Interoute Launches Check Point Security Gateway Virtual Edition

Interoute has begun offering the Check Point Security Gateway Virtual Edition (VE) via its Interoute CloudStore.

Applications available on the Interoute CloudStore have been tested and approved to run on Interoute Virtual Data Centre (VDC), the global networked cloud infrastructure with locations across Europe, North America and Asia. The company enables customers to provision the VDC as either a private, public or hybrid cloud. This complements the advanced capabilities of Check Point VE gateways and gives companies the ability to provision and control computing and storage infrastructure on demand, using Pay-as-You-Go or committed payment models. Interoute VDC customers and partners can also select the specific zone they want their data to be hosted and stored in, which can help companies needing to comply with stringent data protection regulations.

Check Point VE gateways protect dynamic virtualized environments and external networks, such as private and public clouds, from internal and external threats by securing virtual machines and applications with extensive security using the full range of Check Point’s award-winning Software Blade Architecture. With Check Point VE gateways available on the growing Interoute CloudStore appliance marketplace, organisations can leverage Check Point’s multi-layer security protection on demand in an easy and flexible way.

http://www.interoute.com/press-release/interoute-virtual-data-centre-expands-its-demand-security-services-check-point%E2%80%99s

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Australia's NBN Co Picks Coriant for Optical Transport

NBN Co is extending the rollout of its nationwide optical transport network with deployment of a high-capacity fiber optic ring built upon the Coriant hiT 7300 Multi-Haul Transport Platform.

The fiber ring spans over 10,000 kilometers in Western Australia and will expand the capacity of NBN Co's backbone network supporing fast broadband services to businesses and consumers in the region. NBN Co's transcontinental optical transport backbone currently spans 60,000 kilometers of fiber configured in over 100 fiber rings nationwide.

Coriant noted that its the hiT 7300 is currently deployed in over 850 operational sites worldwide. The hiT 7300 is a 96-channel coherent optical communications system that supports the transmission of 100G per channel for a total system capacity of up to 9.6 Tbps per fiber pair.

"We are pleased to continue our strategic partnership with NBN Co as they expand the capacity, reach and performance of their fiber optic infrastructure," said Pat DiPietro, Chief Executive Officer, Coriant. "Our end-to-end support for the National Broadband Network encompasses not only best-in-class optical transport technologies, but also a comprehensive range of world-class planning, design, logistics, implementation, and support services that enable NBN Co to meet critical deployment timelines and ensure the highest level network and service availability."

http://www.coriant.com

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Alcatel-Lucent Delivers Next Gen 1830 PSS Metro Optical

Alcatel-Lucent is expanding its line of 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS) optical transport platforms with new, small form-factor models designed for metro and data center networks. Targeted Service Provider applications include access aggregation, content delivery, and mobile backhaul, while large enterprises and cloud providers could use the new systems for data center interconnectivity and wide area networking.

The Alcatel-Lucent 1830 PSS family uses the 400G Photonic Services Engine and common software and interface cards for all models. Compared to previous systems, Alcatel-Lucent said these next gen 1830 PSS-4/16 and the new PSS-8 offer 2X the capacity, 50% less footprint and 40% power savings, enabling them to be deployed out in the network.

The new 1830 PSS-4, 1830 PSS-8 and 1830 PSS-16 support any mix of high-performance packet, optical and photonic services. Alcatel-Lucent is also bringing distributed switching capability for better metro aggregation with smooth capacity scaling from 400 Gbps to 1.6Tbps.  Slots offer any mix of 10G, 100G and 200G-based services. Alcatel-Lucent is also adding enhancements such asu 100G/200G rate adaptive uplink capability, 1 20-port X 10G multiprotocol switchponder and integrated ROADMs. The platforms are SDN-enabled to support application-driven, dynamic service instantiation.

Alcatel-Lucent noted that its 1830 PSS platform is currently in use by more than 500 customers worldwide with more than 240 already deployed with 100G (more than 25,000 units of 100G).

