Microsoft and Facebook to Build 160 Tbps Transatlantic Cable

Microsoft and Facebook will jointly fund a new transatlantic cable system linking Virginia Beach, Virginia to Bilbao, Spain.

The MAREA cable, which will be managed by Telxius, Telefónica’s new infrastructure company, will feature eight fiber pairs and an initial estimated design capacity of 160 Tbps. The new 6,600 km submarine cable system will take a more southern route than other transatlantic cables, which mostly connect northern Europe to the New York/New Jersey region.

Construction is set to begin in August 2016 with completion targeted for October 2017.

“In order to better serve our customers and provide the type of reliable and low-latency connectivity they deserve, we are continuing to invest in new and innovative ways to continuously upgrade both the Microsoft Cloud and the global Internet infrastructure,” said Frank Rey, director, global network acquisition, Microsoft Corp. “This marks an important new step in building the next generation infrastructure of the Internet.”

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/server-cloud/2016/05/26/microsoft-and-facebook-to-build-subsea-cable-across-atlantic/

• Microsoft has previously announced investments with Hibernia and Aqua Comms for fiber connectivity from North America to Ireland and on to the United Kingdom.
• Microsoft is a consortium partner in the New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable Network.  Other partners include China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Chunghwa Telecom, and KT. TE SubCom its the cable supplier.

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Level 3 Launches Enterprise Security Gateway in the Cloud

Level 3 Communications launched a cloud-based network security solution that helps enterprises evolve from the traditional on-premises hardware model to Security as a Service.

The Level 3 Enterprise Security Gateway (ESG) moves the security perimeter from their enterprise or data center to the Level 3 network.

Level 3 cited the following benefits and competitive differences:

• ESG uses Level 3's network to provide carrier agnostic, network-based security protection – data on any device at any location through any connection or carrier can be secure.
• From anywhere in the world, customers can leverage Level 3's global IP backbone capacity, more than 42 Terabits per second (Tbps), and rich interconnection agreements to access security tools hosted in gateways.
• ESG offers multiple carrier-class security services for customers, including anti-malware with sandboxing, data loss protection, application awareness and enforcement and next-generation firewall.
• ESG is backed by Level 3's threat research, providing actionable intelligence for customers.
• Single Viewpoint: Through Level 3's customer portal, users can view their entire ESG ecosystem, enabling access to a multitude of reports and gateway performance metrics.
• Around-the-clock protection; customers have access to Level 3's 24/7 Security Operations Centers and professionals

"With today's global launch of Enterprise Security Gateway (ESG), Level 3 continues to enhance our network-based enterprise security solutions portfolio. With ESG, enterprises can fundamentally shift their security perimeter to the Level 3 network cloud where customers can then access a state of the art collection of security solutions, tools and technical expertise. ESG reinforces Level 3's commitment to our customers where everything we do is intended to allow them to grow their business faster, operate their networks more efficiently and to do both in a secure fashion," stated Anthony Christie, Chief Marketing Officer, Level 3.

http://news.level3.com/2016-05-25-Level-3-Takes-Security-to-the-Network-and-Leverages-the-Cloud-to-Defend-Customers

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Video: A Fundamental Shift in Corporate Security Thinking - BT Americas

There has been a fundamental shift in the way that companies think about security, says Kate Kuehn, Head of Sales - Security for BT Americas.

Security used to be an afterthought for technology deployments.  Now, security is the first thing that companies are considering, because it does impact every area of their business.

See video: https://youtu.be/1yOwsmDlIlc

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Video: Data Center Interconnect and Edge CDNs

More and more operators are interconnecting data centers in a metro region. Jim Hintze, Senior VP of Sales at FiberLight, highlights this trend along with the idea of moving content closer to the user in metro regions.

See: https://youtu.be/0dI4aysud-Y

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Video: Delivering a U.S. Fiber Presence for International Carriers

International carriers are looking for a metro fiber presence in many U.S. markets.  Jim Hintze, Senior VP of Sales at FiberLight, talks about how these international carriers are looking for fiber instead of leasing capacity from existing operators.

See video: https://youtu.be/tKi0vthQvrM

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Video: Simplifying Cloud Connectivity

Enterprises are looking for a secure way to connect to the cloud that they have visibility and control over.

Mary Stanhope, Vice President of Marketing at Global Capacity, says a key performance challenge is overcoming the "long tail" -- the long haul routes that operate users in one city from servers located far away.

