Thursday, March 30, 2023

Cisco debuts 36 x 800G line card for its 8000 series routers

Cisco introduced a 36 x 800G line card with a capacity 28.8 Tbps for use in its Cisco 8000 Series Routers. The line card offers double the density of the previous generation, with support for 2x400G-FR4 and 8x100G-FR interfaces.



The high density solution is aimed at IP backbone, metro core, and data centers supporting AI/ML workloads.

The new 28.8Tbps / 36 x 800G line card is powered by Cisco Silicon One P100 chip, which is implemented in 7nm. The silicon design packs 192 x112G SerDes in single chip. It features on-chip SRAM/TCAM memory with high-capacity HBM for buffering and LPM scale. The new chip also brings advanced traffic management, load balancing, instrumentation and telemetry. Cisco is also introducing an IOS XR Path Tracing capability that provides hop-by-hop visibility of the packet’s path through the network.


“We continue to expand 800G to more use cases, from AI/ML fabrics to the core, to help our customers meet their performance and sustainability goals,” said Kevin Wollenweber, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Networking, Data Center and Provider Connectivity. “With our dense core and spine solutions using new double density line cards with Cisco Silicon One, we have accelerated the transition to 800G anywhere.”

The line card could be populated with Cisco's forthcoming 800G pluggable transceivers. Because it supports industry standards, the line card could also accept third party optics conforming to MSA specs.

https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2023/m03/new-cisco-800g-innovations-help-to-supercharge-the-internet-for-the-future-by-improving-networking-economics-and-sustainability-for-service-providers-and-cloud-providers.html

Cisco boosts its Routed Optical Networking solutions

Cisco is rolling out a number of enhancements to its Routed Optical Networking portfolio with new products and features, including a new Cisco NCS 1010 open optical line system, Bright ZR/ZR+ pluggable optics, and expansion of Cisco Crosswork Automation portfolio.   "Cisco is committed to powering an inclusive future for all, where everyone has access to quality internet, and that requires fundamental changes in networking,” said Bill Gartner,...


Sabrina Meng takes a turn as Chair of Huawei

Sabrina Meng will assume the position of Rotating and Acting Chair of Huawei from April 1, 2023 to September 30, 2023, serving as head the Board of Directors and its Executive Committee.

Meng Wanzhou has held positions including Director of the International Accounting Dept, CFO of Huawei Hong Kong, and President of the Accounting Mgmt Dept. Ms. Meng now serves as Deputy Chairwoman of the Board, and Rotating Chairwoman and CFO of Huawei.

On Friday, March 31, Huawei is expected to announce its 2022 financial results.

https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2023/3/rotating-chair-tenure

  • In September 2021, after nearly 3 years of house arrest in Vancouver, Canada, pending extradition to the United States, Meng reached a settlement with U.S. Department of Justice resolving the case of alleged fraud.
  • Meng is the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei.


Windstream completes rip-n-replace of Huawei gear

Windstream confirmed that it has now removed all Huawei equipment from its network.

Windstream’s network included Huawei gear acquired as part of its 2017 purchase of EarthLink. 

The company says the prohibited equipment represented a small fraction of its routing and transportation capability.

As a federal contractor, Windstream implemented a multi-year engineering plan to remove this equipment in 2019, before the FCC made removal mandatory. By fall 2022, all Huawei equipment had been disconnected from Windstream’s network and was no longer operative.

“As an industry leader in network intelligence and infrastructure expansion, Windstream was prepared to quickly and effectively remove the impacted equipment,” said Art Nichols, Windstream’s chief technology officer. “Our multi-pronged approach included using alternate routes, replacing equipment where necessary, and leveraging the company’s winning Fast and Flexible process.”

https://www.windstream.com

Verizon Frontline intros two connectivity nodes for first responders

Verizon Frontline introduced two new portable communications assets for delivering mission-critical communications to first responders when network connections and coverage are impacted by natural disasters or damaged infrastructure.