“As traffic continues to grow, operators and enterprises need to deploy optical transport switches specifically tuned for metro applications. By optimizing our 1830 PSS for the metro environment, we are able to offer solutions that are right-sized to help meet transport demand now at low initial cost, with the right scale and switching flexibility, allowing them to grow capacity and deliver services rapidly as demand grows,” stated Sam Bucci, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Terrestrial Optics, Alcatel-Lucent.

http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/press/2015/alcatel-lucent-expands-optical-networking-portfolio-meet-enterprise-and-operator-demand-video-cloud

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FCC Releases 400-Page Open Internet Order

The FCC released its newly adopted Open Internet rules, which were approved by a 3-to-2 vote last month. The actual text of the order had not been publicly available until now.

The new rules aim to establish a legal standard for broadband provider practices to ensure that they do not unreasonably interfere with or disadvantage consumers' access to the Internet.

At the time of the vote, FCC Commissioner Tom Wheeler said the order would establish three "bright line rules":

• No Blocking: broadband providers may not block access to legal content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
• No Throttling: broadband providers may not impair or degrade lawful Internet traffic on the basis of content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices.
• No Paid Prioritization: broadband providers may not favor some lawful Internet traffic over other lawful traffic in exchange for consideration of any kind—in other words, no “fast lanes.”   This rule also bans ISPs from prioritizing content and services of their affiliates. It also prohibits practices that target specific applications or classes of applications.  

http://www.fcc.gov/openinternet

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Ericsson Cuts 2,200 Positions in Sweden, Mostly R&D

Ericsson confirmed plans to cut 2,200 positions in Sweden, mainly in R&D and Supply, as part of its on-going cost and efficiency program announced last November.

The program targets savings of approximately SEK 9 b. with full effect during 2017.

Ericsson said it strategy is to excel in core areas: Radio, Core and Transmission and Telecom Services; and to fund growth in the targeted areas: IP networks, Cloud, TV & Media, OSS & BSS and Industry & Society.

http://www.ericsson.com/news/1901885?categoryFilter=press-releases_1270673222_c

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OpenDNS Acquires BGPmon, Extending its Network Monitoring Services

OpenDNS, which provides network security and DNS services, has acquired BGPmon, a provider of network and routing monitoring services based on the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Financial terms were not disclosed.

BGPmon’s service monitors customer networks from hundreds of vantage points worldwide and delivers near real-time alerts in case of a route-hijack, network instability or policy violations.

“Network attacks are becoming more sophisticated everyday and companies need to prepare for the fact that unexpected parts of their internet infrastructure will be targeted,” said David Ulevitch, founder and CEO of OpenDNS. “BGPmon has built a service that helps the largest companies, networks, and services on the Internet better understand traffic changes and maintain a stronger security posture. Its network security monitoring and routing features will enhance the OpenDNS Global Network and broaden our ability to discover, catch and better predict advanced attacks.”

https://www.opendns.com/
http://www.bgpmon.net/

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Cisco and Microsoft Integrate Azure with Application Centric Infrastructure

Cisco and Microsoft are expanding their cloud and data center relationship to include a new platform to accelerate service delivery and streamline the journey to the Intercloud for cloud providers. The goal is to provide the building blocks for cloud providers to evolve beyond traditional infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offerings to create combined IaaS, platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS) solutions that deliver more value to their customers.

Specifically, the companies are launching the Cisco Cloud Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform—an integrated solution that combines Windows Azure Pack and Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) to help cloud providers deliver hybrid cloud services. This collaboration will deliver pre-packaged policy management libraries that allow cloud providers to implement applications more quickly with consistent policy management. In addition, Microsoft System Center 2012 R2is integrated with the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) Manager to provide the operational simplicity and control that cloud providers need to manage their growing business.

The companies said the combination of Windows Azure Pack and Cisco ACI allows partners to deliver services—from network services and disaster recovery, to big data, and enterprise application services—at DevOps speed, drastically reducing total cost of ownership and accelerating time-to-revenue.

