China's CERNET Deploys Compass-EOS Router for Peering

The China Education and Research Network (CERNET) has deployed Compass-EOS r10004 modular routers with multi 100Gbe and 10GbE links in its production next-generation exchange point (CNGI-6IX) connecting universities and institutes across China and to link to the global Internet.


CERNET is funded by the Chinese government and connects more than 2,000 universities with more than 20 million users.

“The Compass-EOS r10004 routers bring high capacity at a small form factor and fit well with the CERNET next generation network architecture,” said Xing Li, Deputy Director of CERNET Center. “We are pleased to work together with Compass-EOS on our planned software-defined networking applications that aim at simplifying network design, deployment and operation.”

http://compass-eos.com/

• Earlier this year, Compass-EOS introduced its silicon-to-photonics router that essentially leverages an on-chip optical mesh and electronics to route high-densities of 100GbE and 10GbE. The company's first product, r10004, is a carrier-grade, modular platform offering 800 Gbps Capacity in a 6U enclosure.  It offers 2 x 100G ports or 20 x 10G ports with full Layer 3 routing functionality for core, peering or aggregation deployments.
  
• The company's silicon-to-photonics implementation, which it calls icPhotonics, simplifies router design by bringing the entire backplane on-chip, thereby enabling petabit-class scalability, significantly smaller footprint and power consumption, and easier implementation of software-defined networking capabilities.  The on–chip optical integration ensures QoS routing at high utilization rates and congestion-free multicast packet handling. Compass-EOS said it is also able to ensure maximum router protection from DDoS attacks at maximum capacity.
  
• In April 2013, Compass-EOS confirmed that NTT Communications has selected its new r10004 core-grade modular routers for use in its high-capacity transpacific network. 

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Huawei Releases Source Code for its Protocol-Oblivious Forwarding

Huawei is releasing the source code for its Protocol-Oblivious Forwarding (POF) technology, which is a software-defined networking (SDN) forwarding implementation. Users can freely download and run the software, modify the source code, or develop new features.

Huawei said the goal of its Protocol-Oblivious Forwarding is to evolve the Open Networking Foundation's OpenFlow protocol towards a more flexible programming model where forwarding devices are no longer limited by pre-defined packet protocols or forwarding rules.  Data plane hardware is not limited by hard­-wired protocol implementations.

The open-source project provides source code and documents for POF Controller and POF Switch prototypes. The POF Controller is a BSD/Apache-licensed and Java-based OpenFlow controller. It provides a GUI for switch control and configuration. The POF Switch is a BSD-licensed and Linux C-based virtual switch.

"We believe carriers and users of networks can benefit from more flexible switches and reduce the total cost of ownership by focusing on building simpler, fit-for-purpose networks where only the required forwarding behaviors need to be programmed in each switch. Such forwarding plane evolution technologies help remove protocol dependency in forwarding devices and can ultimately enable support of any existing/customized packet-based protocols via generic instructions. We believe that openness and software-based programmability of forwarding devices can help increase the adoption of OpenFlow, particularly in the carrier space where we see a huge potential for simplification." said Dr. Justin Joubine Dustzadeh, VP of Technology Strategy & CTO of Networks at Huawei Technologies.

http://www.huawei.com
http://www.poforwarding.org/

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Wind River Targets Open Virtualization Profile for NFV

Wind River is developing Open Virtualization Profile software for implementing high performance, open-source, real-time kernel virtualization in next generation telecommunications equipment as well as network functions virtualization (NFV) and cloud environments.

Open Virtualization Profile is a high value add-on software profile for Wind River Linux developed by optimizing open source Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology. This allows the deployment of network services on virtual machines without the performance loss associated with using traditional, propriety IT-like virtualization products.

Key features include:

• Real-time high performance; extremely low latency measuring as low as under 3 microseconds
• Flexible provisioning of virtual machines
• Live migration of virtual machines
• CPU isolation
• Open source-based; compatible with frameworks such as the Yocto Project™, oVirt and others
• Broad support for a variety of guest operating systems

The first release is expected in Q3 2013.