The first of the two new assets is the compact Verizon Rapid Response Connectivity unit, whichis designed to be deployed by one person in fewer than 15 minutes and is capable of delivering secure and reliable voice and internet service for first responders under austere conditions. The Verizon Rapid Response Connectivity Unit is C-Band-enabled (5G) and features Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite connectivity options, a cloud-managed firewall, a cloud-managed router/switch and 4G LTE network extenders capable of supporting up to 120 active users. This asset is also built on a rugged, all-terrain motorized carriage, includes a gasoline generator with an extra five-gallon fuel tank and functions at nearly any altitude, in nearly any climate.

The second new asset is Verizon Frontline’s Mobile Connectivity Agile Vehicle, a modified electric motorcycle capable of providing first responders with mission-critical communications capabilities when operating in areas that traditional vehicles and larger deployable assets can’t reach.

For example, the Mobile Connectivity Agile Vehicle is able to navigate narrow, hard-to-access trails to provide wildland firefighters deep in a forest with satellite connectivity directly on the front lines. In addition to its satellite capabilities, the Mobile Connectivity Agile Vehicle is also equipped with a cellular network extender and WiFi router to help provide public safety agencies with critical voice and data service during emergency response operations.

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-frontline-debuts-two-newest-deployable-asset-prototypes

FCC looks to reevaluate licenses of foreign telecom operators

The FCC is considering whether to periodically reassess the operating licenses of foreign-owned companies that provide telecommunications services in the United States. The new rules would require foreign-owned license holders to undergo a periodic review and renewal process, which would involve close consultation with our national security colleagues in the Executive Branch.

 FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said the rules need to be updated to stay ahead of evolving security threats. 

“Across the board, the FCC is taking clear and decisive action to address national security risks in our communications networks,” said Chairwoman Rosenworcel.  “That is why it is so important to have the agency regularly review foreign companies’ authorizations to provide telecommunications services in the United States.  If a provider poses a threat that cannot be mitigated, we will take the steps necessary to remove their access to our networks.”

In the last few years, the FCC has revoked the Section 214 operating authorities of four Chinese state-owned carriers based on recommendations from national security agencies. 

The FCC has also brought a case against a company that was required to divest unvetted Russian ownership.

https://www.fcc.gov/document/chairwoman-proposes-periodic-national-security-sec-214-reviews




Israel's Partner Comm picks Adtran's fiber access

Partner Communications is leveraging Adtran's open, disaggregated 10Gbit/s fiber access platform.

Partner Communications is Israel’s second-largest mobile operator, and it also operates a fiber broadband network that passes nearly one million homes and connects hundreds of thousands of fiber customers. 

Adtran’s Combo PON technology enables Partner Communications to simultaneously provision a mix of GPON and XGS-PON services across the same fiber infrastructure using a single access port while maximizing the efficiency of their operations. This simplifies the migration to multigigabit services as demand increases while saving space and power.

“There is competition across our market in Israel. It’s imperative that we can offer higher internet speeds and deliver them quickly. We already see high market demand for our multigigabit service tiers. Adtran’s solution simplifies our network operations, lowering our cost to scale fiber broadband,” said Yaniv Bar-Gil, head of fiber infrastructure division at Partner Communications. “Adtran also offers a high level of customer support that we cannot find with other solution vendors. The team works hard to understand our unique challenges and helps us address them quickly so we can focus on delivering the best experience to our subscribers.”