Cisco also added 14 cloud providers to its list of participants in the Intercloud partner ecosystem, bringing the number of Intercloud providers to more than 60 with a footprint of more than 350 data centers across 50 countries. The new Intercloud providers include Bezeq International (Israel), City Cloud Technology (China), CTC - Itochu Techno Solution (Japan), Freudenberg IT (Germany), iland (United States), Proximus (Belgium), QSS (Bosnia) QTS (United States), Skyscape Cloud Services (United Kingdom), Telecom Italia (Italy), Telefonica (Spain), Troila Technology Development (China), ViaWest (United States) and Yunan Nantian Electronic Information (China).

“We want our service providers partners to move up-market with us and offer higher-end cloud services. By partnering with Microsoft we’re able to deliver a tightly integrated, application centric cloud architecture. This unique new platform will help our partners dramatically accelerate the delivery of new and innovative hybrid cloud services for their customers,” stated Nick Earle, senior vice president, Cloud and Managed Services, Cisco.

"Cisco and Microsoft already have a strong relationship in the cloud and data center markets.  Today, we’re expanding that collaboration with a solution that will allow our mutual partners to deliver services quickly and grow revenue faster with a cloud-enabled platform. The work we’ve done to integrate Cisco ACI with Windows Azure Pack will allow cloud providers to dramatically accelerate time-to-market, while decreasing costs.  Together, Cisco and Microsoft are helping our partners evolve with current market demand and rapidly shifting customer needs,” said Aziz Benmalek, general manager, Hosting Service Providers, Microsoft.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/press-release-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1608152

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Juniper Boosts its Supercore Router with New Silicon, Density, SDN

Aiming to 'Revolutionize Routing Again,' Juniper Networks rolled out a series of enhancements to its Converged Supercore PTX Series router based on new custom silicon and expanded software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities. The PTX routers combine full IP and MPLS functionality, transport integration and SDN programmability.

Juniper said its new ExpressPlus custom ASIC is capable of performing more than 1.5 billion filtered operations per second and scaling up to 500 Gbps (1 Tbps half-duplex), making it the world’s most advanced routing silicon.  It delivers four times the performance and three times the efficiency gains over Juniper’s previous-generation Express chipset. The 28 nanometer chip can drive 5x100G interfaces and leverages 3D memory architecture, reducing its physical footprint by 20 times compared with previous solutions, which optimizes power consumption and space requirements.

The new silicon enables the PTX5000 routers to deliver 3 Tbps per slot (30x100GE interfaces) for a total capacity of 24 Tbps (48 Tbps half-duplex).  Energy efficiency is estimated at 1/2 watt per gigabit. In terms of size, the PTX3000 is designed for space-constrained environments and can scale up to 8 Tbps or (16 Tbps half-duplex) in a form factor 91 percent smaller than its nearest competitor. Juniper will also introducing new line cards for the PTX Series core routers.

In addition, Juniper has extended the capabilities of its NorthStar Controller to provide visibility and control into additional layers of the network and fully support and handle dynamic traffic, such as that driven by mobile and cloud applications. Juniper said these capabilities enable the NorthStar Controller to increase utilization by dynamically adjusting to changing network conditions in real-time.

"Today, we build on the Converged Supercore architecture we announced in 2011 with the addition of new silicon, systems and software designed specifically to help our customers achieve unparalleled levels of scale in our platforms and a level of performance, automation and optimization never before seen in the industry with NorthStar SDN control. This holistic approach to networking gives our customers the power to innovate and bring new concepts to life through connecting ideas to people and people to solutions," stated Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president and general manager, Juniper Development and Innovation.

http://newsroom.juniper.net/press-release/juniper-networks-unveils-industrys-most-powerful-core-routing-platform

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Juniper Debuts Spine Switches for Cloud Scalability

Juniper Networks is introducing a new line of spine switches for bringing physical and logical scale, performance and port density to cloud data centers.

The new QFX10000 line, which builds on the company's MetaFabric architecture, is powered by Juniper’s latest, Q5 custom ASIC. The new chip offers deep buffers and an architecture that supports virtualization for SDN with the logical scale for applications such as big data, video and IP storage.