See video: https://youtu.be/Y3bDeR7Pb-s

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Video: Deep Metro Fiber for Texas and Other Regions

FiberLight is an infrastructure-rich company operating in seven states.  Its largest network is in Texas, where FiberLight's infrastructure extends over 9,000 route miles.

Ron Kornos, Chief Strategy Officer at FiberLight, introduces the company and talks about how data center connectivity is becoming a key driver of the business.

See video: https://youtu.be/BD-yY050cy8

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BT Tests 5.6 Tbps Optical Transmission Speed

BT and Huawei demonstrated speeds of 2 Tbps over a live core network spanning 700km between London and Dublin.

Separately, BT also announced today that it has successfully transmitted speeds of 5.6Tbps over a single optical fibre running on its trial network between the BT Labs in Adastral Park and the BT Tower in London, beating the previous record of 3 Tbps set in 2014.

Key technical facts about the trials:

• The 2Tbps trials exploit commercial flexible grid hardware and real-time flexible rate 64GBaud transponders. 64GBaud optical technology runs at twice the electrical speed of current deployed core optical network optical signals and is one of the key enablers for high-speed, long reach optical transmission.
• The live trials were conducted over a 727km commercial flexible grid optical core link between London and Dublin, based on Huawei’s OSN 9800/8800 and iManager U2000 platforms, carrying live 40/100G customer traffic. The link includes a 133km long unrepeatered submarine cable link from Dublin to Holyhead.
• The trials demonstrate, for the first time, the successful operation of real-time 64GBaud flexible-rate transponders allowing all-optical, long reach (unregenerated) superchannel transmission, with low latency.
• In addition, by exploiting flexible rate transponders, BT successfully demonstrated fast capacity turn up (or network upgrade) equivalent to ~2Tbps in one minute.
• BT and Huawei also successfully demonstrated a record real-time 5.6Tbps optical superchannel over a closed loop network running between the BT Tower and Adastral Park. This comprised 28 x 200Gb/s (64GBaud/QPSK) sub-channels, bundled together to provide combined capacity, achieving highest capacity and spectral efficiency.

Howard Watson, CEO of BT Technology, Service & Operations, said: “BT scientists built the first commercial single mode optical fibre link back in 1984 and the BT Labs remain at the forefront of photonics research more than thirty years later. The core network is the superhighway of the internet. It’s important that our core networks keep pace with the growth in bandwidth demands driven by take-up of high-speed fibre broadband, HD content, 4G smartphones and tablets and in the future, 5G services. So we’re investing in our core, as well as in high-speed access technology such as fibre broadband, to make sure there is no capacity crunch and deliver the best possible speeds to customers.

http://www.btplc.com

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Ciena Intros Blue Planet DevOps Toolkit for SDN/NFV

Ciena introduced its Blue Planet DevOps Toolkit to help network operators speed up the creation and delivery of new on-demand, virtualized services within their SDN and NFV enabled networks.

The kit consists of a set of software development tools and community resources that allow operators to integrate network resources such as devices, functions, or domains (physical or virtual), as well as customize service templates, with the Blue Planet Network and Service Orchestration software.

Ciena said the kit could be used in the creation and on-boarding of new virtual network functions (VNFs) such as virtual firewalls, physical network domains such as Layer 2 metro networks, and virtual domains such as a third party cloud, and ultimately deploy these resources as components of new service offerings.

“Customers have made it clear that the ‘old way’ of doing business is unsustainable. Blue Planet and the DevOps Toolkit have been selected for key global engagements recently because choice, openness, empowerment, and self-service are key components of our software. Ciena is leading this revolution and our Blue Planet DevOps Toolkit allows network operators to integrate their IT, product development and operations to create an interconnected ecosystem that reduces the time required to offer new services and quickly adapt their network to changing market needs," stated Kevin Sheehan, Vice President, Global Customer Operations, Blue Planet Division, Ciena

http://www.ciena.com

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Video: Karen Bartleson - Advancing IEEE's Internet Initiative

The IEEE is the world's largest professional society with over 400,000 members around the world and dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity, Karen Bartleson, President-elect of the IEEE, discusses her involvement with the IEEE's Internet Initiative, which is tacking tough problems in cyber security, privacy, and governance.

She also talks about inspiring future engineers, especially young women, to take up the challenge of improving technology for betterment of the world.

See video: https://youtu.be/xzYEy4gtAdQ

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Salesforce Signs with AWS as Preferred Cloud

Salesforce has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred public cloud infrastructure provider.