“Like many service providers, Partner Communications needed the ability to rapidly deploy efficient FTTH technologies with open architectures to increase their service velocity while lowering operational cost. Our open and disaggregated fiber access solution creates networks with greater simplicity, sustainability and scalability,” commented Ronan Kelly, CTO of EMEA and APAC regions at Adtran. “We’re providing a highly differentiated, multi-vendor, multi-technology platform that delivers the high-speed broadband services needed to attract new subscribers, launch new services and enter new markets.”

https://www.adtran.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/20230330-partner-communications-picks-adtran-to-quickly-launch-multigigabit-fiber-broadband-services

EnerTribe picks Tarana's fixed wireless access

EnerTribe, a Native American and woman-owned consulting firm specializing in telecommunications and infrastructure projects, has selected Tarana's next-generation fixed wireless access (ngFWA) for broadband projects serving tribal communities across the United States. For this project, EnerTribe will assist the Round Valley Indian Tribes (RVIT) in deploying wireless infrastructure to provide improved broadband capacity and coverage in Covelo Valley, California.

EnerTribe serves as a resource for operators, value added resellers, and other organizations that provide essential services to tribal residents, governments, and enterprises. 

Tarana’s G1 platform, which was launched commercially in late 2021, is currently in use in over 210 active operator networks across 19 countries.

Tarana President, Dirk Gates, added, “We are thrilled to be partnering with EnerTribe on such significant projects. EnerTribe’s focus on providing broadband and other essential infrastructure to indigenous communities is well-aligned with our mission to enable connectivity in un- and under-served regions. We are excited about the prospects for our partnership, which will expand quality internet access to the Round Valley Indian Tribes and beyond.”

Ribbon completes $55 Million preferred stock private placement

In a private placement financing transaction, Ribbon issued 55,000 shares of Series A preferred stock, along with warrants to purchase approximately 4.86 million shares of common stock. Each share of Series A preferred stock was sold at a price of $970 per share. 

The private placement resulted in gross proceeds of approximately $53.4 million, with participation from Ribbon's three largest stockholders - Neuberger Berman client funds, JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Swarth Investments Ltd. 

Ribbon used the net proceeds, together with cash on hand and funds received from the sale of its fixed rate interest rate swap, to prepay $75 million of the principal amount outstanding on the Term Loan A under Ribbon's senior secured credit agreement. 

"We are pleased with the continued interest and support we received from both existing and new stockholders, as well as the banks included in our credit facility," said Ribbon Communications CFO Mick Lopez.  "We believe the structure of the preferred stock, coupled with the previously announced amendment to the credit facility, complements our existing senior secured credit facility in a stockholder friendly way, while preserving balance sheet flexibility going forward. With the outlook for future interest rate increases diminishing, we believe the value of our fixed rate swap has likely peaked, making this an ideal time to capture this value and effectively reduce our total outstanding debt by approximately $20 million," continued Mr. Lopez. 

Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Intel updates data center silicon roadmap

AI from the cloud to the network and to the edge was the persistent theme in an investor webinar hosted by Intel and focused on the company’s Data Center and Artificial Intelligence business unit. 

The top order of business was to outline the Xeon roadmap for the next few years, its key product line in a total available market (TAM) that Intel now believes with top $110 billion over the next five years.

Xeon highlights:

Current: 4th Gen Xeon systems are now shipping with all major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufacturers (ODMs), as well as with the top 10 global cloud service providers. Intel claims its 48-core 4th Gen Xeon can deliver a 4X performance gain going head-to-head with a 48-core 4th Gen AMD Epyc CPU on a broad set of deep-learning workloads.

Q4 2023: 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Emerald Rapids is Intel’s next Performance-core (P-core) product. The CPU is already sampling to customers. Volume validation is underway.

First-half 2024: Intel Xeon Processor code-named Sierra Forest, the first Efficient-core (E-core) Xeon processor, will boast 144 cores per socket. The first CPU based on the upcoming Intel 3 process, Sierra Forest hit power-on earlier this quarter with multiple OSes booting in record time (less than a day). It’s on schedule with the first samples already out the door.

A Fast Follow: Intel Xeon Processor code-named Granite Rapids, will arrive hot on the heels of Sierra Forest in 2024. Though a specific launch date has yet to be disclosed, its time-to-market will benefit from sharing a platform with Sierra Forest. Shared IP and technology minimize development and design time. 