Some highlights:

• The new Juniper QFX10002 is a fixed configuration, 2-rack unit form-factor unit designed for from 40GE and 100GE within the same switch. 
• The QFX10008 is a modular, eight slot chassis that delivers ground breaking 100GE port
• density and up to 48Tbps of total system capacity.
• The QFX10016 will deliver unprecedented system capacity of up to 96Tbps, combined with leading port density in a powerful 16-slot chassis. 
• The QFX10000 line supports orchestration, automation and management solutions from market leaders like VMware, as well as open source solutions, like OpenStack and OpenContrail, will simplify and automate network management and provisioning.

Juniper is also introducing its Junos Fusion automation-enabled software architecture for data centers.  It enables coherency through automation and manages the entire data center as a single network rather than individual network elements. The company said Junos Fusion will make it easy to automate the turn-up and configuration of new networks while reducing the risk of configuration errors. In conjunction with EVPN/VxLAN, it simplifies application placement across multiple layers of the network.

"With the introduction of the QFX10000 line based on the new Q5 chip, Juniper Networks has significantly raised the industry bar in terms of network scale, density and performance. The addition of this new switch line further enhances our existing QFX Series portfolio by providing our customers with complete choice through our open, flexible and highly scalable solutions that serve traditional enterprise data centers to the largest cloud environments,” statd Jonathan Davidson, executive vice president and general manager, Juniper Development and Innovation at Juniper Networks.

http://www.juniper.net

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Juniper Brings 1 Tbps Throughput to SRX5000 Firewalls

Juniper Networks announced the availability of Express Path, an optimization capability for its SRX5000 Series Services Gateways.
Specifically, Juniper is introducing new Express Path software for its latest I/O cards (IOCII) that allows organizations to deploy the SRX5000 Series for securing both normal and latency sensitive traffic on a per policy basis within the same line card. The Express Path software and hardware optimization enables the SRX to identify and prioritize specific types of traffic to be fast-pathed to IOCII hardware.  The solution identifies and prioritizes active session flows to receive appropriate security treatment based on the type of traffic. Juniper said it is able to deliver latency as low as 7 microseconds..

The Express Path for the SRX5000 Series Services Gateway can support single, high bandwidth flows of up to 100 Gbps and firewall throughput capacity of up to 1 Tbps.

Juniper is also announcing new application security capabilities with AppSecure 2.0 for its virtual firewall vSRX, formally known as Firefly Perimeter, to deliver enhanced protection for cloud and hybrid data centers.

http://www.juniper.net

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Google Cloud Storage Nearline Priced at $0.01 per GB

Google introduced a Cloud Storage Nearline service with a 3-second response time SLA.

Google Cloud Storage Nearline is priced at $0.01 per GB per month for data at rest.  Google offers redundant storage at multiple physical locations and granular access controls integrated with its other Cloud Storage services.

http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/03/introducing-Google-Cloud-Storage-Nearline-near-online-data-at-an-offline-price.html

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Blue Coat to be Acquired by Bain Capital from Thoma Bravo

Bain Capital, one of the world’s foremost private investment firms, will acquire Blue Coat Systems from Thoma Bravo for approximately $2.4 billion in cash.

Blue Coat, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, provides on-premise, hybrid and cloud-based solutions for protecting web connectivity, combating advanced threats and responding to security breaches.

Bain Capital indicated a possible return to the public market for Blue Coat.

“We are excited by the opportunity to work with Blue Coat's world-class management team to grow the business organically and through acquisitions, and to ultimately return the company to the public markets,” said David Humphrey, a managing director at Bain Capital. “We are very impressed with the profitable growth the company has demonstrated and believe strongly in the future growth of the cyber security market and Blue Coat’s position in this important sector.”

“Blue Coat has differentiated products for protecting enterprises from even the most sophisticated threats, and we are proud to be a foundational part of the security architecture for the world’s largest enterprises. The world’s most trusted brands use Blue Coat, and the acquisition by Bain Capital sets us on the trajectory to further grow our portfolio, better serve our customers and help us prepare to return to the public markets,” said Gregory S. Clark, chief executive officer, Blue Coat Systems, Inc. “Bain Capital has a long history of accelerating growth, and I look forward to partnering with them in our journey to be one of the top performing security companies in the world.”

https://www.bluecoat.com/company/press-releases/blue-coat-be-acquired-bain-capital

• In early 2013, an investor group led by San Francisco-based private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo acquired Blue Coat Systems in a deal valued at $1.3 billion. 