Under the deal, Salesforce will expand its use of AWS to core services—including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, App Cloud, Community Cloud, Analytics Cloud and more—for the company's planned international infrastructure expansion. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Many Salesforce services, including Heroku, Marketing Cloud Social Studio, SalesforceIQ, and the recently announced Salesforce IoT Cloud, already run on AWS infrastructure. Salesforce will utilize AWS to help bring new infrastructure online more quickly and efficiently.

“We are excited to expand our strategic relationship with Amazon as our preferred public cloud infrastructure provider,” said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, Salesforce. “There is no public cloud infrastructure provider that is more sophisticated or has more robust enterprise capabilities for supporting the needs of our growing global customer base.”

“Leading enterprises and ISVs around the world are migrating their business-critical applications to the AWS Cloud to be more agile and efficient, reduce costs, and take advantage of the security, reliability, and broad functionality we offer,” said Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS. “Companies rely on Salesforce to transform their businesses and we are thrilled Salesforce has chosen AWS as their public cloud infrastructure partner, helping them continue to scale, add new services and maintain their incredible momentum.”

http://aws.amazon.com
http://www.salesforce.com

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Viptela Pulls In $75 Million for its SD-WAN Platform

Viptela, a start-up based in San Jose, announced $75 million in Series C funding for its Software-Defined WAN (SD-WAN) platform. The company cites deployments by more than 25 Fortune 500 enterprises including some of the world’s largest retailers, financial institutions, conglomerates, healthcare organizations and other businesses that have many geographically distributed locations. The company has licensing partnerships with Tier-1 carriers Verizon and Singtel; and has been recognized as a Gartner Cool Vendor and a Next Billion Dollar Startup by Forbes.

Viptela said it plans to use the proceeds to scale sales, marketing, technical support and research & development to meet aggressive customer demand for its products and execute its global go-to-market strategy.

The round was led by Redline Capital with participation from new investor Northgate Capital and existing investor Sequoia Capital. This brings total funding to nearly $110M.

“Our ability to raise this level of financing, while many technology vendors are struggling to raise capital or experiencing ‘down rounds’ is a testament to our team, technology and execution,” said Amir Khan, CEO of Viptela. “These funds will enable us to add the resources to expand into new geographies, extend our lead in this hyper-growth sector and capture a lion’s share of the market.”

http://www.viptela.com

Viptela Intros LTE-enabled SD-WAN Routers

Wednesday, May 04, 2016  SD-WAN, Viptela  No comments

Viptela introduced a compact SD-WAN router that natively supports any transport method including 3G/4G/LTE and wireless LANs.

The company said the new product extends the business case for SD-WAN to smaller companies, home/remote offices, ATMs and other sites that don’t require the scalability of the company’s existing enterprise and campus vEdge models.

The Viptela vEdge-100 provides the same secure data connectivity over any transport technology as the vEdge-1000 and 2000 router models, while adding integrated support for 3G/4G/LTE connections and Wireless LANs. It can be deployed without any onsite configuration and is centrally managed via the cloud.  The unit is fully integrated with the Viptela SEN platform and establishes secure DTLS sessions with the vSmart controller and IPsec sessions with other vEdge routers. It performs full IP router functions including OSPF, BGP, QoS, ACLs, etc.

“Increasing bandwidth requirements being generated by cloud, mobile and unified communications applications are making the use of MPLS connections cost prohibitive, especially for small/home offices, remote sites, retail outlets and ATMs,” said Ramesh Prabagaran, Vice President of Product Management at Viptela. “The new line of vEdge-100 devices opens up the use of SD-WAN to a wide range of new business locations with the addition of integrated wireless capabilities. It eliminates the complexity associated with using third-party add-ons or external modems to deploy 3G/4G/LTE as a WAN connection. Like all our vEdge models, it supports zero-touch deployment and is centrally managed which eliminates need for an onsite technician to bring new sites online.”

http://www.viptela.com

Verizon Delivers SD-WAN with Viptela

Thursday, February 18, 2016  SD-WAN, Start-ups, Viptela  No comments

Verizon will deliver a new software defined networking solution using Viptela’s Software Defined WAN Platform. Viptela also entered into an exclusive managed services arrangement with Verizon in the United States.

The new Verizon service, powered by Viptela, allows enterprises to “mix and match” private and public IP connections such as MPLS, wireless LTE, broadband and Ethernet to meet an organization’s unique application requirements based on geographic location, bandwidth and application service availability needs. The new managed service is being offered in the U.S., Europe and the Asia Pacific region. It is delivered from Verizon’s cloud and will be supported by Verizon’s IT consulting group.

