Following widely reported outages impacting O2's 4G network in the UK and Softbank's mobile network across central Japan, Ericsson issued an urgent bulletin attributing the issue to two specific software versions of the SGSN–MME (Serving GPRS Support Node – Mobility Management Entity).
The main issue was an expired certificate in these software versions. Ericsson said a complete and comprehensive root cause analysis is still in progress.
Ericsson said the issue impacted a number of customer networks but did not elaborate.
Börje Ekholm, President and CEO, Ericsson, says: “The faulty software that has caused these issues is being decommissioned and we apologize not only to our customers but also to their customers. We work hard to ensure that our customers can limit the impact and restore their services as soon as possible.”
Softbank is on the cusp of completing an initial public offering (IPO) for its mobile business in Japan. Bloomberg reported that the offering is valued at 2.65 trillion yen (US$23.5 billion)
Here's an update on the SDN Enabled Broadband Access reference design developed by Open Networking Foundation (ONF), presented by ADTRAN's Kurt Raaflaub.
SEBA is a lightweight platform based on a variant of R-CORD. It supports a multitude of virtualized access technologies at the edge of the carrier network, including PON, G.Fast, and eventually DOCSIS and more. SEBA supports both residential access and wireless backhaul and is optimized such that traffic can run ‘fastpath’ straight through to the backbone without requiring VNF processing on a server.
U.S. revenue is estimated at more than $282 million for Managed SD-WAN services in 2018, according to a new report from Vertical Systems Group covering service migration, network connectivity and market sizing.
This figure is based on billable U.S. customer sites and WAN access connections installed and under management.
A Managed SD-WAN Service is defined as a carrier-grade network offering for enterprise and business customers, which is managed by a network operator, and delivered over a Software Defined Network (SDN) service architecture that has separate control (overlay) and data (underlay) planes. Not included in this analysis are DIY (Do It Yourself) SD-WAN solutions purchased directly from an SD-WAN technology supplier or a systems integrator.
“Carrier-grade Managed SD-WAN Services in the U.S. began to generate notable revenue in the second half of 2018. Prior to this, most providers supported customers with pilot SD-WAN services that were not substantively monetized,” said Rick Malone, principal of Vertical Systems Group. “For 2019, we expect a major boost in revenue with network operators fully ramped up to sell, deliver and support Managed SD-WAN Services. Moreover, a key driver for managed services is the growing appreciation that migration to SD-WAN is considerably more complex than the promise of ‘easily deployed’ plug-and-play DIY solutions.”
Providers actively selling Managed SD-WAN services in the U.S. include the following companies (in alphabetical order): Aryaka, AT&T, CenturyLink, Cogent, Comcast, Fusion Connect, GTT, Hughes, Masergy, MetTel, Sprint, Verizon, Windstream and Zayo. Other network operators throughout the world offer or plan to offer Managed SD-WAN Services in the U.S. market.
ADTRAN has acquired SmartRG Inc, a supplier of open-source connected home platforms and cloud services for broadband service providers. Financial terms were not disclosed.
SmartRG, which is based in Vancouver, Washington, offers a portfolio of cloud-management, analytics, Wi-Fi-enabled residential gateways along with a SmartOS software platform.
SmartRG counts more than 3 million devices in service and over 1.3 million devices under management in North America, the Caribbean and South America. The company expects to scale and drive growth through its differentiated software solutions as more customers shift from closed, proprietary options to SmartOS—its open-source-based, cloud-enabled solution suite.
ADTRAN said SmartRG's Smart OS, together with its own ADTRAN Mosaic platform, provides full end-to-end management and orchestration solutions from cloud edge to subscriber edge. Service providers understand that bandwidth must now be delivered not only to the doorstep but down to every device within a home to meet consumer expectations.
“We are very excited to welcome everyone at SmartRG—a growing and profitable enterprise—and look forward to their contributions to our team,” ADTRAN Sr. Vice President of Technology and Strategy Jay Wilson said. “SmartRG’s expansive customer base exemplifies its market leadership and we are committed to a smooth transition, as we move toward full collaboration and integration with our award-winning Mosaic platforms.”