"As networks are pushed to their limits, virtualization is becoming an increasingly important approach. Operators are looking toward NFV to support the transition to scalable platforms that enable flexible deployment of network services," said Jim Douglas, senior vice president of marketing at Wind River. "With Wind River Open Virtualization Profile, we are delivering a real-time virtualization solution to support the rigorous SLAs of a carrier network and enable them to gain the flexibility, scalability, and cost and energy benefits cloud data centers already enjoy."

http://www.windriver.com/announces/open_virtualization_profile/

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NSN Hits 56 Mbps Uploads with TD-LTE in 20 MHz Carrier

Nokia Siemens Networks achieved a record 56 Mbps peak upload throughput in a TD-LTE network using its commercial 4G base station with multiple antenna technology and a single 20 MHz carrier.

The company set this record in a test network in Hangzhou, China, using its Flexi Multiradio 10 Base Station and Single User Multiple Input Multiple Output (SU-MIMO) technology.

Nokia Siemens Networks claims uplink records for both SU-MIMO and Multi User-Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) technologies.

“We are witnessing a mobile data traffic boom with users downloading – and increasingly also uploading – huge files”, said Tero Peltola, vice president, LTE at Nokia Siemens Networks. “Nokia Siemens Networks is proud to be at the forefront of TD-LTE innovation, helping operators increase data throughput in their networks and provide superior customer experience for tomorrow’s smartphone users. Today’s download speeds will be tomorrow’s upload speeds.”

http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com/news-events/press-room/press-releases/nokia-siemens-networks-breaks-yet-another-record-for-td-lte-peak-upload-throughput

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PLUMgrid Debuts Virtualization Platform for Cloud Data Centers

PLUMgrid, a start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, released its PLUMgrid Platform, an infrastructure virtualization solution that enables the creation of on-demand programmable networks, which the company calls Virtual Domains. The goal its to allow administrators to create, copy and deploy secure multi-tenant virtual networks in seconds.

The PLUMgrid Platform integrates security, operations and maintenance tools, and network visibility and analytics.  It runs on existing standard-based x86 servers to deliver dynamic and scalable virtual data center networks. The company says network services can be added or removed in seconds, without network disruption or downtime.

PLUMgrid is building an ecosystem of industry partners, including A10 Networks, Arista Networks, Broadcom, Cavium, Check Point Software Technologies, Citrix, Cumulus Networks, F5 Networks, Ixia, Mellanox Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Silver Peak and Zerto.

“The PLUMgrid Platform has been deployed and tested at the AT&T Foundry in Palo Alto after being one of the top presentations at a Fast Pitch earlier this year,” said Abhi Ingle, Vice President, Ecosystem and Innovation, AT&T. “The technology has important implications for cloud operators as they seek to deliver cost-optimized and differentiated services.”

“The PLUMgrid Platform was two years in the making, and our goal was to make networks as simple as a click,” said Awais Nemat, Co-founder and CEO, PLUMgrid. “We listened very closely to our customers, and today we’re bringing to market a comprehensive, extensible and open platform that enables them to quickly respond to business needs, and offer customized services that drive new revenue opportunities.”

http://plumgrid.com/

PLUMgrid was founded in 2011 and is backed by US Venture Partners and Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

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O3B's First Four Satellites Successfully Launched by Arianespace

O3b’s first four satellites were successfully launched by an Arianespace Soyuz rocket from the Guiana Space Center.

O3b is deploying a network of 12 satellites to deliver broadband connectivity to billions of people across emerging markets who have never had access to this level of connectivity before. 

Thales Alenia Space produced the Ka-band relay platform.

A second group of four O3b satellites will be launched in September, completing the first phase in O3b’s constellation and ahead of the launch of the company's service later in the year.

O3b Networks’ investors include SES, Google, Liberty Global, HSBC Principal Investments, Northbridge Venture Partners, Allen & Company, Development Bank of Southern Africa, Sofina, Satya Capital and Luxempart. O3b Networks is headquartered in St. Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands.

http://www.o3bnetworks.com

This mission marked the fifth Soyuz launch from the Guiana Space Center (CSG).

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Sprint Shareholders Vote for Softbank Deal

Sprint shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favor of Softbank's acquisition proposal.  The deal still requires FCC approval.  The companies anticipate the merger will be consummated in early July 2013.