Some additional highlights:

  • Intel invented and is leading the ecosystem in developing a new type of DIMM called Multiplexer Combined Rank (MCR) that lets can achieve speeds of 8,800 mega transfers per second, based on DDR5.
  • The Habana Gaudi3 AI accelerator has taped in. Performance details haven’t been shared yet, but Habana Gaudi2 is in the environment and offering 1.8x advantage in throughput-per-watt over a comparable A100 server when running a popular computer vision workload.
  • There are 15 new FPGA products scheduled to go through the production release qualification (PRQ) process this year – that’s more new product introductions than ever before in Intel’s FPGA business.
  • Intel has made contributions to SYCL, an open C++-based programming model, and acquired Codeplay Software (a leader in the SYCL language and community). SYCL is now included in oneAPI so customers can program and compile across CPUs, GPUs and accelerators from multiple vendors.

“When we talk about compute demand, we often look at the TAM through the lens of CPU units. However, counting sockets does not fully reflect how silicon innovations deliver value to the market. Today, innovations are delivered in several ways, including increased CPU core density, the use of accelerators built into the silicon and the use of discrete accelerators,” stated Sandra Rivera, Intel Executive VP and GM of the Data Center and Artificial Intelligence business unit. 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/four-takeaways-from-intel-investor-webinar.html

Synopsis debuts AI-powered EDA suite for chipmakers

Synopsys launched a suite of AI-driven solutions for the design, verification, testing and manufacturing of the most advanced digital and analog chips. 

The company said its new toolset lets engineers use AI at every stage of chip design, from system architecture to design and manufacturing, and access the solutions in the cloud. 

Renesas, a leader in the automotive space, is already using Synopsys.ai to shave weeks off product development times with enhanced silicon performance and cost reduction.

The Synopsys.ai EDA suite includes AI-driven solutions:

  • Digital design space optimization to achieve power, performance and area (PPA) targets, and boost productivity (used in 100 production tape-outs by January 2023).
  • Analog design automation for rapid migration of analog designs across process nodes.
  • Verification coverage closure and regression analysis for faster functional testing closure, higher coverage and predictive bug detection.
  • Automated test generation resulting in fewer, optimized test patterns for silicon defect coverage and faster time to results.
  • Manufacturing solutions to accelerate development of lithography models with high accuracy to achieve the highest yield.

"Increased complexity, engineering resource constraints and tighter delivery windows were challenges crying out for a full AI-driven EDA software stack from architectural exploration to design and manufacturing – and we've delivered it," said Shankar Krishnamoorthy, GM of Synopsys EDA Group. "With Synopsys.ai solutions, our customers' ability to search design solution spaces across multiple domains is in hyperdrive. They're finding optimal results far faster as the .ai learns run-to-run, and it's transforming their ability to meet and beat tough design and productivity targets."

https://investor.synopsys.com/news/news-details/2023/Synopsys.ai-Unveiled-as-Industrys-First-Full-Stack-AI-Driven-EDA-Suite-for-Chipmakers/default.aspx

Cyxtera automates provisioning on its global data center platform

Cyxtera has added self-service capabilities that allow organizations to evaluate, order, and deploy services from its global data center platform.

The new capabilities enable customers to shop for and provision on-demand infrastructure, space, power, connectivity, and other services in Cyxtera’s data centers with or without an existing contract in place or the need to engage in a lengthy sales process.

“Our new self-service capabilities give customers everything they like about cloud – the ability to select and provision on-demand services quickly – with the cost predictability, performance, and control they get from running dedicated infrastructure in a data center,” said Mitch Fonseca, Cyxtera’s Chief Development Officer.

“Many organizations are reevaluating their workload placement to optimize efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and scalability,” Fonseca continued. “While public cloud is a great match for early experimentation, DevOps, and many seasonal workloads that burst up or down, it is not typically ideal for steady-state, resource-intensive enterprise workloads and can be very expensive for these use cases.”

