Monday, March 18, 2013

TeliaSonera Goes International with 100G


 TeliaSonera International Carrier (TSIC) announced the activation of 100G across its North American network, connecting 23 cities across the continent.  This add to the company's 100G European network, which stretches from Madrid to Moscow.

“We own and operate our own global fiber backbone. This lets us deploy the technology required to build a future-enabled network. For our wholesale customers, 100G means the ability to scale up capacity without scaling up complexity – and doing so cost-efficiently”, says Erik Hallberg, President of TeliaSonera International Carrier.

TSIC is also looking at options to upgrade its trans-Atlantic connection to 100G. This will create a seamless 100G enabled network encompassing Europe and North America.

TSIS is using NSN’s hiT 7300 platform for 100G in Europe and has deployed Infinera’s DTN-X platform for 100G in North America.

http://www.teliasonera.com


Sunday, March 17, 2013

Telstra Tests 1 Tbps with Ericsson

Telstra has conducted the first trial of 1 Tbps technology in Australia over 995km of an existing optical fiber network using Ericsson's equipment.

Ericsson recently announced it will provide Telstra with the SPO 1400, the latest packet optical transport platform (POTP) for the metro and the MHL 3000 for long-haul applications with 100Gbps service support. The trial tested a 1Tbps line card in the MHL 3000.

The companies said this successful test over the 995 kilometer optical link between Sydney and Melbourne in Australia shows it is possible to deploy 1 Tbps technology in a real network environment.  Furthermore, when 1 Tbps is commercialized, operators will be in a position to deploy it to meet their capacity requirements.

"The trial has proven that our existing optical cable plant can support Tbps channels along with 40Gbps and 100 Gbps channels simultaneously on the same fibre, verifying that we have the ability to increase capacity on our existing fiber cables when required." Alessandro Pane, Head of Ericsson R&D Optical Transmission, says: "Like so many developed countries, Australia is a very technologically advanced market and Australians are sophisticated users of broadband and mobile technology. In addition, there is widespread smart phone, tablet, IPTV and HDTV take-up. Supporting all these services requires an ever-growing capacity in backhaul and inter-city transmission.

http://www.ericsson.com


OneChip Photonics Intros 100G PIC in Indium Phosphide

OneChip Photonics introduced a Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC)-based 100 Gbps device that monolithically integrates all of the optical functions required for an optical transceiver into a single Indium Phosphide (InP)-based chip. All of the active components (Distributed Feedback “DFB” laser, Electro-Absorption Modulator “EAM,” and Waveguide Photodetector “WPD”) and passive components (Wavelength Division Multiplexing “WDM” combiner, splitter and Spot-Size Converter “SSC”) of the chip are, uniquely, integrated in one epitaxial growth step – without re-growth or post-growth modification of the epitaxial material.

The company said its Multi-Guide Vertical Integration (MGVI)-based PICs will enable transceiver manufacturers to produce high-speed, low-power and small-size modules for Data Center Interconnect (DCI) applications.

The MGVI platform in Indium Phosphide is based on the same process that inherently produces the best and fastest Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBTs) used in Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFICs). As such, the company also will be able to integrate electronics, such as Transimpedance Amplifiers (TIAs) and modulator drivers, within a commercially available and volume-scalable process. The silicon photonics dream of leveraging high-volume electronic chip production, while combining photonics and electronics onto the same substrate, is ironically best realized in Indium Phosphide.

http://www.onechipphotonics.com

NeoPhotonics Announces 100G Variable Power Intradyne Coherent Receiver

NeoPhotonics announced a new 100G Variable Power Intradyne Coherent Receiver (VICR) that integrates a variable optical attenuator (VOA) on the signal path and is designed to increase dynamic range and improve the optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) for both single channel and multiple coincident signals.

NeoPhotonics said this capability is designed to enable service providers to better manage network capacity in colorless coherent networks.  The company is currently sampling the VICR and expects to enter general availability with this product in the second half of 2013.