“As fiber-based, virtually future-proof residential networks become a reality and bandwidth is no longer the gating factor, value creation will come from the ability to optimize the subscriber experience,” SmartRG President and CEO Jeff McInnis said. “Our ability to deliver against this need will enable ADTRAN and SmartRG customers to lower costs, simplify and scale networks and grow revenue by creating higher-value and lasting relationships with their customers.”
Speaker: Shahar Steiff, AVP, New Technology, PCCW Global.
A typical Communications Service Provider (CSP) owns and delivers a combination of network connectivity, compute, and storage services that are bundled into billable product offerings. It is most likely that such product offerings rely on partner CSPs that use each other’s resources to complement geographical or service capability coverage. To meet its potential, the market needs solutions that will dramatically streamline the commercial interactions between the CSP partners in the supply chain delivering such products. Those interactions typically include establishment of legal and commercial relationships, inquiries about availability of services, requests for quotes, placement of orders, billing, and settlement. As new and ever more complex products enter the market, commercial interactions based on manual intervention and processing using, for example, phone-calls, emails, and fax, will continue to consume significant time, thus delaying the delivery of these high margin services and holding back market growth.
Secure automation of these commercial interactions is highly significant for the availability of services supporting the growth of productivity and the global economy. In the immediate term, demonstrations of automation of billable connectivity/compute/storage services are of great significance to CSPs and vendors of commercial and business platforms.
This PoC provides a powerful demonstration of the dramatic reduction in time and resources required by service providers and partner operators throughout the commercial and business phases of the lifecycle of each service, as well as the ability to offer new products and services with deployment times significantly shorter than the current typical weeks or months. The PoC is based on the distributed ledger paradigm where commercially-sensitive transactions and information are managed using blockchain technology. Although blockchain is popularly perceived as being synonymous with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, blockchain can be used for a large variety of applications of distributed ledgers, including global supply chain verticals. The PoC illustrates the automation of commercial interactions, including product offer discovery, recursive quoting, and blockchain-based settlement and clearing across a network of seven wholesale/transit operator domains.
In addition, automated commercial interactions require machine-to-machine interfaces standardized and designed in such a way that they can be used by most, if not all, the suppliers and customers of these connectivity, compute, and storage billable services. MEF is making progress in standardizing business interaction interfaces (LSO Sonata APIs) which form an important part of this demonstration. These APIs have been combined in this demonstration with smart contract technology in which pre-standardized commercial and business service attributes are captured and expressed dynamically in machine form. This combination of MEF-defined APIs, smart contract technology, and the secure distributed ledger paradigm based on blockchain technology will enable the dramatic reduction of time and human resources in querying, quoting, ordering, billing, and settlement between stakeholders in the WAN-based services market, as well as the explosive growth of new services based on end-to-end, multi-domain, automation.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - Blockchain-Based Carrier Marketplace for LSO Sonata. PoC Participants: Colt Technology Services & Zeetta Networks.
Speaker: Joan A. Garcia EspÃn, Director of Product Management, Zeetta Networks.
Today, carriers have to build formal agreements with every off-net provider with which they want to do business. This limits the commercial engagement to providers with whom we place a larger number of off-net orders. Engaging with more off-net providers with whom we only will place a handful of orders is expensive, and the cost (especially in terms of manpower) of doing so more than outweighs the potential benefit. As a result we pay more for off-net circuits than we could because we use larger providers as intermediaries to do business with smaller providers. These “aggregators” add their own margin in these transactions, which effectively acts as a “tax” that carriers pay for working in this model.
Blockchain could be used to establish a circle-of-trust that service providers, large and small, can join that gives each access to a larger market of suppliers with whom to do business with directly, whilst in tandem bringing about a massive reduction of the overhead of bilateral agreements.
