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ZTE's New LTE-Advanced Base Station Supports 5 X 20 MHz

ZTE unveiled its ultra-wideband remote radio unit (RRU) for LTE-Advanced.

ZTE said the platform is the first base station device globally that complies with the LTE-Advanced requirements for over 100MHz operating bandwidth.   The ZTE ZXSDR R8978 offers a TD-LTE eight-channel RF module that supports 100MHz bandwidth. It can operate in the entire Band 41 frequency of 190MHz. It supports a maximum of 5 X 20MHz signal bandwidth.

In China, the entire 190MHz spectrum of 2500-2690MHz has been allocated for TDD.

To meet operators' future requirements for ultra-wideband RRUs, ZTE developed the ZXSDR R8978 by using low consumption and broadband RF technologies.

It supports up to five carrier frequencies.

ZTE's design uses advanced amplifier technologies including Crest Factor Reduction (CFR), Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD), Doherty, amplifier voltage adjustment, and time slot–based intelligent electricity conservation. The RRU uses noiseless natural heat dissipation.  ZTE estimates this design and can achieve a 35% reduction in power consumption compared with RRUs that use traditional air-conditioner heat dissipation, lowering electricity costs.

http://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/newsroom/press-release/hw-266814-umts.htm

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MIT Develops Ferroelectric-graphene-based Waveguides

Researchers at MIT have developed a prototype device uses graphene sandwiched between two layers of a ferroelectric material to make simple, switchable plasmonic waveguides.

Light can be confined in these waveguides down to one part in a few hundreds of the free-space wavelength, representing an order-of-magnitude improvement comparable waveguide systems.

Practical applications could include optical interconnects and photonic integrated circuits.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/ferroelectric-graphene-based-system-could-lead-to-improved-information-processing-0621.html

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Georgia Tech Makes Gains in Quantum Networking

Georgia Institute of Technology reported a milestone a quantum network milestone: entangling light with an optical atomic coherence composed of interacting atoms in two different states.

Researchers developed a state-intensive optical trap using both ground-state and highly-excited (Rydberg) rubidium atoms.  This allowed the researchers to increase the rate at which they could generate photons by a factor of 100 compared to their previous work.

“We want to allow photons to propagate to distant locations so we can develop scalable protocols to entangle more and more nodes,” said Alex Kuzmich, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Physics. “If you can have coherence between the ground and Rydberg atoms, they can interact strongly while emitting light in a cooperative fashion. The combination of strong atomic interactions and collective light emissions results in entanglement between atoms and light. We think that this approach is quite promising for quantum networking.”

The research was reported June 19 in the early edition of the journal Nature. The research has been supported by the Atomic Physics Program and the Quantum Memories Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and by the National Science Foundation.

http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=218131

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Huawei Collaborates in METIS Research for 5G

Huawei announced its participation in the METIS project, an initiative co-funded by the European Commission as an Integrated Project under the Seventh Framework Programme for research and development (FP7).

METIS, which stands for Mobile and wireless communications Enablers for the Twenty-twenty Information Society, aims to explore the foundations for 5G wireless systems.

Huawei said it is playing the leading role in the Radio Link Technology stream. The company recently sponsored a METIS project meeting in Munich, which gathered together more than 140 researchers from industry, carriers and universities.

Huawei expects 5G wireless networks will emerge in the market between 2020 and 2030, potentially delivering access speeds of up to 10G.

"There are a lot of innovations that need to be created and a lot of technology challenges need to be overcome to create 5G solutions. At Huawei, our researchers are studying the new radio link technologies and new radio access network architecture. We are also working on prototyping and have conducted field trials on cloud-based radio access networks (so called Cloud-RAN). We are playing a leading role in 5G wireless technology development," stated Dr. Wen Tong, Huawei Fellow and the head of Huawei Communications Technologies Labs.

http://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/newsroom/press-release/hw-266862-5g.htm
https://www.metis2020.com/