The Viptela SD-WAN solution expands Verizon’s Managed SD WAN portfolio currently based on Cisco’s iWAN technology in the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

Key features of Viptela’s SD-WAN platform:

• Centralized management and increased agility: Deploy changes in service policies in minutes using centralized management and zero-touch capabilities
• Application performance and service availability: Visibility into application and infrastructure performance to enable informed decisions on resource utilization and application tuning
• Security: Every device is authenticated and every packet encrypted in the network for added protection while supporting network segmentation
• Service-chaining: Enables supplementary L4 – L7 services like WAN optimization, firewalls and data leak prevention delivered from the Verizon cloud across the enterprise network

“Viptela SD-WAN creates a unified and secure WAN that allows Verizon to deliver a new range of business application capabilities with exceptional levels of security, performance and availability,” said Amir Khan, CEO of Viptela. “The new Viptela-powered service enables Verizon to expand its WAN footprint by harnessing the power of software defined networking, and capitalize on new business opportunities made possible by the cloud and virtualized infrastructures.”

http://www.viptela.com

Blueprint: What’s Wrong with the WAN?

Wednesday, January 21, 2015  Blueprint, Viptela, WAN  No comments

by Khalid Raza, CTO, Viptela Today’s WANs are built on largely the same infrastructure as they were 10 years ago.  Back then, demands by users and applications were more predictable, resulting in more expected traffic patterns and bandwidth requirements.  And there was no cloud.  And there was no virtualization. But things are different today.  Delay-sensitive real-time applications such as VoIP and video are now enterprise...

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Telefónica Renews Submarine Cable Maintenance Contracts

Telefónica has renewed the marine maintenance service agreement for its domestic and South America-1 (SAM-1) submarine cable systems with Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN), now part of Nokia, and TE SubCom.  The five-year extension will take effect on January 1, 2017.

Under the Atlantic Private Maintenance Agreement (APMA), ASN and TE SubCom will continue to make available three dedicated maintenance vessels in the Western Atlantic (Curaçao) and Eastern Atlantic (Cape Verde and Calais), as well as experienced, fully trained and certified personnel for cable repairs on Telefónica’s domestic and SAM-1 cable systems, totaling more than 27,000 km. The SAM-1 cable systems provide high bandwidth connectivity between the U.S. and Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Peru, with Telefónica’s domestic network providing service between Spain’s mainland and the Canary Islands.

“Telefónica is committed to providing best-in-class services to its customers by partnering with trusted companies for the provisioning of the fastest and best quality service and solutions,” said Telefónica Communications Department. “The high quality marine maintenance services demonstrated since 2012 by TE SubCom and ASN made it easy for our organization to decide to renew the APMA service agreement for another five years.”

http://www.nokia.com
http:/www.subcomm.com

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eero Raises $50 Million for Home WiFi System

eero, a start-up based in San Francisco, raised $50 million for its home WiFi system.

ero uses multiple 802.11ac access points placed throughout the home to provide strong coverage in every room.  The company will use the funding to build its customer support team and prepare for a widespread retail presence in Best Buy.

The funding was led by Menlo Ventures with significant participation by Index Ventures. They join eero’s existing investors, First Round Capital, Shasta Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Playground Global, and others, which also participated in the round, bringing the company's total funding to over $90 million.

“Since we started shipping eero systems to customers earlier this year, we have been building on our momentum, scaling our infrastructure, and improving our software so we can support our growing customer base,” said Nick Weaver, eero founder and chief executive officer. “With this round of funding from leading investors, eero is well-positioned to provide a strong foundation for the connected home on an even larger scale.”

http://www.eero.com

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CloudBolt Manages Cloud Bursting to VMware, AWS, Azure, Openstack

CloudBolt, a start-up based in Campbell, California, has added cloud bursting capabilities to its cloud management platform.

CloudBolt said its tech-agnostic approach to cloud bursting and cloud management enables IT teams to build and rebuild VMs in an automated fashion, eliminating the need for complicated and resource-intensive migration of live VMs from one technology to another. These same CloudBolt blueprints can be deployed and scaled into different environments and technologies, enabling both the initial automated provisioning and cross-technology auto-scaling.