We would achieve this by providing capability -- building on LSO API work happening in MEF to which Colt is contributing -- to be able to find a provider that can meet a specific off-net requirement, evaluate their track-record in the market in delivery and assurance (reputation), get quotes, and place orders on a fully automated basis. This would allow providers like Colt to ensure they are getting a good balance of price and quality of service when buying off-net services as well as using the reputation we build through the quality of IQNet and our service-centric approach in the market to increase the number of sales when selling.
Each transaction -- and specifically SLA compliance in producing quotes, delivering orders, and in-life performance -- will be stored on the blockchain so that operators can evaluate the performance, in a secure environment, of a potential partner in their own selection process. An opaque copy of the financial contract established between the providers will also be stored on the blockchain to later support settlement.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
The main goal of this PoC is to demonstrate the automated & assured orchestration of MEF services across multiple operators’ domains on production networks. The PoC demonstrates the ordering and fulfillment of a complex service comprising connectivity services and VNFs. The showcase demonstrates the feasibility of using NFV-based Service Activation and Testing solutions for MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet services via LSO Presto APIs.
As part of this PoC, several LSO:SOF implementations are used (e.g. ONAP, proprietary) in a single MEF 3.0 Carrier Ethernet service deployment interacting via LSO Sonata and LSO Interlude APIs.
Use Case: A Tata Communications customer uses the Tata service portal to order a service to Tata cloud service. However, one of the customer’s sites is not located on a Tata network and hence this request is sent to Tata’s operator partners for serviceability checks.
This PoC is part of a multi-year MEF 3.0 Implementation project that provides feedback to the MEF technical committees on a range of aspects of LSO orchestration of complex services comprising connectivity and virtual entities (SDN + NFV) across multiple operator domains.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
Internet Exchange Australia (IX Australia) has deployed Smartoptics' DCP-M40 Open Line System and Pluggable DWDM QSFP28 PAM4 transceivers to provide high capacity links to metro locations in Sydney.
The new, automated, network was delivered by Independent Data Solutions (IDS) and provides IX Australia with lowest cost 40 x 100 Gb/s traffic capability over a single pair of fibers.
The new Smartoptics DCP-M40 Open Line System enables up to 40x100G wavelengths over spans exceeding 50km with fully automated addition of new channels for ease of use.
Oslo-based Smartoptics AB said space and power considerations were important factors in the technology choice due to the cost of colocation and available power in hosting facilities. The 1U form factor and max 45W power consumption for a fully loaded 40 channels system were significantly differentiating factors over more traditional coherent transponders.
Magnus Grenfeldt, CEO Smartoptics, commented, “In winning this important network expansion project, Smartoptics demonstrates continued success in commercializing PAM4 technology, our unique open line system and network automation technology as new foundation for Data Centre Interconnectivity. IX Australia has seamlessly expanded the capabilities of its network selecting the most optimal technology for their interconnects. Selecting PAM4 over coherent technology for less than 80km interconnects is clearly significantly advantageous in terms of cost, complexity, availability and latency.”
Telia activated Sweden's first 5G network on the campus of KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
The 5G network will serve as an innovation and research platform for the academia and partner companies. Telia is using a test spectrum license.
Ericsson is the technology provider.
Börje Ekholm, President and CEO, Ericsson, says: “This is the first 5G network in Sweden using commercial and standardized radio and core products. This project serves as an important step toward launching early commercial 5G services. Building a 5G network in one of Sweden’s most creative environments, the KTH campus, demonstrates Ericsson’s and Telia Company’s joint commitment to drive innovation.”
CyrusOne has acquired land from Schiphol Area Development Company N.V., just outside Amsterdam, on which it will build a new data center campus. CyrusOne will develop up to 360,000 square ft with an estimated 72 MW of power capacity on the site.
This is the second major expansion announcement for CyrusOne in the Netherlands. In October 2018, CyrusOne announced an agreement with Agriport A7 for the development of up to 270 MW on an 83-acre campus approximately 25 miles north of central Amsterdam in Middenmeer.
