Juniper's Rami Rahim: Engineering Simplicity is the new mantra

The battle against complexity is the biggest problem facing networking today - and the biggest problem for the IT industry overall -- said Rami Rahim, CEO of Juniper Networks, at the company's NXTWORK event in Las Vegas.

Engineering simplicity is now "the guiding star" for everything going on inside the company, according to Rahim, because otherwise the transition to multicloud networking will be choked by the overlapping systems policies and management frameworks.

Rahim described the industry transition from the Scale-up Era of the late 90s, to the Scale-out Era that powered Web 2.0, to the emerging Multicloud Era.

The scale-out architecture was successful in many regards but the sheer number of elements in the network brought reliability challenges because mean time between failure (MTBF) rates meant that something could break every day. Software-defined networking helped solve this issue, but now automation tools are needed to manage the complexity.

Hyperscale cloud providers have the resource to build and deploy automation, but enterprises need them as well. The multicloud era means that operations may reside across many domains with separate management. Getting past this roadblock requires deep visibility and automation. The goal must be to operate networks with the least amount of human interaction possible.

Juniper is proposing a 5-step journey to multicloud.

Juniper's answer for simplifying cloud automation is its Contrail Enterprise Multicloud solution.

"It's not about building better networks, it's about making networking better," said Rahim.

Bikash Koley, Juniper's CTO talked about the architecture for unifying the company's solutions for the multicloud era, including its Contrail framework, Junos OS, and a new "ATOM" API stack for integrating telemetry and intent.

Juniper revs new Ethernet switches for the multicloud world

Thursday, February 15, 2018  Juniper, Switching  

Juniper Networks introduced a new line of Ethernet switches designed for the new era of multicloud networking, where the assumption that distributed enterprises will access resources from multiple data centers is a reality.

The rollout includes new switches for the enterprise data center, campus, and branch, as well as a new cloud-based management platform called Sky Enterprise. Junos remains central to all of the new products and the rest of the existing switching portfolio.

“The promise of multicloud is to deliver an infrastructure that is secure, ubiquitous, reliable and fungible and where the migration of workloads will be a simple and intuitive process,” said Bikash Koley, chief technology officer at Juniper Networks. “For IT to be successful in becoming multicloud-ready, it is critical organizations consider not only the data center and public cloud, but also the on-ramps of their campus and branch networks. Otherwise, enterprises will face fractured security and operations as network boundaries prevent seamless, end-to-end visibility and control.”

Highlights of the announcement include:

• A new QFX10002-60C "universal" switchfor data center spine, data center edge and data center interconnect (DCI).  It features 60x100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) deep-buffer interfaces. 
• A new QFX5210-64C 64x100GbE port spine switch
• A new QFX5200-48Y 48x25GbE top-of-rack switch
• A new QFX MACsec line card addition for the QFX10000 modular switches. This card provides 30-port 100GbE connectivity for encrypted traffic in and between data centers.
• Juniper Sky Enterprise - a cloud management service that enables operators to deploy, configure and manage switching and security devices, reducing change errors by up to 90 percent. Sky Enterprise also gives network operators visibility into wireless access points using Aerohive Hive Manager NG API integration.
• New EX2300 and EX4300 compact switches for campus networks. The EX4300 multigig switch supports POE++ for new applications and MACsec to enable a secure on-ramp to the cloud. The EX9250 switch is a compact campus core that gives enterprises multiple fabric options by supporting both Junos Fusion and EVPN-VXLAN.
• New NFX150 Network Services Platform for branch offices. This combines native branch security and hybrid WAN functionality with wireless 4G and LTE connectivity between branches. Built as an extensible platform, it can run third-party virtual network functions (VNFs).
• Contrail SD-WAN with new subscription-based pricing: Juniper’s Contrail SD-WAN solution bundles the SRX Series Services Gateway and the NFX Series with the platform and orchestration software required for multicloud-ready SD-WAN. New subscription pricing bundles provide several physical and virtual endpoint options with secure SD-WAN management.  

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Juniper and Nutanix expand partnership for multiclouds

Juniper Networks and Nutanix expanded their existing partnership with an aim on simplifying enterprise multicloud architectures.

The goal is better integration and automated management between network, security, compute and storage.

Specifically, Juniper’s Contrail Enterprise Multicloud will integrate with Nutanix APIs to provide enhanced network visibility for virtualized workloads, ultimately facilitating automated fabric management.