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IBM and Semtech Develop Long Range Wide-area Network for IoT

IBM Research and Semtech announced a new technology called LoRaWAN (Long Range wide-area networks) that promises significant advantages over cellular networks and Wi-Fi for providing machine-to-machine (M2M) communications.

IBM said LoRaWAN sensors can communicate over distances of more than 100 km (62 miles) in favorable environments, 15 km (9 miles) in typical semi-rural environments and more than 2 km (1.2 miles) in dense urban environments at data rates from 300 bit/s up to 100 Kbps. This makes them well suited for sending small amounts of data, such as GPS coordinates and climate readings, where broadband can't reach. The sensors also require very little energy to operate; most can run for 10 years or more on a single AA battery, and AES128 keys make communication tampering and eavesdropping virtually impossible.

In support of LPWAN technology, IBM, Semtech, and other companies also announced the LoRa™ Alliance, a new association to support and develop the standardization LoRaWAN. The alliance aims to combine hardware and software based on the LoRaWAN standard for telecom operators and network operators, enabling them to offer IoT services to both businesses and consumers.

"The Internet of Things is already changing our world – from better traffic control on our highways, to greater energy efficiency in buildings and manufacturing operations, to reduced crime on our city streets," said Thorsten Kramp, Master Inventor, IBM Research. "Technology advancements like the one we're announcing today will help significantly advance that vision by extending the range and longevity of sensors that make up an intelligent world."

http://www.lora-alliance.org/

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Elastica Raises $30M for Cloud App Security

Elastica, a start-up based in San Jose, California, raised $30 million in series B funding for its "Data Science Powered" Cloud Application Security solutions.

Elastica continuously protects organizations’ sensitive data as they adopt cloud applications and services by revealing Shadow IT and shadow data, and by providing data governance, compliance risk mitigation and powerful tools for incident response and post-incident analysis. The Elastica CloudSOC platform harnesses advanced data science and machine learning to deliver granular visibility of real-time traffic, advanced anomaly detection to identify threats and real-time content classification. Granular policies can be created and enforced in real time to prevent data breaches, compliance violations and exposure of sensitive data. The SaaS-based delivery model allows organizations to easily deploy the solution with no on-site software or hardware required.

“While cloud apps are increasingly essential for business agility and IT cost effectiveness, they have inherent information exchange and collaboration capabilities that require a new kind of security,” said Rehan Jalil, CEO of Elastica. “Our unique data science technology that delivers effective security across cloud application and services has positioned us to lead the cloud app security category. New financing will further fuel our growth.”

Third Point Ventures led the round, with participation from Mayfield Fund and Pelion Venture Partners. Robert Schwartz from Third Point Ventures joined the Elastica board.

http://www.elastica.net

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Facebook Releases FBOSS Open Switching System

Facebook released its open switching system (code-named “FBOSS”) on GitHub. The initial release consists primarily of the FBOSS agent, a daemon that runs on each switch and manages the hardware forwarding ASIC. It receives information via configuration files and thrift APIs and then programs the correct forwarding and routing entries into the chip. It also processes packets from the ASIC that are destined to the switch itself, such as control plane protocol traffic, and other packets that cannot be processed solely in hardware. Facebook describes FBOSS as a set of applications that can be run on a standard Linux OS.

Facebook also said it is planning to contribute the specification for its top-of-rack switch (code-named “Wedge”) to the OCP networking project. Wedge top-of-rack switches use a single Broadcom Trident II ASIC for high-speed forwarding. Wedge will be available through Accton and its OEMs and channel partners.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/843620439027582/

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Facebook Shows its Yosemite Open Source Modular

At the Open Compute Summit in San Jose, Facebook introduced its "Yosemite" open source, modular chassis for high-powered microservers.