With Cyxtera’s Digital Exchange data center network fabric and Enterprise Bare Metal offering, organizations can choose on-demand services from a variety of leading enterprise vendors, including Dell, HPE, and NVIDIA. They can also provision Cyxtera SmartCabs if they wish to use their own hardware. With either configuration, organizations can leverage Cyxtera IP Connect to instantly provision internet access.

www.cyxtera.com

Corning opens new optical cable factory in North Carolina

Corning inaugurated its newest optical cable manufacturing campus in Hickory, North Carolina. 

Corning has manufactured optical fiber and cable in North Carolina for more than 40 years. With the opening of the Trivium campus, Corning will manufacture optical cable at two sites in Hickory and at sites in Newton and Winston-Salem. The company manufactures optical fiber in Concord and Wilmington. Charlotte is home to Corning’s Optical Communications headquarters.

The new campus is part of a series of investments by Corning totaling more than $500 million since 2020, helping to meet growing fiber and cable demand and strong customer commitments.

The company says its new manufacturing facilities will add hundreds of jobs to its existing North Carolina workforce of more than 5,000. 

"High-speed internet is critical for North Carolinians to work, learn, get health care online, and connect with one another," North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said. "Manufacturers like Corning know our strong workforce and economy make North Carolina the best place to do business, and we’re glad to partner with them to create more good paying jobs in Hickory."

“With this new manufacturing campus, we’re creating local jobs, we’re helping our workforce build important skills, we’re cultivating our next generation of talent right here in North Carolina, and we’re thrilled to continue addressing demand for the fiber and cable that are so vital to moving the world forward,” said Corning Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Wendell P. Weeks. “We appreciate the support of federal, state, local officials, and industry organizations as we come together to help connect the unconnected and to make ‘Internet for All’ a reality.”

Corning recently launched a strategic supply collaboration with NTCA to support rural network buildouts, providing NTCA members with a specially reserved supply of cable and connectivity solutions.

https://www.corning.com/worldwide/en.html

Lockheed's Crescent Space to offer lunar communications

Crescent Space Services, a new commercial company launched by Lockheed Martin, aims to provide infrastructure-as-a-service for lunar missions.

Crescent's first product, named Parsec, is a cislunar communications and navigation network. Parsec uses a constellation of small lunar satellites that will collectively work to provide continuous connection between Earth and the people and assets in lunar orbit, as well as on the surface of the Moon. In addition to communications, Parsec will also provide critical position, timing and navigation services for lunar missions.

Crescent will own and operate the Parsec network upon launch of its first nodes in 2025. Lockheed Martin will produce and deliver the Parsec spacecraft to Crescent, drawing upon its deep expertise developing exploration missions, communications satellites, software and GPS satellites.

Crescent is led by CEO Joe Landon, who previously served as vice president of Advanced Programs Development for Lockheed Martin Space.

"Crescent is well positioned to serve the upcoming wave of lunar science and exploration missions, including NASA's crewed Artemis moon landings," said Landon. "With Lockheed Martin's investment and access to its technical capabilities and deep space experience, Crescent is set up to ensure Parsec will be ready to provide reliable and affordable communications services for our customers."

https://www.crescentspace.com

Faroese Telecom hits 5G peak of 5.9 Gbps with Ericsson

Faroese Telecom, the incumbent operator on the Faroe Island, and Ericsson achieved 5G download peak speeds of up to 6Gbps using 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum. It is the fastest measured speed in a live network in Europe to date. 


The 5G non-standalone data speeds were achieved in an indoor deployment using Ericsson’s AIR 5322 and Baseband 6648. By aggregating 800MHz of 5G mmWave spectrum in n258 and 40 MHz of 4G FDD (frequency division duplex) spectrum a downlink speed of 5.9Gbps was measured by the smartphone when using 256QAM modulation. Moreover, an upload speed of 1.6Gbps was registered by aggregating several carriers in the uplink (UL) and selecting a TDD (time division duplex) pattern optimized for UL traffic.   