Additionally, Juniper’s Unified Cybersecurity Platform together with Nutanix’s software-defined networking offering, Flow, and AHV hypervisor, intends to secure applications with microsegmentation in enterprise cloud, as well as provide a hardened security posture that prevents lateral propagation of threats. Enterprises will be able to deploy the vSRX integrated virtual firewall in their Nutanix environment, extending the same capability across multicloud architectures with a single point of control using vSRX on-premises and in AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

“As enterprises race toward multicloud, they are burdened with complexities that arise during each stage of the journey. By integrating Contrail Enterprise Multicloud and Juniper’s Unified Cybersecurity Platform with Nutanix’s Enterprise Cloud, we are delivering an end-to-end secure and automated multicloud environment spanning compute, storage and networking for our customers,” said Bikash Koley, Chief Technology Officer, Juniper Networks. 

“The future of enterprise infrastructure is multi-cloud - that’s no longer up for debate. Networking shouldn’t be the complex burden holding companies back from this transition, and that’s why we’re so committed to working with our partners like Juniper to offer our joint customers seamless, secure networking fit for the multi-cloud world,” said Raja Mukhopadhyay, VP of Product Management, Nutanix

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Implementing Multicloud - Bikash Koley explains

Juniper Networks is actively pursuing an enterprise multicloud strategy that it describes as a seachange for networking, but how is it actually implemented in its products?

Bikash Koley, CTO of Juniper, explains.

https://youtu.be/Jiap6F-NNF4

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Nokia intros open and programmable access network slicing

Nokia introduced an open and programmable fixed access network slicing solution that partitions the fixed access network into autonomous slices and delivers for operators the Network-as-a-Service.

Nokia said its solution enables operators to scale to a virtually unlimited number of discrete network slices that can be independently operated, for example to run 5G mobile transport, wholesale or business services.

The new solution is built around Nokia's cloud-native software platform Altiplano and open standards.  It allows operators to establish full control and autonomy for each slice they manage, plus determine the performance metrics for the network and services they deliver to customers.

It uses open interfaces and YANG data models to create a virtual slice that looks, feels and operates just like a physical network.

Each service provider runs its own dedicated controller with a dedicated view of their slice of the network. This provides operators with the control and flexibility to deliver differentiated broadband services in a multi-vendor network environment.  Equipment from different vendors can sit alongside each other, in different slices or on the same slice. The solution also makes it easier to share the physical network by enabling operators to automate challenging processes such as rules, regulations and multi-vendor integration.

Nokia notes that has been actively involved in the work that led to the publication of TR-370 on Fixed Access Network Sharing (FANS) by the Broadband Forum and is currently involved in the specification of the YANG modules that are used to achieve FANS.

Federico Guillen, president of Nokia Fixed Networks, said: "I believe that virtual network slicing will form the basis for everything the fixed access industry does going forward.  It can provide a more elegant and powerful way to monetize ultra-broadband deployments, help accelerate the delivery of new services, spread investment risk, reduce complexity and unlock new business opportunities that allow service providers to better serve their end-customers."

https://onestore.nokia.com/asset/202253

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Micron to invest $100 million in AI start-ups

Micron announced plans to invest up to $100 million in startups focused on artificial intelligence (AI), with twenty percent aimed at startups led by women and other underrepresented groups. The company has been investing in tech start-ups in its sector since 2006 via its Micron Ventures arm.

Micron will also offer a $1 million grant for universities and non-profit organizations to conduct research on AI.

"We are pleased to bring together the industry's brightest thinkers, researchers, innovators and technologists to discuss AI, machine learning and deep learning," said Micron President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. "These trends are at the heart of the biggest opportunities in front of us, and increasingly require memory and storage technologies to turn vast amounts of data into insights that accelerate intelligence."

The announcements were made at the inaugural Micron Insight 2018 event in San Francisco, which included leaders from Amazon, BMW, Google, Qualcomm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Visteon, along with author, cosmic explorer and MIT professor of physics, Max Tegmark.

http://bit.ly/MicronFoundation

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ThousandEyes: Fortune 50 companies unprepared for DNS attack

A whopping 68 percent of the top 50 companies on the Fortune 500 rankings are not adequately prepared for the next major attack on the DNS, according to the results of the 2018 ThousandEyes Global DNS Performance Report, which also found similar vulnerability among 44 percent of the top 25 SaaS providers, as well as 72% of the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 companies.