LeanIX, a start-up based in Bonn, Germany, closed $30 million in Series C funding.
LeanIX offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application for Enterprise Architecture (EA), which enables organizations to make faster, data-driven decisions.
The funding round was led by Insight Venture Partners. Previous investors DTCP (Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners), Capnamic Ventures, and Iris Capital also participated in the round. The closing brings LeanIX’s total funding to nearly $40 million since its founding in 2012.
Guru Parulkar, Executive Director of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), provides an overview of this week's operator-led conference in Silicon Valley, which featured presentations from ONF’s operator leadership: AT&T, China Mobile, China Unicom, Comcast, Google, Deutsche Telekom, Telefonica, NTT Group, and Turk Telekom.
A major accomplishment for 2018 was ONF's release of its initial set of open source Reference Designs, which target edge and access clouds infrastructure. These are “blueprints” for how to put common modular components together to create platforms based on open source. They leverage the ONF's prior work with CORD and M-CORD.
One big item of news from this week's conference is AT&T's announcement that it has launched the first SDN-enabled Broadband Access (SEBA) field trials in two cities with over 100 customers.
It's a really exciting time at AT&T not only because of the upcoming 5G launch later this month but also because of the many other areas of innovation underway in the network, said Andre Fuetsch, CTO of AT&T and President of AT&T Labs, in a keynote address at the ONF Connect conference in Santa Clara, California.
Some highlights:
AT&T is actively developing the ONF Software-defined Broadband Access (SEBA) reference design. It has two field trials underway using 10 GPON technology. This marks the first field deployment of SEBA, which is expected to be an enabler of edge cloud capabilities.
AT&T is handling 242 petabytes of traffic per day, 53% of which is video.
The move to NFV/SDN began in earnest in 2014 and so far the company has virtualized 65% of its network. The stated goal is to virtualize 75% by 2020.
The decision to adopt whitebox switches in the network is a key differentiator for AT&T, especially as capabilities move toward the edge.
In 2017, AT&T announced its first field trials of whiteboxes.
AT&T is now ready to move forward with the deployment of 60,000 whitebox routers in cell site towers across its network.
These cell site whitebox gateway routers will use a software stack from AT&T's Vyatta division.
AT&T has published its specifications the white box cell site gateway router. This has become the basis for the Disaggregated Network Operating System (DANOS) project, which is now being hosted by the Linux Foundation.
The cell site routers integrate into its Open Network Automation Project (ONAP) implementation. This is powering the 5G network.
AT&T is also deploying whiteboxes as top-of-rack switches in its data centers. It is also deploying whiteboxes in its global POPs, including recent installations in Singapore, Toronto, and Amsterdam.
AT&T is supporting the O-RAN Alliance for virtualizing the radio access network.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and deputy chairwoman of Huawei, was arrested in Vancouver, Canada on December 1st at the request of the U.S. government, which is seeking her extradition, according to multiple news sources. U.S. authorities reportedly are investigating violations of economic sanctions on Iran.
Meng Wanzhou (Sabrina Weng) is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.
A biography on Huawei's website says Meng Wanzhou joined the company in 1993 and has previously held the positions of Director of the International Accounting Dept, CFO of Huawei Hong Kong, and President of the Accounting Mgmt Dept. She is credited with the founding of five shared service centers around the world, the completion of Huawei's Global Payment Center in Shenzhen, leading an eight-year partnership with IBM focused on Integrated Financial Services.
BT removed Huawei gear from core network functions following its acquisition of EE three years ago, according to The Financial Times.
The report says BT will also avoid the use of Huawei gear in its 5G core although it may use other infrastructure products from Huawei. This follows warnings from British intelligence agencies that Huawei could pose a national security risk. No technical details were reported.
ADVA introduced a compact cell site gateway device for providing Carrier Ethernet and IP service demarcation for small cells deployed outdoors in locations such as walls or lampposts.