“Today is a historic day for our company, and I want to thank our shareholders for approving this transformative merger agreement,” said Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. “The transaction with SoftBank should enhance Sprint’s long-term value and competitive position by creating a company with greater financial flexibility.”

http://www.sprint.com

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OpenDaylight Project Adds Members

The OpenDaylight Project, a collaborative open source project to advance Software-Defined Networking (SDN), now has a total of 27 members.  The latest companies to join are ADVA Optical Networking, Ciena, Guavus and Versa Networks.

OpenDaylight has been able to make the base controller architecture available within 60 days of the project’s launch and is now actively building the merged controller, as well as a Virtual Tenant Network (VTN) application. 

OpenDaylight is an open source Collaborative Project at The Linux Foundation. 

http://www.opendaylight.org/

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Allot Confirms Orders from 3 Top-Tier Mobile Operators

Allot Communications has secured orders from three of the world’s top ten telecommunication operators to assist in their LTE network rollouts. All three orders are from existing customers, including two in Europe and one in the United States. These operators will use the Allot Service Gateway as part of their initial LTE deployments.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

Allot recently announced availability of its pure-play, 3GPP-compliant Traffic Detection Function (TDF) for LTE networks for helping operators analyze subscriber behavior and monetize their broadband networks.

TDF - part of the 3GPP Release 11 LTE standard - provides network visibility to better analyze and respond to broadband traffic. Allot said its TDF-enabled Allot Service Gateway can be used by operators to monetize OTT traffic by leveraging application awareness and transaction information in order to deploy innovative pricing plans, drive new service revenues and increase customer loyalty.  

“TDF brings with it the opportunity for carriers to implement business intelligence analytics and application-specific charging policies. This type of dedicated functionality is critical for carriers looking to add value to OTT providers like Facebook and Skype,” said Andrei Elefant, VP Marketing & Product Management of Allot Communications. “Allot is a market leader in TDF, and we are leading the change in standardizing this important technology to simplify operator networks and bring our customers the most powerful analytics tools available.”

http://www.allot.com

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Vitesse Raises $40.2 Million in Public Offering

Vitesse Semiconductor closed $40.2 million through a public offering for 18,720,000 shares of its common stock, which includes the exercise in full by the underwriters of their over-allotment option, at a per share price to the public of $2.15.

Vitesse will receive net proceeds of approximately $37.5 million after deducting the underwriting discount and estimated offering expenses. Certain officers and directors of Vitesse participated in the offering.

http://investor.vitesse.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=773688

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Compass-EOS Integrates McObject’s High Availability Database

Compass-EOS is using McObject's eXtremeDB High Availability database in its new r10004 core router.

Specifically, the Compass-EOS r10004 router relies on eXtremeDB High Availability’s replication features to maintain two fully synchronized copies of the control plane database, on active and standby controller cards. If the main database instance becomes inoperable due to hardware or software failure, its responsibilities are immediately assumed by the standby. This enables Compass-EOS’s core router to offer non-stop forwarding (NSF), protecting users against unplanned downtime.

http://www.mcobject.com

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AT&T Opens Innovation Centers in Atlanta, Plano

AT&T is launching new Innovation Centers in Atlanta and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas to speed up innovation in Digital Life, connected car, connected devices, home entertainment and machine-to-machine technologies.

The AT&T Foundry in Atlanta, which is adjacent to Georgia Tech, will test and develop products and services for Digital Life, AT&T’s recently-launched home security and automation service. The team will also create new apps and services related to the “connected car,” mobility, emerging devices, and AT&T U-verse. Cisco will be host sponsor and will help identify key third-party developers, startups, investors, inventors and other entrepreneurs to bring into the facility.

The new AT&T Foundry Machine-to-Machine and Connected Device (M2M/CD) center in Plano, Texas will focus on platforms, infrastructure and tools for M2M.

“Since its founding three years ago, the mission of the AT&T Foundry® has been to identify great ideas, put the right people and technology ecosystem around them and move them quickly to market,” said John Donovan, Senior Executive Vice President of AT&T Technology and Network Operations, AT&T Inc.  “As a result, our customers are benefitting from great products and services that set the pace for innovation and our company is realizing more enhanced efficiencies internally.