Key findings of the 2018 ThousandEyes DNS Infrastructure Performance Report include:
Leading enterprises and SaaS providers remain needlessly vulnerable: DNS best practices are not widespread in major enterprises and SaaS providers, exposing them to severe risk and potentially making them vulnerable to the next attack such as Dyn experienced nearly two years ago.
Not every DNS infrastructure is created equal: DNS performance varies widely for public resolver providers and managed providers across regions and countries. Consideration for managed providers should be based on measured performance, rather than brand, or scope of global presence. 
Social and political systems create unpredictability: DNS performance variations correlate to countries known to interfere with Internet behavior, and controls over technology create risks for doing digital business in certain regions.

The 2018 ThousandEyes Global DNS Performance Report also provides an assessment of  DNS providers. Out of fifteen measured public DNS providers, newcomer Cloudflare was found to have overall fastest performance, followed by Google and OpenDNS, both of which improved over their performance in the 2017 ThousandEyes analysis. Top providers varied by region and country.

Performance highlights of the 2018 report include:

• In the United States, Google was the top performer, followed by Cloudflare and OpenDNS. 
• In the UK, Level 3 had the best performance, followed by Google and OpenDNS. 
• In Japan, Cloudflare was the fastest performer, with Google in second and Neustar in third place. 

“Without DNS, there is no Internet. It's how users find a company’s apps, sites and services on the Internet. A DNS performance issue or attack can have a critical impact on customer experience, revenue, and brand reputation,” said Angelique Medina, senior product marketing manager at ThousandEyes. “The ThousandEyes report highlights vital insights that can help organizations design a more effective DNS infrastructure — because even the most basic DNS decisions can determine how a company’s application or service, and ultimately how their overall brand, is perceived.” 

The full 2018 ThousandEyes DNS Performance Report is available here.
https://www.thousandeyes.com/global-dns-performance-report

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CNEX Labs raises $23M for SSD Controller architecture

CNEX Labs, a start-up developing a transformative architecture for solid state drive (SSD) controllers, raised over $23 million in Series D venture capital.

CNEX said its patented, ground-up redesign of traditional SSD controller architecture plus its turn-key SSD design capability allows customers to procure SSDs customized for their own needs, while reducing their exposure to the cyclical swings in SSD supply that have constrained business growth. The SSD controller technology includes a highly-programmable interface to NAND flash memory, allowing the same controller to work with multiple types of NAND; flexible Flash Translation Layer (FTL) control (either drive- or host-based), allowing easier optimization for different types of workloads; and proprietary hardware acceleration supporting key functions typically run on slower firmware. The company is based in San Jose, California.

The new funding was led by early investor Dell Technologies Capital (which also led CNEX’s Series A round). Strategic investors also include M12, Microsoft’s venture fund (which led CNEX’s Series C round), major semiconductor foundries, large storage and networking semiconductor companies and other new and existing strategic investors. Additional investors in this round include Sierra Ventures, Walden Venture Investments, Brightstone Venture Capital and others.

“CNEX Labs technology relieves customers from the mercy of a commoditized market and puts them back in control of their own destinies,” said CNEX Labs CEO and Co-Founder Alan Armstrong. “We are proud to have achieved such strong backing and validation from industry partners and investors.”

http://www.cnexlabs.com

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Shasta Ventures adds execs from Symantec, Salesforce, InterWest

Shasta Ventures, an early-stage investor based in Menlo Park, California with more than $1 billion under management, announced three additions to its team: former Symantec General Manager Balaji Yelamanchili, Salesforce Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Izak Mutlu, and InterWest Board Partner Drew Harman.

“Balaji, Izak, and Drew are the dream team, joining us at a period of rapid growth,” said Shasta Managing Director and Partner Jason Pressman. “With the promotion of three partners and the addition of two new associates all within the last year, these new team members will be instrumental in helping us build our portfolio of SaaS, next-gen infrastructure, data intelligence, and security investments into world-class companies.”