The operator plans to deploy multi-gigabit mmWave technology across all of the self-governing nation’s 18 islands in suburban and rural areas.

Faroe Islands is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. 

Jan Ziskasen, CEO of Faroese Telecom Group, says: “Our ambition is to have giga speed everywhere on the islands – in cities as well as in small villages, on roads, in tunnels, on mountaintops and even out to sea. Digital inclusion is a main pillar in our sustainability agenda thus reaching every centimeter and every person located on our 18 islands is paramount. This will bring unprecedented services to our consumers and businesses where world-class 5G gives key infrastructure for developing products and services paving the way for the future.”


Versa appoints VP of Marketing

Versa Networks has named Dan Maier, a former executive from GreyNoise, Anomali and Zscaler, as its new Chief Marketing Officer. 

The company alson named Gopal Bhagia, former Senior Director of Global Demand Generation at Tenable, as its new VP of Demand Generation; and Kevin Sheu, former Bitglass Marketing leader, as its new VP of Product Marketing.

“I am excited to join Versa Networks at such an exciting and critical time for the company and the growth of SASE,” said Mr. Maier. 


SES and Intelsat confirm merger talks

SES and Intelsat confirmed that have undertaken talks about a possible business combination.

At this stage, there can be no certainty that a transaction would materialise. 

https://www.ses.com

Tuesday, March 28, 2023

Enfabrica unveils multi-terabit Accelerated Compute Fabric chips

Enfabrica, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, emerged from stealth to unveil a new class of Accelerated Compute Fabric (ACF) chips optimized for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and accelerated computing workloads.

Enfabrica's Accelerated Compute Fabric (ACF) devices are designed to deliver multi-terabit-per-second data movement between GPUs, CPUs, accelerators, memory and networking devices. The company envisions composable AI fabrics of compute, memory and network resources that scales from a single system to tens of thousands of nodes. The design provides uncontended access to >50X DRAM expansion over existing GPU networks via ComputeExpressLink (CXL) bridging.

Enfabrica’s said its flagship ACF switch silicon enables customers to cut their cost of GPU compute by an estimated 50 percent for Large Language Model (LLM) inferencing and 75 percent for deep learning recommendation model (DLRM) inferencing at the same performance point.

Enfabrica’s first Accelerated Compute Fabric Switch (ACF-S) chip offers multi-port 800 Gigabit Ethernet networking and high-radix PCIe Gen5 and CXL 2.0+ interfaces. Without changing physical interfaces, protocols or software layers above device drivers, the ACF-S delivers multi-Terabit switching and bridging between heterogeneous compute and memory resources in a single silicon die, while dramatically reducing the number of devices, I/O latency hops, and device power in today’s AI clusters consumed by top-of-rack network switches, RDMA-over-Ethernet NICs, Infiniband HCAs, PCIe/CXL switches, and CPU-attached DRAM.

Notably, by incorporating unique CXL memory bridging capabilities, Enfabrica’s ACF-S is the first data center silicon product in the industry to deliver headless memory scaling to any accelerator, enabling a single GPU rack to have direct, low-latency, uncontended access to local CXL.mem DDR5 DRAM at more than 50 times greater memory capacity versus GPU-native High-Bandwidth Memory (HBM).

“Generative AI is rapidly transforming the nature and volume of compute traffic in data centers,” said Rochan Sankar, CEO and co-founder of Enfabrica. “AI problem sizes and user serving scale will continue to grow by orders of magnitude every couple of years. The problem is that current server I/O and networking solutions have serious bottlenecks that will cause them to either buckle under the scale of demand, or vastly underutilize the costly compute resources deployed to meet it. We believe we have cracked the code on a I/O fabric design that will scale high-performance, low-latency AI workloads at far superior TCO than anything out there, and make growing AI infrastructure composable, sustainable and democratized. We are excited to work with our partners and target customers to deliver our Accelerated Compute Fabric products into this fast evolving market.”

https://enfabrica.net

  • Enfabrica began in 2020, funded by Sutter Hill Ventures, and led by Silicon Valley veterans Rochan Sankar, Shrijeet Mukherjee, and key engineers who built industry-leading silicon and software stacks at Broadcom, Google, Cisco, AWS and Intel.