The ADVA FSP 150-GO102Pro, which is billed as the world’s smallest cell site gateway device, delivers precise time and frequency synchronization. It features automated testing and in-service monitoring and is available in two sizes. A hardened housing is sealed against water, moisture, and dust.
ADVA says this single device with standardized software-defined networking (SDN) interfaces offers a unique combination of Carrier Ethernet and IP features together with the advanced synchronization capabilities required for emerging technologies such as LTE-Advanced and 5G. The ADVA FSP 150-GO102Pro features a comprehensive set of protocols and tools for fast and efficient service activation, testing and monitoring. It also empowers operators to take advantage of bandwidth slicing and auto-provisioned bandwidth services.
“Our FSP 150-GO102Pro is the ultimate outdoor demarcation technology. It ensures the highest quality of service even in the harshest conditions. This phenomenally versatile device empowers operators to deliver reliable, programmable mobile backhaul connectivity without investing in expensive cabinets or power-hungry air conditioning systems,” said Stephan Rettenberger, SVP, marketing and investor relations, ADVA. “We worked closely with major wholesale service providers to develop our FSP 150-GO102Pro. The solution is specifically engineered to meet their exacting requirements and facilitate their 5G ambitions. It offers full Layer 2 and 3 service demarcation with a complete set of Carrier Ethernet and routing features. The FSP 150-GO102Pro even provides highly automated zero touch provisioning for effortless installation and activation.”
“The latest addition to our market-leading portfolio of multi-layer edge technology responds to an urgent demand for a demarcation product that can be easily installed in any location. Versatile mounting options, the market’s smallest form factor and an extended temperature range without the need for fans make our FSP 150-GO102Pro ideal for wholesale operators looking to quickly and affordably connect small cell sites,” said Ulrich Kohn, director, technical marketing, ADVA. “The launch of our FSP 150-GO102Pro means there no longer needs to be any compromise on the quality of mobile backhaul connectivity services, even in the toughest conditions. It ensures high-capacity service demarcation with the lowest available power consumption. What’s more, our FSP 150-GO102Pro technology is fully prepared for central SDN control, creating a truly future-proof architecture.”
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - Multi-Domain, Application-Defined Interconnection Orchestration. PoC Participants: AT&T, Equinix, and Ciena. This group won the prestigious MEF18 PoC Gold Award.
Speakers: Marco Naveda, Principal Architect, Office of the CTO, Ciena and Oleg Berzin, Senior Director, Technology Innovation, Equinix.
Software Defined Interconnection Exchanges enable public/private peering using secure interconnection across a multi-domain global virtual fabric and federated orchestration using open LSO APIs. This can enable @scale deployment of massive IoT with edge clouds, network clouds, and public clouds per application slice. Secure IoT services are also possible with machine inference engines at the enterprise edge. A broad ecosystem of enterprises, edge cloud providers, network cloud providers, and public cloud providers can leverage and benefit from this global virtual fabric.
In this PoC, the Ciena Blue Planet mulit-domain orchestrator is unifying the enterprise customer experience across the micro edge, the macro edge, and hyper-scale cloud. The PoC illustrates interworking between the Blue Planet orchestrator and the open source ONAP orchestrator supported by AT&T and others collaborating within The Linux Foundation. The PoC incorporates LSO Interlude and LSO Legato interfaces for service orchestration.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - Pocket-sized, Model-driven Networks. PoC Participants: Vodafone, Ciena, and DGIT Systems.
Speakers: Greg Tilton, CEO, DGIT Systems; Chris Lowman, Innovation & Architecture Team, Vodafone and Sam Torrente, IT Operations Transformation, Ciena.
This PoC uses LSO Legato and LSO Sonata APIs -- augmented by some additional, extended APIs -- to configure a network model, learn the model in a business system through an API, compose a product using the learned model in a catalog, and then publish the composed product to customers (audience), who can then order and manage the product via a web mobile application.
Ciena creates the network within their Blue Planet environment, then exposes the service models through a TMF633 catalog API within the LSO Legato context, allowing the DGIT System Telflow to learn about the model and use it to create an offer for market.