The AT&T Foundry program was launched in 2010 to identify solutions both inside and outside of AT&T to some of the most pressing needs facing the company and the industry. Some innovations that have resulted include the broad deployment of Self-Optimizing Network (SON) technology throughout the AT&T network through a collaboration Intucell.  The idea was first introduced to AT&T via a "fast pitch" in collaboration with Amdocs and then honed at the AT&T Foundry.  Another innovation is Remote Patient Monitoring (doctors and other caregivers remotely  monitoring a patient’s pulse rate, weight and other parameters over an LTE connection) and SafeCell (an app for fleet managers to monitor and restrict drivers’ use of mobile devices while behind the wheel).

http://www.att.com

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Cisco Boosts its Enterprise Networking Portfolio

Cisco announced a major revamp of its enterprise networking line,  including new and updated Cisco Catalyst switching and Integrated Services Router products.




Cisco, which this year has been updating its entire service provider and enterprise networking portfolio to become open and programmable, said a key objective is to enable applications to get the networking information they need to offer more innovative services to end users with less hands-on administration from IT professionals.

Cisco ONE is Cisco’s portfolio that addresses SDN and, more broadly, incorporates programmability across the network infrastructure to enable innovation, investment protection and lower operating expenses. Within the enterprise, the Cisco ONE Enterprise Network Architecture brings openness and programmability to the campus and branch, making them more agile, high-performance, and application-savvy, all while adding value to existing network resources.

Highlights of the rollout include:

Cisco Enterprise Networks campus and branch innovations include the following:

• Cisco Catalyst 6807-XL modular switch for the next-generation campus backbone, optimized for 10/40/100 Gbps and based on the Catalyst 6500 for investment protection. The Catalyst 6807-XL is a 7-slot, 10-rack-unit modular chassis with up to 880 Gbps per slot capacity and 11.4TB per port switching capacity.
• Cisco Catalyst 6880-X semi-fixed switch enhances Cisco’s midmarket portfolio with 10 Gbps advanced services for smaller and mid-size campus deployments. The Catalyst 6880-X is a 3-slot, 4RU switch with 16 fixed 10 Gbps port Supervisor engine and four half slots for optional 10 Gbps or 40 Gbps line cards, supporting up to eighty 10 Gbps ports or twenty 40 Gbps ports.
• Cisco Catalyst 6800ia Instant Access switch provides programmable, one-touch deployments for simplified Catalyst 6000 campus operations. The Cisco Catalyst 6800ia virtually consolidates access switches across multiple locations into one extended switch, and includes all the feature richness of the Catalyst 6800 and 6500 switches for access networks.
• Cisco 4500E Supervisor Engine 8E brings Cisco Unified Access to the most widely deployed modular access switch, allowing customers to preserve their wired infrastructure investments by extending common features, resiliency and granular QoS to wireless. The fully programmable Cisco UADP ASIC, introduced in January with theCisco Catalyst 3850 switch, will be featured in the new Cisco Catalyst 4500E Supervisor Engine 8E, extending wired and wireless convergence to chassis-based switches.
• Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) 4451-AX addresses the needs of the largest, most demanding branch offices, extending the branch router portfolio up to 2 gigabit forward performance with native services and pay-as-you-grow purchase model. ISR 4451-AX enables IT professionals to deploy application services in minutes and includes native WAN optimization with a services aware data plane for LAN-like experience at the branch.
• Cisco Aggregation Services Router (ASR) 1000-AX provides application services for WAN aggregation by integrating Application Visibility and Control and AppNav with Virtual Wide Area Application Services (vWAAS) into the most popular customer configurations.

The product announcements coincide with this week's Cisco Live! event in Orlando, Florida.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1210644

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Microsoft and Oracle Team on Enterprise Clouds

Microsoft and Oracle announced a partnership that will enable customers to run Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure.

Under the pact, customers will be able to deploy Oracle software — including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server — on Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure and receive full support from Oracle. Microsoft will also offer Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server to Windows Azure customers, and Oracle will make Oracle Linux available to Windows Azure customers.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

"Microsoft is deeply committed to giving businesses what they need, and clearly that is the ability to run enterprise workloads in private clouds, public clouds and, increasingly, across both,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft. “Now our customers will be able to take advantage of the flexibility our unique hybrid cloud solutions offer for their Oracle applications, middleware and databases, just like they have been able to do on Windows Server for years."