Current Shasta enterprise software investments include Forbes 2018 Cloud 100 companies Anaplan and Canva, as well as SaaS 1000 Top Companies Highspot, LeanData, Leanplum, LiveIntent, Lucidworks, and Spiceworks and high-growth start-ups Scalyr and Sendbird. Earlier investments include Apptio (APTI: NASDAQ), the business management system of record for hybrid IT, Glint (acquired by LinkedIn), the people success platform, and Zuora (ZUO: NYSE), the leading cloud-based subscription management platform provider. Shasta’s security portfolio features Airspace Systems, Mocana, Stealth Security and Valimail, among others.

https://shastaventures.com

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Intel Vision Accelerator targets AI inference on edge devices

Intel unveiled its family of Intel Vision Accelerator Design Products targeted at artificial intelligence (AI) inference and analytics performance on edge devices. Two acceleration solutions are being introduced: one that features an array of Intel Movidius vision processors and one built on the high-performance Intel Arria 10 FPGA.

The devices could be used to build vision-based AI accelerator cards that collect and analyze data right on edge devices for real-time decision-making. AI workloads are offloaded from the system CPU.

“Until recently, businesses have been struggling to implement deep learning technology. For transportation, smart cities, healthcare, retail and manufacturing industries, it takes specialized expertise, a broad range of form factors and scalable solutions to make this happen. Intel’s Vision Accelerator Design Products now offer businesses choice and flexibility to easily and affordably accelerate AI at the edge to drive real-time insights,” stated Jonathan Ballon, Intel vice president and general manager, Internet of Things Group

Intel said developers it is working with have achieved up to 9.6X times using accelerator cards powered by these devices.

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Bloomberg: Hacked Supermicro Hardware Found in U.S. Telecom

Bloomberg is reporting that compromised hardware from Super Micro Computer was discovered in the network of a major U.S. telecom carrier in August. The name of the carrier was not disclosed. Bloomberg said evidence of the hardware hack was provided by Yossi Appleboum, who is co-CEO of Sepio Systems, a security consultancy based in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Super Micro is still refuting the claims and no information regarding tampered servers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-09/new-evidence-of-hacked-supermicro-hardware-found-in-u-s-telecom?srnd=premium

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Microsoft's Project xCloud video game streaming coming in 2019

Microsoft shared details of its Project xCloud, which will use state-of-the-art global game-streaming technology to allow users to play on any device. The idea is to make the gaming experience to music and movies — available on demand and accessible from any screen.

Microsoft promises to make it easy for developers to bring their content to Project xCloud.

Project xCloud public trials are expected to begin in 2019. Microsoft said the initial focus is "on delivering an amazing added experience to existing Xbox players and on empowering developers to scale to hundreds of millions of new players across devices. Our goal with Project xCloud is to deliver a quality experience for all gamers on all devices that’s consistent with the speed and high-fidelity gamers experience and expect on their PCs and consoles."

Cloud game-streaming is expected to be a multi-faceted, complex challenge. Microsoft noted that compatibility with existing and future Xbox games requires custom hardware blades for its data centers. The customizable blades host the component parts of multiple Xbox One consoles.

https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/10/08/project-xcloud-gaming-with-you-at-the-center/

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Huawei releases flagship 128-port 100GE data center switch

Huawei introduced a CloudEngine series data center switch providing 128 x 100GE ports and featuring a maximum switching and forwarding capability of 25.6 Tbps. Huawei said the new 4U high CE9860X switch will support future 400GE ports.

Two of these CE9860X switches, along with Huawei's 25GE/10GE CE6800 series switches, can be used for spine-leaf network for data centers with fewer than 3000 servers.

Leon Wang, General Manager of Huawei Data Center Network Domain, said “The CE9860X is a new flagship member in the Huawei CloudEngine series data center switch family. CloudEngine series switches have been released for nearly six years and have become one of the products of choice for global enterprises to build cloud data center networks. We believe that the CE9860X will bring belief to many small and medium-sized enterprises and become the best model for them to build cloud data center networks.”

https://e.huawei.com/en/news/global/2018/HC2018/201810090849?source=corp_comm

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Huawei previews Intent-Driven CloudCampus

Huawei announced its next-generation Intent-Driven CloudCampus solution featuring SmartRadio WLAN performance optimization, AI-powered intelligent O&M engine CampusInsight, and AI-powered proactive security protection of campus networks.