Key design elements to the system:

• A server-class SoC with multiple memory channels, which provides high-performance computing in 65W TDP for SoC and 90W for the whole server card.
• A standard SoC card interface to provide a CPU-agnostic system interface.
• A platform-agnostic system management solution to manage the system and these 4 SoC server cards, regardless of vendor.
• A multi-host network interconnect card following OCP Mezzanine Card 2.0 specification, which connects up to 4 SoC server cards through a single Ethernet port.
• A cost-effective, flexible, and easy-to-service system structure.
• This system will be fully compatible with Open Rack, which can accommodate up to 192 SoC server cards in a single rack. 

Facebook is contributing the design to OCP.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/1616052405274961/

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HP Teams with Foxconn for Cloudline Servers

HP and Foxconn introduced a portfolio of basic, cost-focused and customizable compute platforms optimized for the Open Compute Project specifications as well as HP Helion OpenStack.  The companies formed a non-equity joint venture a year ago and this is their first product.

HP Cloudline servers, which are built on open-design principles, support open management tools and leverage common industry interfaces in hardware and firmware. The design goal is deployment and management at an extreme scale and integration into multi-vendor environments. Cloudline will feature multi-node, density-optimized servers with 2P, 1P and system on a chip (SoC) designs to deliver efficiency and low cost per node.

Qihoo 360, which provides Internet and mobile security products and services to 500 million monthly active PC Internet users and more than 640 million mobile users in China, has selected HP Cloudline.

http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/servers/proliant-servers.html?compURI=1551682#tab=TAB4

• HP recently unveiled a new "Altoline" open network switches that are produced by a joint venture between HP and Accton Technolog. The HP Altoline switches are loaded with Open Network Install Environment (ONIE) boot loader giving customers the option of using Cumulus Networks' Linux network OS.

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Pacnet Deploys Infinera's Open Transport Switch to Virtualize Optical Network

Pacnet, which operates submarine cable systems connecting 15 cities in the Asia-Pacific region, has deployed Infinera’s new Open Transport Switch (OTS) software to extend virtualization into the optical layer of its network. Pacnet’s existing Intelligent Transport Network is based on the Infinera DTN-X packet optical transport networking platform.


Infinera’s OTS is now deployed within the Pacnet Enabled Network (PEN), which is an SDN-based service delivery platform that offers Layer 2 Ethernet services on-demand from 1 megabit per second to 10 Gbps. PEN delivers scalable bandwidth and software-enabled intelligence, allowing customers to dynamically provision bandwidth in minutes through a custom portal based on their business needs.

The combination of Infinera's DTN-X platform with the new Open Transport Switch allows PEN to offer a Layer 1 transport bandwidth on-demand service in increments of N x 10 Gbps. It is designed to allow services in increments of N x 100 Gbps for high-capacity customers in the future. The deployment runs in Hybrid Control mode, with new services leveraging bandwidth under SDN control, while existing production services continue to operate using their Infinera DNA network management system.

Pacnet said it was able to get the new OTS capabilities up and running in its PEN platform in a matter of a few months.  Pacnet is shifting into a DevOps model and Infinera is designing its optical solution for this same IT mindset. The Infinera OTS software, which leverages an open web 2.0 architecture, abstracts and virtualizes the underlying multi-layer Intelligent Transport Network taking advantage of the highly scalable and software controllable DTN-X platform. OTS then presents modern, open application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable simple programming of the transport network by any SDN controller or orchestration system.  It runs on x86 Linux server.

“In November 2013, we launched the industry’s first fully-automated, SDN-based service delivery platform, Pacnet Enabled Network, on Layer 2 Ethernet. Today, we are excited to continue to lead through innovation by bringing this capability to our optical layer," said Jim Fagan, president, managed services at Pacnet. "With this deployment, Pacnet can deliver to our customers a true Cloud experience to better utilize our unrivalled network assets.”