The mobile users will then be able to order and managed their offers through a mobile web application
This PoC shows that a common set of APIs can be used for LSO Sonata and LSO Cantata use cases and can drive alternative digital channels. It also shows that a model-driven presentation of networks though the LSO Legato API use case can be used by IT systems to dynamically bundle services to create market offers.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - Self-Service, Agile, Orchestrated Cloudlink™. PoC Participants: Zayo and Ciena.
Speaker: Mike Stein, Product Manager, Zayo.
With the adoption of the Cloud, customers today enjoy the flexibility of being able to spin up and spin down resources on a consumption, as-needed basis via their cloud service provider. Until recently, that same capability did not exist in the network service provider domain. This created a dynamic where large Cloud Service Providers (CPs) were able to engage with a customer on a lightweight and nimble basis, whereas large Network Service Providers (NSPs) were viewed as monolithic, slow to engage, and inflexible.
With CloudLink, Zayo and Ciena (Blue Planet) have partnered to combine best-in-class SDN technology and trusted API integration with large CPs, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle Cloud, and Zayo Cloud. This product evolution delivers the necessary agile, self-service, and elastic connectivity needed to enable a customer to rapidly provision private connectivity to the public cloud. These capabilities are showcased in this MEF18 PoC, which applies MEF’s LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) architecture and open LSO APIs (Legato, Sonata, Interlude, and Presto) in a production environment to automate the end-to-end delivery of CE services across a multi-vendor network, from an enterprise site to the cloud.
The outcome, CloudLink by Zayo, provides an extremely flexible solution that allows a customer to consume network resources in the same way they consume cloud resources - on an as-needed, consumption basis. The benefit to the network and cloud service providers includes faster time to revenue and increased customer satisfaction, making CloudLink a powerful solution for all parties.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) has been adopted in the industry; now, with CloudLink, cloud connectivity as a service is a reality.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
MEF18 Proof of Concept, 29 - 31 Oct - End-to-end Service Orchestration of E-LAN over Multiple Domains via the LSO Interlude Interface and Across Multiple Vendors. PoC participants: Eurofiber and Inmanta.
Speaker: Jeroen van der Laan, Software Solution Architect, Eurofiber.
Zero-touch automation of network services across domains and technologies provides many business opportunities. At MEF18, Eurofiber demonstrates end-to-end service orchestration of E-LAN services over multiple providers and across vendors and technologies. The company relies on the Inmanta Service Orchestrator to achieve fully automated fulfillment and management of the E-LAN services. End-to-end service orchestration results in much faster delivery, more flexibility, and higher reliability.
This PoC is the result of the actual Proof of Concept that has been created within the Eurofiber Group together with Inmanta. In the Showcase, a customer can order (or adapt) an E-LAN service by providing a few parameters to the business application. Using these parameters, all other configuration of the service is automatically deducted. The orchestrator applies the changes to the network services and infrastructure in a reliable and structured way, guaranteeing end-to-end consistency across domains.
Eurofiber NL and UNET are part of the Eurofiber Group, a fast-growing international provider of industry-leading digital infrastructure. With its fiber-optic network and high-quality datacenters, Eurofiber provides companies, government bodies, and non-profit organizations with a future-proof infrastructure. An open infrastructure that enables customers to thrive, innovate, and reach their full potential is the foundation for a smart society.
Inmanta is a spin-off of the University of Leuven and enables CSPs to deliver their services much faster and with more flexibility. Its end-to-end service orchestrator automates and streamlines the entire service lifecycle. Instead of months and years to deliver services and release new features, Inmanta reduces the process to a matter of weeks and minutes.
Save the date for MEF19, 18-22 November 2019, JW Marriott, LA LIVE, Los Angeles.
The main issue was an expired certificate in these software versions. Ericsson said a complete and comprehensive root cause analysis is still in progress.
The main issue was an expired certificate in these software versions. Ericsson said a complete and comprehensive root cause analysis is still in progress.