"We believe that future campus networks will quickly have three distinct characteristics: ubiquitous wireless, intelligent operation and management, and cloud-based management," said Zhao Zhipeng, General Manager of Huawei's Campus Network Domain. "To support digital applications, future campus networks will become more intelligent than ever. To bring the future to today, Huawei's latest Intent-Driven CloudCampus Solution uses big data, AI, and SmartRadio WLAN performance optimization technologies to help enterprise users build high-quality networks featuring always-on business, assured user experience, and simplified O&M."

Highlights include:

• WLAN APs (802.11ac Wave 2 and 802.11ax) will support SmartRadio technology with intelligent Dynamic Frequency Assignment (DFA), intelligent roaming and load balancing, intelligent Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA), and other algorithms for optimization. The WLAN optimization typically improves the capacity of the entire network by more than 30 percent and greatly enhances the audio and video experience of each user.
• AI-powered intelligent O&M engine CampusInsight, which provides root-cause analysis of wired and wireless network faults. CampusInsight also uses SmartPersona technology to proactively predict the root cause of poor-quality users and proactively implement optimizations, accelerating network fault remediation from hours to minutes.
• Encrypted Communication Analytics (ECA) for AI-powered unknown threat and encrypted traffic detection and defense. This system uses the security probes of switches to capture the features of encrypted traffic. By using cloud-based AI models trained on massive amounts of malicious encrypted traffic, Huawei's CIS identifies malicious encrypted traffic with a detection rate of more than 99 percent and a false reporting rate of less than 0.01 percent. The threat disposal time is shortened from days to minutes.

Huawei will also release a series of new IDN-ready campus switches that can significantly increase terminal access capacity and support the advanced features of Intent-Driven CloudCampus through software upgrades.

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CenturyLink intros Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections

CenturyLink launched a new Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections service that enables real-time creation and deletion of private Ethernet connections to cloud service providers. Customers can now dynamically connect across hybrid cloud workloads including their private cloud and data center locations, as well as within a cloud provider such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS GovCloud (U.S.) is also included in the connectivity options.

Cloud Connect Dynamic Connections enables customers to self-provision the connections on-demand through a secure portal or via API integration. The connections is delivered over private MEF Carrier Ethernet 2.0 connections across CenturyLink's redundant global fiber network of more than 2,200 public and private data centers and over 100,000 on-net enterprise buildings to cloud service providers across the globe. Billing works on a pay-as-you-go model. Every dynamic connection is on an hourly rate with no long-term contract and no early termination fees.

"CenturyLink can now provide on-demand, real-time network connections between enterprise locations, public data centers and cloud service providers across the globe," said Paul Savill, senior vice president of core network and technology solutions at CenturyLink. "This also demonstrates how CenturyLink's global network and hybrid cloud management solutions make the cloud ecosystem easier for enterprises to leverage. Our on-net customers can now enjoy a network experience that matches their cloud experience—wherever they operate."

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Broadcom samples Automotive Gigabit-capable PHY, Secure Switch and Smart Camera MCU

Broadcom expanded its portfolio of automotive Ethernet devices designed to advance in-vehicle connectivity, infotainment, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and smart mobility. The launch includes:

• 100BASE-T1 / 1000BASE-T1 Ethernet PHY: BCM8988x
• 100BASE-T1 / 1000BASE-T1 switches with full security: BCM8955x
• Camera MCU with computer vision functionality: BCM8910x

Broadcom says Ethernet has become the de-facto networking technology for connecting various electronic systems in the car, such as body electronics, infotainment, and ADAS. High speed Ethernet links are essential in getting endpoints such as cameras, RADAR and LIDAR to transfer large amounts of data across the network for accurate real time decision making.

“We are excited to be leading the next evolution of in-vehicle connectivity and networking. Broadcom has been instrumental in developing the automotive One Pair Ethernet technology and ecosystem from inception. As new technologies make inroads into vehicles, Ethernet will play a crucial role in the next wave of automotive applications. Our latest offering of Gigabit capable portfolio and our continued efforts to define next generation PHY technologies, is empowering auto manufacturers to bring new innovations to next generation connected vehicles,” said Ali Abaye, senior director of marketing of the Physical Layer Products Division at Broadcom.

To date, Broadcom has shipped more than 50 million automotive 100BASE-T1 BroadR-Reach PHY and switch Ethernet ports.

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TidalScale raises $24 million for software-defined servers

TidalScale, a start-up offering software-defined servers, announced $24 million in Series B funding. TidalScale enables organizations to build a virtual server of any size from standard commodity physical servers in minutes. And once it’s up and running, TidalScale’s real-time machine learning layer continuously optimizes system performance.