CloudBolt customers can define tiers within services that can be deployed to VMware, Azure, OpenStack, AWS, a physical server, or any of the other technologies CloudBolt supports. Key capabilities include:

• Automated cloud bursting based on load levels detected on servers
• Per application-tier scaling configuration, including configurable thresholds, minimums, maximums, and behavior on how to scale when conditions are met
• Automated scale back
• Scaling triggered by users, on a schedule, or via CB’s REST API
• Inter- and intra- technology scaling. For example, the ability to scale from VMware to AWS or from one VMware cluster to another.
• Support for the 14 resource handler technologies that CloudBolt supports, including seven public clouds, six private virtualization technologies, as well as physical server provisioning
• Out of the box support for four different load balancers, three configuration management systems, plus common IPAM, change management, SDN, and monitoring systems

“Cloud bursting is the shining promise of hybrid cloud, capable of cutting IT costs by optimizing resource utilization. However, because of the complexity of implementing cloud bursting, these benefits have been within the reach of only the smallest fraction of organizations,” said Jon Mittelhauser, CEO, CloudBolt. “CloudBolt’s cloud management platform takes the complexity out of cloud bursting by making it easier for IT shops to set up and build on top of what they already have, and by enabling them to extend the behavior to include and automate their processes and procedures. With CloudBolt’s cloud bursting, IT shops can own the base and rent the spike.”

http://www.cloudbolt.io

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Nita Patel Introduces the IEEE Women in Engineering Conference

The annual IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference (IEEE WIE ILC) brings together women from across the globe to share ideas on closing the gender gap as technologists, engineers and scientists in the STEM fields.

Nita Patel, Founder and Chair of the IEEE WIE ILC, introduces the event and invites you to join the movement.

http://ieee-wie-ilc.org/

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HPE's Services Business to Merge with CSC for Global IT Services

Hewlett Packard Enterprise will spin-off its Enterprise Services business and merge the unit with CSC, creating a pure-play, global IT services company with annual revenues of approximately $26 billion, more than 5,000 customers in 70 countries and employees in every major global region.

The companies said the combination will give them greater scale to service global clients migrating to the cloud. The deal is expected to produce first-year cost synergies of approximately $1 billion post-close, with run rate of $1.5 billion by end of year one.

Mike Lawrie, the current head of CSC, will become chairman, president and CEO of the new company, and Meg Whitman will join the Board of Directors. The new company's board will be split 50/50 between directors nominated by HPE and CSC.

After the spin-off, the remaining HPE will still have $33 billion in expected annual revenue. The company says the plan enables it to sharpen its focus on secure, next-generation, software-defined infrastructure built on its portfolio of servers, storage, networking, converged infrastructure, as well as its Helion Cloud platform and software assets.

"The 'spin-merger' of HPE's Enterprise Services unit with CSC is the right next step for HPE and our customers," said Meg Whitman, president and chief executive officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "Enterprise Services' customers will benefit from a stronger, more versatile services business, better able to innovate and adapt to an ever-changing technology landscape."

"As a more powerful, versatile and independent global technology services business, this new company will be well positioned to help clients succeed on their digital transformation journeys," said Mike Lawrie, CSC chairman, president and chief executive officer. "Together, CSC and HPE's Enterprise Services will have the scale, foundation and next-generation technologies to innovate, compete and grow in a rapidly changing marketplace. We are excited by the great potential this merger brings to our people, clients, partners and investors, and by the opportunity to strengthen our relationship with Hewlett Packard Enterprise."

https://www.hpe.com/
http://www.csc.com/

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Facebook's Telecom Infra Project Gets Organized

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP), which was kicked off by Facebook earlier this year with a mission to take the principles of the Open Compute Project (OCP) model and apply them to software systems and components involved in access, backhaul, and core networks, has expanded its membership and formed the first set of technical project groups.

New TIP members include Axiata Digital, Indosat, MTN Group, Telefonica, Vodafone, Acacia, ADVA, BlueStream, Broadcom, Coriant, Deloitte, Juniper Networks, and Lumentum. TIP launch partners included Intel, Nokia, Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom.

The new Project Groups include:

Access
System integration and site optimization – Chaired by SK Telecom
New integration via innovative, cost-effective and efficient end-to-end solutions that address rural and urban regions difficult to serve profitably.

Unbundled solutions – Co-chaired by SK Telecom and Nokia
Taking a fresh look at access, specifically through a cost-effective approach for low-power, low-maintenance solutions.

Media-friendly solutions – Chaired by Intel
Focusing on methods to increase effective throughput and further enhance the mobile user experience by bringing compute and storage capacity closer to the network edge.

Backhaul
High-frequency autonomic access – Chaired by Facebook
Defining thin and extensible software stack to autonomously coordinate routing, addressing and security related functions in packet-switched IPv6 networks.