“We are pleased to add the VICR to our extensive line of PIC based intradyne coherent receivers,” said Tim Jenks, Chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics. “The VICR illustrates the power of photonic integration to provide additional functionality to our existing products, which are designed to benefit our customers with improved performance in the same form factor and simplified board layouts.”

http://www.neophotonics.com

Menara Announces Metro 100G Tunable DWDM Transceiver with OTN and FEC

Menara Networks introduced a 100G "System-in-a-Module" that integrates OTU4 framing, ultra FEC, full C-band tunability and 100GE performance monitoring in a 100% MSA compliant CFP form factor with a standard CAUI interface.

"Menara Networks continues on its march to simplify the optical network and help carriers and data center operators bridge the gap between the growing network cost and the declining revenue per bit," said Siraj Nour ElAhmadi, Menara Co-Founder and CEO. "We continue to believe that WDM transmission is a cost and not a revenue center to service providers. Our latest DWDM 100G "System-in-a-module" OTN CFP brings the same level of disruption to the economics, size and power of 100G WDM transmission as our OTN XFP did to 10G transmission."

Menara's patented "System-in-a-Module"  maps a 100GE payload into an ITU G.709 compliant OTU4 frame while offering non-intrusive monitoring of the Ethernet frame statistics. ITU G.975.1 compliant forward error correction is supported with configurable coding gain up to 9.4dB for use over amplified DWDM systems. The OTU4 signal is then transmitted using optical duo-binary signal (ODB) dispersion tolerant modulation over 4 optical channels on the ITU 50 GHz grid. Each of the four channels can be independently tuned over any of the 102 channels supported on ITU 50 GHz grid.

Furthermore, Menara offers a PRBS line performance checker/generator, an extensive set of OTU4 Performance monitoring pints and alarms and has a built-in OTN SNMP MIB accessible through the front Ethernet face plate for ease of configuration and management.

Menara confirmed that it has received an order from a Tier-1 system vendor for this product.

Menara is also announcing the Armada 1000-GM, a 1RU 100G WDM transport solution that offers 100G transponder and 10G/40G muxponder functions into a tunable CFP based OTU4 100G uplink. The compact Armada 1000-GM also includes integrated EDFA optical amplifiers and dispersion compensating modules offering a complete 100G DWDM transmission solution for metro and data center interconnection applications in a compact 1 RU footprint.

http://www.menaranet.com

Menara Selected for New DWDM Network in Iraq

IQ Networks, a leading facility-based fiber Internet Service Provider in Iraq, has selected Menara Networks transponder-less DWDM solution to build a state-of-the-art national 10 Gbps IP over DWDM network in Iraq.

Specifically, IQ Networks will use Menara Networks' "System-in-a-Module" Tunable OTN XFP transceivers for complete DWDM transponder replacement. The small form factor MSA compliant pluggable modules offer high performance optical networking functions including integrated ITU-T G.709 OTU-2 framing, OTN alarms and performance monitoring processing, Forward Error Correction for OSNR gain, automatic receiver threshold adaptation and SBS suppression for up to 2,000 km transmission.

http://www.menaranet.com

NTT Electronics Ships Single-Chip 100G OTN Framer


NTT Electronics (NEL) released a 100G Optical Transport Network (OTN) Framer with very low power dissipation. The new OTN Framer can be used alongside NEL's 100G Digital Coherent Signal Processor (DSP) and is capable of operation in multiple modes including 100G Transponder, 10 x 10G Muxponder, and 100G Regenerator.

NEL said its new OTN Framer employs advanced CMOS technology to provide framing solutions, fully compliant with the ITU-T G.709 standard, with low power dissipation in the 10 W to 20 W range depending on the selected mode of operation. It also incorporates high-performance Hard-Decision (HD) FEC within a standard 7% OTN overhead. It supports a unique Enhanced FEC, in addition to the Standard GFEC, to provide the improved net coding gain by more than 3 dB. The OTN Framer achieves ultimate performance of the SD-FEC when operated in conjunction with NEL's flagship 100G DSP.

http://www.ntt-electronics.com/

Verizon Rolls out Fleet Management Solution


Verizon is rolling out Networkfleet management solution over the Verizon Wireless network using technology from Hughes Telematics, which Verizon acquired last year.  Networkfleet will debut in Verizon's U.S. service fleet for improved monitoring, management and route optimization capabilities.