Partners in METIS include: Ericsson (DE, SE), Aalborg University (DK), Aalto University (FI), AlcatelLucent (DE), BMW Group Research and Technology (DE), Chalmers University of
Technology (SE), Deutsche Telekom (DE), DOCOMO (DE, JP), Elektrobit (FI), France Telecom-Orange (FR), FraunhoferGesellschaft (DE), Huawei Technologies GmbH (DE), KTH-Royal Institute of Technology (SE), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (GR), Nokia Corporation (FI), Nokia Siemens Networks (DE, FI, PL), University of Oulu (FI), Poznan University of Technology (PL), RWTH Aachen (FI), Institut Mines-Télécom (FR), Telecom Italia (IT), Telefónica (ES), University of Bremen (DE), University of Kaiserslautern (DE), and Universitat Politècnica de València (ES).

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NEC Introduces LTE Small Cell Gateway

NEC announced a compact, all-in-one LTE small cell gateway that accommodates approximately 1,000 LTE small cell access points in a single unit.

The new, ATCA-based gateway supports LTE small cell services by concentrating security, maintenance, user data processing and traffic control functions on one blade. Additionally, as subscribers increase, the gateway's capacity can easily be extended by increasing the number of blades.

The gateway can also be connected to existing 3G small cell gateway equipment.

"In recent years, telecommunications carriers have been introducing LTE, optimizing wireless capacity and promoting greater capacity in response to the rapid increase in communications from smartphones, tablets and other devices," said Katsumi Tanoue, Assistant General Manager, Mobile Radio Access Network Division, NEC Corporation. "NEC's new gateway is ideally suited for satisfying this increasing market demand."

In addition to this gateway, NEC is also promoting the development and commercialization of an LTE small cell gateway that supports more than 10,000 LTE small cell access points.

http://www.nec.com/en/press/201306/global_20130621_01.html

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Zain Picks Ericsson for Managed Services in Saudi Arabia

Zain awarded a 3-year managed services contract to Ericsson covering field operations and maintenance of Zain’s network across Saudi Arabia.

The agreement, which marks Ericsson’s first partnership with Zain in Saudi Arabia, will support Zain to allocate newly available resources toward initiatives that better serve end-users, such as strategy, development and research.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

Rolled out this quarter, Ericsson services include day-to-day operations and maintenance of Zain KSA active and passive infrastructure, providing corrective and preventive maintenance services across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

http://www.ericsson.com/news/130621-field-ops-in-saudi-arabia_244129229_c

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Huawei Offers UMTS HSPA+ Boost

Huawei introduced a User Connection Boost solution for UMTS HSPA+ that doubles the number of user connections in a single UMTS cell.  The first commercial deployments are in Portugal and Canada. User Connection Boost enhances bearer and radio resource sharing efficiency to greatly enhance number of simultaneously connected users. It also extends user terminal battery life, all without affecting user experience. To do so, the solution utilizes software-deployable algorithms for CPC (Continuous Packet Connectivity), E-FACH (Enhanced Forward Access Channel) and E-RACH (Enhanced Random Access Channel).

Huawei said UMTS HSPA+ continues to evolve by offering an increasing number of connections per cell.  Improvements continue with uplink and downlink peak rate enhancements thanks to improved dual-carrier and high-order modulation technologies. By the second half of 2012, 134 operators in 70 countries completed commercial DC-HSDPA deployment and can now offer services for increasingly popular DC-HSDPA-capable terminals.

http://www.huawei.com/en/about-huawei/newsroom/press-release/hw-266814-umts.htm

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NTT DOCOMO to Double Number of LTE Base Stations

NTT DOCOMO plans to increase its number of LTE base stations from 24,400 (March 31, 2013) to 50,000 by March 31, 2014.

As part of this effort, NTT DOCOMO introduced a new compact LTE base station with simultaneous 3G capability, measuring less than 1/10th the size and less than 1/5th the weight of conventional LTE base stations.  The first units entered commercial operation in DOCOMO's Xi LTE and FOMA 3G networks in Japan this month.

The compact all-weather base station, which is mainly designed for area expansion in low-traffic areas such as mountainous locations, can be installed in places where conventional LTE base stations cannot be deployed due to excess size or cost.