Open optical packet transport – Co-chaired by Facebook and Equinix
Defining Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) open packet transport architecture that triggers new pace of technology innovation and flexibility, and avoids implementation lock-ins.

Core and Management
Core network optimization – Chaired by Intel
New innovation through disaggregation of traditional telecom core network via deconstructing traditionally bundled components.

Greenfield telecom networks – Co-chaired by Nokia, Facebook and Deutsche Telekom
Accelerating operator-friendly evolution towards a pure and efficient IT-based network architecture via greenfield solutions designed from the ground up.

https://telecominfraproject.com/news/updates-to-the-tip-foundation/

Facebook's Terragraph Accelerates WiGig for City Access

Wednesday, April 13, 2016  Facebook, WiGig  No comments

Facebook took the wraps off of two terrestrial connectivity technologies for fast wireless access.

Terragraph is a 60 GHz, multi-node wireless system for dense urban areas and that uses radios based on the WiGig standard. Facebook said Terragraph will deliver gigabits of data capacity. IPv6-only Terragraph nodes will be placed at 200m intervals. Terragraph will incorporate commercial off-the-shelf components and aim for high-volume, low-cost production. Facebook noted that up to 7 GHz of bandwidth is available in the unlicensed 60 GHz band in many countries.  U.S. regulators are considering expanding this to a total of 14 GHz.

Facebook Terragraph will also leverage an SDN-like cloud compute controller and a new modular routing protocol that Facebook optimized for fast route convergence and failure detection. The architecture also tweaks the MAC layer to solve shortcomings of TCP/IP over a wireless link. The company says the TDMA-TDD MAC layers delivers up to 6x improvement in network efficiency while being more predictable than the existing Wi-Fi/WiGig standard.

Terragraph is already in operation at the Facebook campus in Menlo Park, California, where it delivers 1.05 Gbps bidirectional (2.1 Gbps total throughput per distribution node) in P2P mode, up to 250 meters away. A wider trial is planned for San Jose, California.

Facebook also released details on Project ARIES, a transmission technology that is a) spectrally efficient and allows for higher throughput in even the smallest bandwidths, and b) energy efficient, allowing for extended coverage range.

The proof-of-concept system features a base station with 96 antennas and can support 24 streams simultaneously over the same radio spectrum. Researchers have demonstrated 71 bps/Hz of spectral efficiency. The target is aiming for an unprecedented 100+ bps/Hz of spectral efficiency. Facebook said ARIES is an embodiment of Massive MIMO — by using “spatial multiplexing,” the antenna array at the base station can serve a multiplicity of autonomous user terminals on the same time-frequency resource. This opens up possibilities such as resource sharing as an alternative not only to the need for spectrum licensing.

Facebook already has an ARIES testbed delivering 10x spectral and energy efficiency gains in point to multi-point deployments.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/1072680049445290/

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vArmour Raises $41 Million for Micro-Segmentation

vArmour Networks, a start-up based in Mountain View, California, raised $41 million in Series D funding for its work in software-defined security for virtualized data centers.

vArmour, which was founded in January 2011 by two NetScreen veterans, specializes in application-aware micro-segmentation with advanced security analytics. Its Distributed Security System (DSS) enables organizations to gain application-layer visibility and control of their network, applications and users to prevent, detect and respond to cyber attacks and breaches in data center and cloud environments. The company cites deployments at hundreds of organizations across the globe, including a significant number of the world’s largest banks, telecom service providers, government agencies, healthcare providers and retailers.

The funding round was led by Redline Capital, Telstra and other strategic investors, bringing total company funding to $83 million.

"vArmour is now segmenting and protecting critical data for some of the largest national infrastructure and financial institutions in the world,” said Tim Eades, CEO of vArmour. “We have proven that our product and model are extremely effective, cost efficient and scalable, and this new round of funding and investment from global distribution partners will propel company growth."

https://www.varmour.com

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Team Grush Wins $1 Million from Intel, TBS, Mark Burnett

Team Grush - inventors of a digital toothbrush that uses virtual games to motivate children to brush their teeth, was voted the winner in the season 1 finale of the tech reality TV challenge America’s Greatest Makers.  The team beat out 23 other entrants and was awarded $1 million in prize money.

All of the teams presented new devices built with Intel technology.

Intel and Burnett, president of MGM Television and Digital Group, confirmed a second season of America’s Greatest Makers would air in the United States in 2017.

https://www.americasgreatestmakers.com/

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