The Networkfleet telematics solution combines in-vehicle hardware and a Web-based application to store, view and analyze data on specific vehicles as well as overall fleet performance. Vehicles are equipped with a GPS device that sends information to the Networkfleet Data Center over a secure wireless network. Key features include GPS fleet tracking, asset tracking, fleet maps, vehicle diagnostics with alerts, roadside assistance, preventative maintenance and other fleet management tools.

Verizon is deploying Networkfleet to an initial 18,000 company vehicles in its fleet this year to expedite customer service, while increasing productivity and cost efficiencies.


"As one of the largest commercial fleet operators in the United States, Verizon recognizes the challenges and opportunities associated with managing fleets, and we continue to shape our offerings to help customers turn rolling assets into a competitive business advantage," said David Small, senior vice president and chief platform officer for Verizon Enterprise Solutions. "We see the fleet management space as a tremendous opportunity. We will continue to work with our ecosystem to serve this growing market, and we are committed to innovating in the machine-to-machine space."

Verion said its Networkfleet solution could be used in many industries, such as transportation, energy & utilities, government, retail, construction, etc.

http://verizonenterprise.com

Telefónica I+D Tests NSN's FlexGrid Optical


Telefónica I+D, the R&D labs of Telefónica, has successfully tested the integration of Nokia Siemens Networks’  FlexiGrid technology with a standards-based control system for optical networks.

NSN's FlexiGrid is based on the company's hiT 7300 DWDM platform. To increase network efficiency, Nokia Siemens Networks integrated its FlexiGrid technology as well as its 100G technology with an optical transport control system based on GMPLS. The company said its architecture increased spectral efficiency by 50 percent. The implementation enables the automated operation of the network and increases the reliability of service delivery as well as the flexibility of service provisioning. The test also reduced the fragmentation of the optical transport network.

The trial was conducted as part of Telefónica’s Innovation Program which focuses on network evolution, and its being implemented by the Research and Development team together with the Global Chief Technology Office.

“We have successfully tested Nokia Siemens Networks’ FlexiGrid transport architecture in our labs and demonstrated that Generalized Multi-Protocol Label Switching (GMPLS) based FlexiGrid networks are technically feasible. This is a key step to increase the efficiency and performance of our core transport networks,” said Juan Fernandez-Palacios, head of Core Network Evolution at Telefónica I+D Global Chief Technology Office unit.”

http://www.nokiasiemensnetworks.com


On December 3, 2012, Nokia Siemens Networks and Marlin Equity Partners announced that they had reached an agreement for Nokia Siemens Networks to sell its Optical Networks business unit to Marlin Equity Partners. The announcement outlined that the deal would result in the unit being established as an independent company with the goal of becoming a leading provider in the optical market.


Polatis Cites Growing Demand for Photonic Cross-Connects in Data Centers

Polatis reported strong and growing demand for their latest Series 6000 192x192 optical switch, which was launched last year at OFC/NFOEC, leading the company to triple capacity at its European manufacturing plants.

"Our customers are telling us that traditional data center aggregation solutions cannot keep up with growing capacity demands" said Gerald Wesel, CEO Polatis, Inc. "The advent of optical circuit switch elements that integrate seamlessly with Software-Defined Network (SDN) control planes is poised to transform data centers by enabling new approaches that enhance performance while reducing costs. Polatis switches are ideally suited for the data center market as they have the best performance in the industry with exceptionally low loss and latency, fast switching and low power consumption."

http://www.polatis.com


Thursday, March 14, 2013

Samsung Galaxy S4 Covers Six LTE Bands

Samsung unveiled its GALAXY S 4 smartphone featuring a larger screen size and battery, quad core and octo core processors, better camera sensors and a number of distinguishing software enhancements.  Key specs includes:


  • 5-inch Full HD Super AMOLED (1920 x 1080) display, 441 ppi
  • 1.9 GHz Quad-Core Processor / 1.6 GHz Octa-Core Processor, depending on market
  • Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean)
  • 13 megapixel rear camera
  • 2.5G (GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE): 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
  • 3G (HSPA+ 42Mbps): 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz
  • 4G (LTE Cat 3 100/50Mbps): up to 6 different band sets, depending on market
  • Codec: MPEG4, H.264, H.263, DivX, DivX3.11, VC-1, VP8, WMV7/8, Sorenson Spark, HEVC
  • WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (HT80)
  • GPS / GLONASS 
  • NFC,  Bluetooth® 4.0 (LE)
  • IR LED (Remote Control), MHL 2.0
  • 2,600 mAh battery.


http://www.samsungmobilepress.com


Fujitsu Develops DMT for High-Speed Optical Links

Researchers at Fujitsu have achieved 100 Gbps optical transmission by running Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) modulation/demodulation on digital signal processors (DSPs) originally intended for 10 Gbps per channel rates.

The DMT modulation/demodulation format, which is used in xDSL, divides the data into multiple subcarriers (carrier waves), and multi-level modulation is used for each subcarrier to achieve high transmission speeds.  To optimize each subcarrier's power and number of multiple values, an algorithm was developed that checks receiving conditions between optical transceivers at the time the system is started up and optimizes power and the number of multiple values to suit the transceivers and line conditions.

Fujitsu said this approach could be scaled up to achieve 400 Gbps Ethernet transceivers suitable for data center applications.

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2013/20130314-02.html

Fujitsu Powers Atacama Compact Array Supercomputer


Fujitsu has supplied 35 of its PRIMERGY x86 servers and a specialized computational unit to power the Atacama Compact Array (ACA) Correlator supercomputer system, which will be employed as part of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) project, a radio telescope featuring unprecedented sensitivity and resolution deployed in Chile.

Fujitsu said the ACA Correlator supercomputer is capable of reading up to 512 billion data samples per second (roughly 200 GB/sec), equivalent to the data transfer speeds supported by 20,000 residential optical broadband lines (at a rate of 100 Mbps each).  The massive volume of data will need to be processed in real time at an ultrafast computational rate of 120 trillion operations per second.

Fujitsu worked in partnership with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) to develop the purpose-built Atacama Compact Array (ACA) Correlator supercomputer system.

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/news/pr/archives/month/2013/20130314-01.html

Reliance Globalcom Implements Ciena's GeoMesh on Trans-Atlantic Network


Reliance Globalcom is upgrading its trans-Atlantic FA-1 South submarine network with Ciena’s GeoMesh solution, which is based on the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform powered by WaveLogic 3 coherent optical processors and optical bypass.

The upgrade will make the Reliance Globalcom trans-Atlantic submarine network capable of supporting OTN-based client services from OTU2 (10G) to OTU4 (100G). It will allow Reliance Globalcom to provide 100GbE services between continental points of presence (PoPs) - whether a large data center or a central office.

Ciena is also supplying its OneControl Unified Management System, which provides multi-layer service management capabilities to enable streamlined service activation, robust fault management, and performance monitoring.  Ciena is also providing Reliance Globalcom with professional services through its Specialist Services portfolio, specifically for installation, integration, testing and support. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Ciena noted that this deployment builds upon a long-standing relationship between the companies. Over the past year, Ciena solutions have been used in several strategic capacity upgrades to support Reliance Globalcom’s submarine network, including a 100G coherent capacity upgrade to its Hawk network from Marseille to London, and its FEA network from Suez to Aqaba.

http://www.ciena.com

Japan's KVH Deploys Cyan for 100 Gigabit Ethernet


KVH is deploying Cyan's optical transmission platform to deliver point-to-point 100 Gigabit Ethernet service in Japan. The service is expected to launch between many of Japan's major metropolitan markets.