The new base station, equivalent to the master station of a remote-type base station, can handle up to two secondary stations. Furthermore, thanks to the new base station's 3G W-CDMA capability, simultaneous LTE and 3G service areas can be tailored efficiently to traffic and installation conditions by using secondary stations and multiple frequency bands.  Electricity consumption is less than 1/4th that of conventional LTE base stations, realizing more eco-friendly operation.

http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/info/media_center/pr/2013/0620_00.html

In February, NEC confirmed that NTT Docomo has selected it to develop LTE-Advanced base stations for its new C-RAN architecture.

NTT Docomo is proposing a new Advanced C-RAN architecture that uses small "add-on" cells for localized coverage that act in concert with macro cells in HetNet fashion.  Deep integration is achieved using carrier aggregation technology, one of the main LTE-Advanced technologies standardized by 3GPP.

Under the Advanced C-RAN architecture, high-capacity base stations utilizing advanced C-RAN architecture will serve as master base stations both for multiple macro cells covering broad areas and for add-on cells in smaller, high-traffic areas. The base stations will accommodate up to 48 macro and add-on cells at launch and even more later. Carrier aggregation will be supported for cells served by the same base station, enabling the flexible deployment of add-on cells. In addition, maximum downlink throughput will be extendible to 3Gbps, as specified by 3GPP standards.

Carrier aggregation is expected to yield 3 Gbps maximum throughput by aggregating multiple carriers of up to 100 MHz of carrier bandwidth.

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Cisco Adds Citrix NetScaler to Unified Fablic Cloud Portfolio

Cisco will integrate the Citrix NetScaler application delivery controller (ADC) technology into the Cisco Unified Fabric Cloud Network Services portfolio. Specifically, the Citrix NetScaler 1000V will be sold by Cisco and its channel partners worldwide and supported by the Cisco Technical Assistance Center.

The announcement builds on a strategic alliance announced by the companies in October 2012.

Some key points:

The Citrix NetScaler 1000V will integrate with the Cisco Nexus 1100 Cloud Services Platform and vPath service insertion architecture to uniquely link to the Nexus 1000V.

As part of the Cisco and Citrix collaboration in next-generation data center and cloud architectures, the Citrix NetScaler SDX service delivery networking platform and the Citrix NetScaler MPX hardware-based line of ADCs will also attach to the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series switches in the future.  This capability will provide customers the benefits of higher resiliency, plug and play installation, improved agility, and increased leverage of both their switching and ADC investments.

A portfolio of virtual services for the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual networking environment will be available, including the ASA 1000V Cloud Firewall, Virtual Security Gateway virtual firewall, virtual Wide Area Application Services WAN optimization solution, Cisco Prime virtual Network Analysis Module, and Cloud Services Router 1000V. The portfolio also includes best-of-breed third party virtual services offerings that are seamlessly integrated into the framework. Citrix NetScaler 1000V will seamlessly co-exist and interoperate with the broader Cisco Cloud Network Services family.

The two companies are also collaborating on go-to-market initiatives, including the publication of Cisco Validated Design (CVD) reference documents to assist customers gaining full leverage from Cisco’s Unified Data Center strategy.

“As enterprise IT aligns itself with cloud rollouts and virtualization, datacenters are becoming the cornerstones of business, driving the need for closer integration between functional elements, and optimizing how applications are delivered over IT and network infrastructure. In that context, the cloud network services-focused partnership between Citrix and Cisco is clearly a step in the right direction,” stated Ram Appalaraju, Vice President, Products, Data Center Group, Cisco.

http://www.cisco.com

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Mobile Infrastructure Sales Fall in Q1 Despite LTE Rollouts

The worldwide 2G/3G/4G mobile infrastructure market totaled $9.8 billion in Q1 2013, down 9% sequentially, and down 2% year-over-year, according to a new report from Infonetics.  Overall sales fell despite another LTE ramp-up driven by North America and Europe.

"We are clearly seeing the broad shift to LTE and its direct effect on 2G, 3G, and WiMAX,” notes Stéphane Téral, principal analyst for mobile infrastructure and carrier economics at Infonetics Research. “Typically strong 2G and 3G markets, China in particular, did not come to the rescue this time around. In fact, China and Russia had a busy 1Q13 selecting LTE vendors."