The new funding comes from a strong investment syndicate that includes Bain Capital Ventures, Hummer Winblad, Sapphire Ventures, Infosys, SK Hynix, and a leading server OEM, as well as other undisclosed investors.

“TidalScale helps organizations sharpen their competitive advantage by making in-memory computing accessible with data sets that exceed the capabilities of even the largest traditional servers–with linear cost. Our breakthrough Software-Defined Server technology amplifies the value of modern data centers by enabling organizations to build a virtual server of any size—the right size—in just minutes. For our customers, TidalScale Software-Defined Servers have proven to be game-changing.  We’re honored that so many respected investors and partners recognize the value and promise of TidalScale,” stated Gary Smerdon, President & CEO at TidalScale.

TidalScale is based in Campbell, California.

Start-up profile: TidalScale, building an inverse hypervisor for scale-up servers

Wednesday, May 02, 2018  Silicon Valley, Start-Ups, Tidalscale  

TidalScale, a start-up based in Campbell, California, is on a mission to build the world's largest virtual servers based on Intel x86 commodity hardware. The company's "inverse" hypervisor combines multiple physical servers (including their associated CPUs, memory storage and network) into one or more large software-defined virtual servers. This is the inverse equivalent of VMware because a rack of physical servers are virtualized as though it were...

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IEEE forms 802.11 Extremely High Throughput Study Group

The IEEE has established an 802.11 Extremely High Throughput Study Group to initiate discussion on new IEEE 802.11 features for bands between 1 and 7.125 GHz. The group is identifying requirements for a possible amendment to IEEE 802.11 that would increase peak throughput to support demanding applications such as video over wireless local area networks (WLANs), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

“We are seeking stakeholders throughout the IEEE 802.11 ecosystem to share their experiences with the standard and needs for features such as more spatial streams, higher bandwidth, multi-AP (access point) techniques and multiband switching, aggregation and operation,” said Michael Montemurro, chair of the IEEE 802.11 Extremely High Throughput Study Group. “We envision a rapidly paced effort over the next six to nine months, which we hope will bring into clear definition the most important requirements to be addressed in accelerated development of a possible future amendment to the IEEE 802.11 base standard.”

The IEEE 802.11 Real Time Applications Topic Interest Group is quantifying performance lags and stability issues that have been observed with real-time applications such as mobile and multiplayer games, robotics and industrial automation, as well as the range of mechanisms in the industry to address those issues. The group is working to document usage models and requirements metrics for real-time applications.

“Immersive gaming, for example, is very latency sensitive and requires a quick turnaround on packets for users to enjoy a high-quality experience. Jitter, packet loss and what’s going on throughout the network can have a large impact on these real-time applications, which may have only moderate bandwidth requirements but have very low tolerance for latency,” said Allan Jones, chair of the IEEE 802.11 Real Time Applications Topic Interest Group. “What we’re trying to do in our group is define more specifically what these requirements are for this particular category of applications, toward the goal of informing ongoing IEEE 802.11 innovation.”

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Frontier launches Gigabit Service in its FiOS territories

Frontier Communications is introducing a new Gigabit service in its FiOS and Vantage Fiber markets, offering its fastest residential broadband service while also increasing its new consumer broadband offer to 200/200 Mbps, and adding higher speed tiers previously not offered in Indiana, Oregon and Washington (300/300 Mbps).

Pricing will be the same with or without a contract.

“Frontier is pleased to now offer a 200/200 Mbps service, the fastest, most efficient introductory broadband service available in our markets, plus eye-popping speed and capacity with our FiOS Gigabit for the home,” said John Maduri, Frontier’s Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer.

“Speed and reliability are hallmarks of FiOS Fiber broadband service,” Maduri added. “Two-way speeds over our all-fiber network make Internet tasks faster and more efficient, regardless of the time of day, while also enabling the many connected devices and streaming services in the home to work simultaneously and smoothly.”

Frontier’s 100 percent, all-fiber FiOS network is available to approximately 1.4 million households in the Tampa Bay region in six-counties along the central west coast of Florida. Frontier continues to invest in its fiber network, expanding its availability to nearly 13,000 single family homes, multi-family units and business addresses in 2017 alone. Overall Frontier’s Florida service territory covers nearly 5,000 square miles.