Graphiant lands $62 million for its network edge service

Graphiant, a start-up based in San Jose, California, announced a $62 million Series B funding round for its network edge service that promises to shake up the established framework of VPNs, including MPLS and SDWAN.

Graphiant provides a next-gen network edge that combines the performance and security of MPLS with the agility of "as-a-Service" delivery. The company says it can deliver SLA-class performance at up to 70% less cost. Graphiant addresses three important use cases. First, enterprises can use Graphiant to connect enterprise resources. Second, they can connect to multiple public clouds. And third, enterprises can connect to other businesses, such as partners or customers.

The round brings the company's total funding to $96 million.

"The reaction to Graphiant's network edge has been swift and enthusiastic," said Khalid Raza, founder of Graphiant. "It has been much faster than what we saw with MPLS at Cisco or SD-WAN with Viptela. Graphiant has hit a nerve.”

https://graphiant.com/

Video: What's next for enterprise connectivity? (after MPLS and SDWAN)

What's next for enterprise connectivity?Graphiant, a start-up based in Silicon Valley, has just unveiled a new network edge service that promises to shake up the established framework of VPNs, including MPLS and SDWAN.In this video, we hear from Khalid Raza, founder and CEO of Graphiant, and who is widely regarded as a visionary in routing protocols and large-scale network architectures. Raza previously was founder & CTO of Viptela, an SDWAN...


NTT develops Beluganos, a network OS for carrier white boxes

NTT announced "Beluganos", a network OS for carrier white boxes.

The technology was developed with IP Infusion and in alignment with NTT's IOWN vision.

Beluganos includes various advanced functions, such as routing and switching capabilities that can replace legacy equipment with a choice of open networking hardware and software solutions, in addition to NTT’s commercial network operation expertise.

Following verification of the network's high reliability, NTT Communications decided to introduce Beluganos into their commercial network infrastructure in combination with white box equipment to support their network services. Operation of the service will commence on March 31, 2023. 

From then on,  NTT Advanced Technology Corporation will provide sales and support for the Beluganos service.

IP Infusion says it will also work to scale the IOWN concept around the world through global sales of Beluganos.

“We are incredibly proud to support NTT in the development, go-to-market and distribution of Beluganos,” said Atsushi Ogata, CEO and President of IP Infusion. “This project demonstrates our ongoing commitment to fostering broad access and high quality software solutions that further innovation and lower total cost of ownership.”

https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2023/03/28/230328b.html

Microsoft brings OpenAI to cybersecurity

Microsoft launched private previews of a next generation cybersecurity tool with access to OpenAI models.

The company says its aim is to amplify the capabilities of security teams by summarizing and making sense of threat intelligence, helping defenders see through the noise of web traffic and identify malicious activity.

Microsoft Security Copilot correlates input from the company’s vast threat intelligence footprint with expertise from security professionals and other tools, including Microsoft Security products, such as Microsoft Sentinel and Microsoft Defender.

“Today the odds remain stacked against cybersecurity professionals. Too often, they fight an asymmetric battle against relentless and sophisticated attackers,” said Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president, Microsoft Security. “With Security Copilot, we are shifting the balance of power into our favor. Security Copilot is the first and only generative AI security product enabling defenders to move at the speed and scale of AI.”

“Advancing the state of security requires both people and technology — human ingenuity paired with the most advanced tools that help apply human expertise at speed and scale,” said Charlie Bell, executive vice president, Microsoft Security. “With Security Copilot we are building a future where every defender is empowered with the tools and technologies necessary to make the world a safer place.”

https://news.microsoft.com/AI-Security-2023