"Our customers’ IT environments are changing rapidly to meet the dynamic nature of the world today,” said Oracle President Mark Hurd. “At Oracle, we are committed to providing greater choice and flexibility to customers by providing multiple deployment options for our software, including on-premises, as well as public, private, and hybrid clouds. This collaboration with Microsoft extends our partnership and is important for the benefit of our customers."

http://www.microsoft.com
https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud/entry/oracle_and_microsoft_join_forces

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Radisys Unveils MPX-OS for Media Processing and Software MRF

Radisys introduced its MPX Operating Software (MPX-OS) as the new foundation of its media processing portfolio, including the company’s purpose-built MPX-12000 MRF platform and Software MRF.

The MPX-OS brings new capabilities for interactive service architectures, including KVM virtualization for cloud deployments, VP8 video codec for WebRTC services, and Over The Top (OTT) HD video conferencing and transcoding requirements

Radisys said the new MPX-OS provides the common media processing software foundation for current and future Radisys products and a key enabler for VoLTE, RCS and OTT services.

Key features include:

• KVM virtualization, enabling virtualized deployment on Intel multi-core services in the telecom cloud for both IMS and OTT services
  
• HD 720p H.264 video codec, delivering support for HD video, including HD video recording, playback and conference mixing for OTT communications and IMS MRF deployments
  
• Support for VP8 video codec, enabling termination of WebRTC endpoints for streaming, record and playback, or multimedia conferencing applications, or H.264 to VP8 media transcoding for WebRTC gateway applications
  
• AMR-WB audio codec for VoLTE, including transcoding support for interoperability between LTE and 3G mobile endpoints using different codecs
  
• Supports both SIP and H.248 interface on the same platform
  
• Virtualized media processing applications, including MPaaS (Media Processing as a Service)

"MPX-OS is an exciting development from Radisys, providing the common media processing software foundation for current and future Radisys products,” said Manish Singh, CTO, Radisys. “MPX-OS also broadens our media processing expertise into new markets, offering our application partner and service provider customers improved economics, flexibility and interoperability as they roll-out interactive communication services. And by engineering MPX-OS for virtualized deployments in the cloud, operators can deploy these services with maximized OPEX and CAPEX savings."

“MPX-OS represents a unique foundation for our customers that are breaking down the barriers between telecom and web communications for seamless voice and video service delivery, regardless of the network or communications device,” said Amit Agarwal, vice president and general manager, Software and Solutions, Radisys. “MPX-OS based solutions are deployed today as the foundation for media processing in VoLTE, RCS and OTT services, including serving as a bridge across those network domains to enable much broader service reach and stickiness.”

http://www.radisys.com

Radisys' MPX-12000 Broadband Media Processing platform,  which is based on the company's 40G ATCA open platform technologies, is specifically designed to provide mobile and IMS network operators the capacities, capabilities and reliability essential for monetizing real-time wireless broadband communications, including mobile video and voice over LTE (VoLTE). Specifically, the platform offers huge scalability in performing the Multimedia Resource Function (MRF) in LTE IMS networks.

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Vodafone Bids EUR 7.7 Billion to Acquire Kabel Deutschland

Vodafone launched a bid to acquire all shares in Kabel Deutschland Holding AG in a deal valued at EUR 7.7 billion.

The offer values Kabel Deutschland at EUR 87 per share, representing an increase of 37 percent on the last share price before takeover speculation emerged.

The companies said a merger would strengthen the market position of Kabel Deutschland and the range of services it offers. Within Vodafone Group, Kabel Deutschland would remain a separate legal entity with its headquarters in Unterfoehring (near Munich).

Kabel Deutschland (KD), Germany’s largest cable operator, offers its customers digital, high definition (HD) and analog TV, Pay TV and DVR offerings, Video on Demand, broadband Internet (up to 100 Mbit/s) and fixed-line Phone services via cable as well as mobile services in cooperation with an industry partner. The company operates cable networks in 13 German federal states and supplies its services to approximately 8.5 million connected households. As per end of fiscal year 2012/13, Kabel Deutschland had approximately 3,600 employees. In the fiscal year 2012/13 (12 months ended March 31, 2013), the Company reported revenues of EUR 1,830 million and an Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 862 million.

http://www.kabeldeutschland.com/
http://www.vodafone.com

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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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