KVH, which serves over 500 financial services customers in Japan, completed field trials of the new service earlier this year using the Cyan Z-Series packet-optical transport platform (P-OTP), XC-2800 2.8 Tbps multi-layer switch fabric, and DTM-100G coherent transponder module.

Yoshiyuki Hamada, vice president, Systems & Technology of KVH, commented, "As KVH has been experiencing overwhelming customer demand for higher capacity network services, we are excited to be launching KVH 100 Gigabit Ethernet Service, and are proud to be offering this service as the first of its kind in Japan. We're looking forward to working with Cyan to deploy highly reliable, high performance solutions to our customers as a neutral network services provider."

http://www.kvh.co.jp/en/
http://www.cyaninc.com

Vertical Systems Group: Fiber Reaches 36% of U.S. Commercial Buildings


Optical fiber facilities currently reach 36.1% of U.S. commercial buildings, leaving the remaining 63.9% in the 'Fiber Gap' with no accessibility to fiber-based network services, according to latest research from Vertical Systems Group. However despite today's gap, business fiber availability has more than tripled since 2004 when the penetration rate was 10.9%.

"Direct fiber is clearly the preferred access technology for Carrier Ethernet services, as well as for higher speed connectivity to IP VPNs, cloud-based applications and the Internet. Enterprise customers prefer direct fiber due to the benefits of scalability to multi-gigabit speeds plus lower bandwidth costs as compared to other access options," said Rosemary Cochran, principal at Vertical Systems Group. "The U.S. fiber gap has been steadily closing each year and this trend will continue. A top growth challenge cited by both retail and wholesale network operators is the expansion of their fiber footprints as rapidly as possible to meet customer demand for higher speed services.”

http://www.verticalsystems.com/prarticles/stat-fiber-us-fiber-penetration-2012.html

Equinix Opens Second Seattle Data Center

Equinix inaugurated its second International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in downtown Seattle in a facility adjacent to its existing SE2 data center, which is located in the Westin Building carrier hotel.

The new IBX will add approximately 51,000 square feet of data center space and capacity for more than 1,000 cabinet equivalents to Equinix’s presence in the Seattle market. The new data center offers direct connectivity to the Seattle Internet Exchange (SIX).

http://www.equinix.com


COLO@ Upgrades with ADVA FSP 3000

COLO@ has selected ADVA Optical Networking’s FSP 3000 to increase capacity at their 34 Peachtree data center facility in downtown Atlanta.

Specifically, COLO@ has secured an additional dark fiber ring consisting of two pairs of fiber running between its at 34 Peachtree, and 56 Marietta, which isone of the most highly connected locations in the U.S.  @COLO is using the the newly installed ADVA FSP 3000 DWDM equipment to turn up circuits as needed.

Ryan DiRocco, CTO at COLO@ stated that "Our goal is to keep our customers connected and have enough capacity to grow and respond to our customers needs quickly and effectively.  By having exclusive access to this dark fiber ring and selecting ADVA Optical Networking equipment we can ensure that the connection needs of our customers can be met and exceeded for years to come."

http://www.coloat.com
http://www.advaoptical.com

Netflix Offers US$100,000 Cloud Computing Prize


Netflix is offering US$100,000 in prize money to developers to improve the features, usability, quality, reliability and security of cloud computing resources.

The Netflix Cloud Prize is divided into 10 categories that offer a US$10,000 prize each, judged by a panel of independent, renowned, technology pioneers.  Winners will be announced in October with prizes presented at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Re:Invent conference in November.

http://netflix.github.com/#repo

Ceragon Secures $73.5 Million Credit

Ceragon Networks closed on a three year $73.5 million of secured credit loans with an additional credit of up to $40.2 million available for bank guarantees.

The financing used by Ceragon to manage fluctuating working capital needs, mainly related to the deployment of its equipment at tier 1 operators and for general corporate purposes.
http://www.ceragon.com