“The production deployment of the Infinera Open Transport Switch to support Pacnet’s innovative new service demonstrates how an open networking approach, combined with a DevOps model, reduces time to market for new services,” said Stu Elby, senior vice president, Cloud network strategy and technology at Infinera. “We believe the availability of the Infinera Open Transport Switch makes the Infinera Intelligent Transport Network the most programmable optical networking solution available, enabling our customers to rapidly develop new services with the SDN controller of their choice.”

http://www.infinera.com/j7/servlet/NewsItem?newsItemID=444


In December 2014, Telstra announced plans to acquire Pacnet Limited, which owns and operates a pan-Asian submarine cable network and offers managed services and data center services to carriers, multinational corporations and governments across the region, for US$697 million acquisition is subject to completion adjustments. In addition to its submarine cables and 21 landing stations in China, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, Pacnet’s core assets comprise an integrated network with 109 PoPs across 61 cities in the Asia-Pacific region, along with 29 data centers in key locations. Seven of the data centers have Tier III accreditation. In addition, Pacnet controls two of the five fibre pairs on the Unity trans-Pacific submarine cable network connecting Japan to the United States.

In the year ended December 2013, Pacnet generated revenues of US$472m and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of US$111m. Pacnet is headquartered in both Singapore and Hong Kong with approximately 815 employees across 25 offices (including PBS China).

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OpenOptics MSA Contributes WDM Spec to Open Compute

The OpenOptics Multi-Source Agreement group is contributing the developed wavelength specifications to the Open Compute Project (OCP). The new specification enables data to be streamed at terabits per second over a single fiber.

The founders and supporters for the OpenOptics MSA for Highly Scalable Interconnect Solutions include Mellanox Technologies, RANOVUS, Ciena, Oracle, Vertilas, and Ghiasi Quantum. The MSA combines 1550 nm WDM laser and silicon photonics for optical networking solutions enabling the lowest cost, highest density, and highest bandwidth single mode fiber (SMF) connectivity, significantly improving terabit-scale data center infrastructure ROI.

“Previously, there was no standard for anything beyond 100 Gbps,” said Gilad Shainer, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “Now, the OCP will have an architecture standard that scales to a terabit and beyond on existing fiber, substantially reduces the cost of hyperscale data center networks.”

“Our OpenOptics MSA collaboration with industry leaders has resulted in the definition of a cost effective and scalable solution for data center network connectivity,” said Saeid Aramideh, chief marketing and sales officer for RANOVUS. “Our agreement on this specification is a major milestone for our industry which we believe will accelerate the adoption of silicon-photonics-based WDM solutions for the data center market.”

“We are pleased to see Mellanox bringing their Open Optics submission to the OCP networking project,” said Frank Frankovksy, chairman and president, Open Compute Project. “Standards efforts like these help further the Open Compute vision for openness and a faster pace of innovation in network technologies.”

http://www.mellanox.com/page/press_release_item?id=1500
http://www.openopticsmsa.org/

• The OpenOptics Multi-Source Agreement was established in 2014 to define 1550nm silicon photonics based QSFP optical transceiver for 100G data center networks on single mode fiber (SMF) infrastructure. 

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Broadcom Releases Open Switch APIs

Broadcom released an Open Network Switch Library (OpenNSL) of APIs that enable the development of new applications on top of Broadcom StrataXGS switches.

The OpenNSL software platform map Broadcom's Software Development Kit (SDK) to an open north bound interface, enabling the integration of new applications and the ability to optimize switch hardware platforms. Examples include network monitoring, load balancing, service chaining, workload optimization and traffic engineering.

Broadcom said it is working with leading software developers on new network applications based on these OpenNSL APIs. In addition, Broadcom provides reference code for applications leveraging unique Broadcom switch functionality. The OpenNSL package supports a suite of network monitoring and analytics tools known as BroadView instrumentation for its Tomahawk and Trident II switches.

"We have been working closely with our partners on the OpenNSL project and expect continued support and growth of the community on this initiative," said Ram Velaga, Broadcom Senior Vice President and General Manager, Network Switch. "Our software is designed to give developers direct access to Broadcom's rich feature set, enabling a higher degree of programmability and providing better control and management of the network."

http://www.broadcom.com

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