Some additional highlights:

• LTE revenue was $2.7 billion in 1Q13, an increase of 21% quarter-over-quarter and 108% year-over-year, though Infonetics believes an appreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Japanese Yen erased at least 5% of revenue
• WiMAX continued its decline, dropping 42% in 1Q13 from the previous quarter
• After dragging down 4Q12, the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) are shaping up as a major engine for 2013; case in point: Brazil added to the 1Q13 revenue mix when its 4 mobile operators kicked off LTE rollouts
• Ericsson remains king of the RAN, with double the revenue market share of #2 Nokia Siemens Networks
• Infonetics expects 3G RAN to continue to be greater than GSM moving forward solely driven by W-CDMA
• Global mobile subscribers are forecast by Infonetics to reach 7 billion by 2017, with LTE subscribers making up just 8% of total subscribers.

http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2013/1Q13-Mobile-Infrastructure-Market-Highlights.asp

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Swisscom Enables LTE Roaming with Ericsson Diameter Signaling Controller

Swisscom is set to become the first European operator to launch LTE roaming services on a global basis.  The mobile operator is using Ericsson's Diameter Signaling Controller, which is implemented in an Ericsson Blade System platform.

Ericsson said its DSC supports the scaling of Diameter-signaling networks, is mission-critical and requires carrier-grade software and hardware.

Magnus Furustam, Vice President and Head of Product Area Core and IMS at Ericsson, says: "We have now passed a major milestone in our development project for the Diameter Signaling Controller. We are very proud that Swisscom selected Ericsson for the launch of its LTE roaming service. Our solution will alleviate some of the signaling load and make the signaling network even more reliable."

http://www.ericsson.com/news/1710974

http://www.ericsson.com/news/120913_diameter_signaling_controller_in_next_generation_signaling_networks_244159018_c?categoryFilter=ericsson_review_1270673222_cc

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Cisco to Acquire Composite Software for Data Virtualization

Cisco agreed to acquire privately held Composite Software, a developer of data virtualization software and services, approximately $180 million in cash and retention-based incentives.

Composite Software, which is based in San Mateo, California, connects many types of data from across the network and makes it appear as if it's in one place. Composite's software integrates traditional and new data sources including cloud and big data, into a simplified consolidated view.

Cisco said Composite's software will expand its portfolio of Smart Services, enabling companies to better leverage network knowledge (APIs) and programmability, which maximizes the benefits of data virtualization. As with the transition from physical servers to server virtualization and from physical networks to network virtualization, together Cisco and Composite will accelerate the shift from physical data integration to data virtualization for customers and partners.

"Cisco's strategy is to create a next generation IT model that provides highly differentiated solutions to help solve our customers' most challenging business problems," said Gary Moore, Cisco president and chief operating officer. "By combining our network expertise with the performance of Cisco's Unified Computing System and Composite's software, we will provide customers with instant access to data analysis for greater business intelligence."

http://thenetwork.cisco.com
http://www.compositesw.com

• Composite Software was founded in 2002.  Investors included Apax Partners, Clearstone Venture Partners, Dot Edu Ventures, Palomar Ventures and Tenaya Capital.

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BT Appoints Gavin Patterson as Chief Executive

BT appointed Gavin Patterson as chief executive, replacing Ian Livingston, who will take up a role in government as Minister of State for Trade and Investment. The change will occur in September.

Gavin Patterson, 45, has served as chief executive of BT Retail and as a BT Board member since 2008, having joined the company as a senior executive four years prior to that. He previously spent four years at Telewest (which later merged with NTL to become Virgin Media), including as managing director of its consumer division. Before entering the communications sector, he spent nine years at Procter and Gamble, rising to become European marketing director.

Sir Michael Rake, Chairman of BT, said: “Ian has done a tremendous job in transforming BT. His decision to accept a government post demonstrates the sense of public service which many of us know to be characteristic. He leaves behind him a very capable team, one which will take forward the strategy that has served BT well and which lays out the path to further success.

http://www.btplc.com

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