FiOS by Frontier is also offered throughout major urban areas in Southern California; in numerous communities in the Dallas, Texas area; and in parts of Indiana, Oregon and Washington. Vantage Fiber is offered in parts of Connecticut, North Carolina and Minnesota. Availability may be limited in some markets.

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Vapor IO adds former Crown Castle exec to its team

Vapor IO, which is developing tower-connected edge colocation services, announced the addition of Alan Bock to its executive team, as vice president of business development, telecommunications. He will focus on carrier relationships as well as relationships in emerging verticals that include autonomous vehicles and smart cities.

Bock is a former VP at telco infrastructure provider Crown Castle. Previously, Bock served in various roles at Crown Castle International, including vice president of corporate development and strategy where he led Crown’s M&A efforts, including the initial investment in Vapor IO. Prior to Crown Castle, Bock held various managerial and finance roles at Cypress Semiconductor and XO Communications. Bock was also recently on the board of directors of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), a leading consortium of wireless infrastructure in the US.

Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge platform delivers a new category of colocation which will move the intersection of the wireless and wireline networks much closer to the end user. The company recently announced its Series C funding led by Berkshire Partners, with participation from current investor Crown Castle. The funding will be used to build out the nation’s largest collection of colocation data centers and interconnection facilities at the edge of the wireless network.

“Vapor IO’s Kinetic Edge is the fastest-growing platform of tower-connected edge data centers. We expect to be in over 100 locations by 2020 and we are on track to become the largest provider of edge colocation and interconnection services,” said Cole Crawford, founder and CEO of Vapor IO. “Alan’s experience and knowledge of the wireless and edge computing industries is second to none, and we are thrilled to have him on the team at Vapor IO to partner with the wireless carriers and help build out our application ecosystem.”

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Edgecore debuts disaggregated PON OLTs for 10G

At SDN NFV World Congress in The Hague, Edgecore Networks introduced disaggregated open OLT products to enable service providers to deploy 10G PON services and GPON services with the lower costs and greater software control of SDN-managed open network infrastructures.

The Edgecore ASGvOLT32 and ASGvOLT64 GPON OLTs will provide 32-ports and 64-ports respectively of GPON, with uplink ports of 2 x 100GbE and 8 x 25GbE. The ASXvOLT16 10G OLT provides 16 XFP ports supporting 10G XGS-PON or NG-PON2, plus 4 x 100GbE uplinks.

The Edgecore open OLTs include the open source software components ONIE, Open Network Linux, Open Optical Monitoring (OOM) API, the Redfish hardware management API, and the OpenOLT Adapter (vOLTHA driver) for operation in SDN Enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) or R-CORD open infrastructures defined through the Open Network Foundation (ONF). The Edgecore open OLTs will also be compatible with commercial OLT software from Aricent. The Edgecore XGS-PON OLT is commercially available as part of an end-to-end full turnkey solution from DASAN Zhone Solutions.

Edgecore will contribute the complete hardware designs and introduce GPON OLT products in conformance with the “Deutsche Telekom Open GPON-OLT Specification” that has been approved through the OCP Telco Project.

Edgecore also announced that its ASXvOLT16 10G PON OLT has been fully approved by the Open Compute Project as an OCP-Accepted™ product, which is immediately available and conforms to the “AT&T Open XGS-PON 1RU OLT” specification in OCP.

“Deutsche Telekom is collaborating with open communities like OCP and ONF, and directly with leading open network vendors like Edgecore, to specify and accelerate the availability of open whitebox hardware manageable from open software platforms to reduce costs and improve performance for broadband access and other services,” said Armin Sumesgutner, SVP Fixed Mobile Engineering Deutschland, Deutsche Telekom. “We are pleased that Edgecore will provide commercial GPON OLT products as fully open hardware designs that conforms to the specification we contributed to OCP.”

“Edgecore has been working closely with leading service providers worldwide, and with the OCP, ONF and TIP communities to offer disaggregated hardware products that enable open network deployments for broadband access, edge computing, mobile backhaul, and edge switching use cases,” said George Tchaparian, CEO, Edgecore Networks. “The addition of open GPON OLTs to our OCP-Accepted 10G OLT will allow service providers to offer a mix of PON services from an SDN-enabled open hardware and software infrastructure, thereby lowering costs and increasing service flexibility.”

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