Japan's J:COM Deploys Motorola's DOCSIS 3.0

Jupiter Telecommunications (J:COM), Japan's largest multiple system operator (MSO), has selected Motorola's channel bonding technology to deploy the company's first DOCSIS 3.0-based Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) and cable modems. Specifically, the deployment uses Motorola's DOCSIS 3.0-based BSR 64000 CMTS/Edge Router and SURFboard SB6120 cable modems. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Motorola said its solution is capable of delivering up to 160Mbps throughput to residential and commercial customers.http://www.motorola.comhttp://www.jcom.co.jp/english.html

Read More

TelePacific Deploys Alcatel-Lucent's Optical Gear in California

TelePacific Communications, a competitive carrier that serves California and Nevada, is deploying Alcatel-Lucent's 1665 DMX multiplexer to expand its network in central California. The project, which is valued at $4.3 million, will help TelePacific extend and increase its aggregation facilities by more than fifty percent in areas including Bakersfield, Stockton, San Luis Obispo and Fresno. The deployment is scheduled for completion by the end of the year.


TelePacific currently operates its 22,794 mile network in California and Nevada. http://www.alcatel-lucent.com

Read More

Juniper Unveils New IDP Appliances

Juniper Networks introduced a new family of Intrusion Detection and Prevention (IDP) appliances featuring greater throughput, performance and port density for providing security coverage at the network perimeter and network core. The new IDP appliances, which are used to identify, secure and manage traffic, offer 10 Gbps of throughput, up to 80 Gbit modular Input/Output (I/O), and a full Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) feature set. The appliances provide in-line protection to thwart network- and application-level attacks using stateful detection and prevention techniques.

Juniper said its IDP appliances provide zero-day protection and prevent worms, trojans, spyware, keyloggers and other malware from penetrating the network or spreading from already infected users. Several models are available:

• The Juniper Networks IDP 8200 delivers 10 Gbps of throughput, and is suited for large enterprise and service provider deployments. In addition to deployments at the network perimeter, the high throughput delivered by the IDP 8200 enables the deployment of IPS appliances in the network core to secure traffic within the corporate network. IDP 8200 pricing starts at $70,000.



• The Juniper Networks IDP 75, 250 and 800 offer IPS capabilities to a wide range of customers, ranging from small enterprises to ISPs. The IDP 75 starts at a list price of $8,000, the IDP 250 starts at $19,000, the IDP 800 starts at $49,000.

The IDP appliances include built-in bypass capabilities to ensure continued network connectivity without the overhead cost and resources needed for an external bypass solution. The new IDP appliances provide continued support for coordinated threat control with Juniper's Unified Access Control and Secure Access SSL VPN. In addition, the IDP products are managed by the Juniper Networks NetScreen-Security Manager (NSM), a centralized, rule-based management solution that provides granular control over the system's behavior.


Juniper is also offering daily signature updates for IDP customers.http://www.juniper.net

Read More

Corecess/Teknovus Cite New FTTx Wins KT, Hanaro

Corecess, a supplier of Gigabit Ethernet Optical Network (G-EPON) systems, announced new contracts in Korea with both KT (Korea Telecom) and Hanaro Telecom and new wins in Asia and Europe. Corecess began deployments at KT in 2005 and at Hanaro Telecom in 2006. Most recently, Corecess has won deployments in Poland, Indonesia and Spain. By year-end, Corecess will have more than 500,000 lines installed. Financial terms were not disclosed.


Corecess' OLT (Optical Line Termination) platforms for central offices and ONUs (Optical Network Units) for customer premises are based on Teknovus' G-EPON chips.http://www.teknovus.comhttp://www.corecess.com

Read More

Xilinx Offers Radiation-tolerant FPGA for Space Applications

Xilinx released new radiation-tolerant Virtex-4QV FPGAs designed to perform video, audio, radar streams, and packet processing functions in space-based electronic systems.




To meet the unique processing requirements of space-based systems, Xilinx selected four of the highest performance, largest capacity devices across the three Virtex-4 platforms for its new Virtex-4QV family. These devices provide extensive system integration among FPGA-based offerings for space applications with up to 200,000 logic cells, 10Mbit of RAM/FIFO, two built-in PowerPC processor blocks with auxiliary processing unit (APU) controller, 512 DSP slices, and four built-in Ethernet MAC blocks.


The company said all of its Virtex-4QV FPGAs are guaranteed for radiation tolerance. Extensive testing by Xilinx and the Single Event Effects (SEE) Consortium verifies a total ionizing dose (TID) of 300 krad (Si) and single-event latchup (SEL) immunity greater than 125 MeVcm2/mg with Virtex-4QV devices. The SEE Consortium was founded in 2002 when Xilinx joined forces with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, leading the way to the application of SRAM-based reconfigurable FPGA technology in high-radiation environments.http://www.xilinx.com/

Read More

Hughes Initiates Commercial Service on SPACEWAY 3 Satellite

Hughes Network Systems activated its first "HughesNet" consumer subscriber for broadband Internet service utilizing its SPACEWAY 3 satellite.


Launched by Arianespace in August 2007, the geostationary SPACEWAY 3 satellite offer 10 Gbps of gross capacity, making it the highest traffic-carrying satellite to be brought into service in North America. It was designed and developed as a next-generation, Ka-band broadband satellite system, and is the world's first commercial satellite to employ on-board traffic switching and routing. It also features dynamic beam forming, and direct small-dish-to- small-dish connectivity for subscribers.


"With this significant milestone, our SPACEWAY 3 satellite has officially commenced carrying revenue-bearing traffic, making Hughes a fully integrated service provider," said Pradman Kaul, president and CEO of Hughes. "We are excited to begin delivering HughesNet broadband services over the world's first commercial satellite with on-board switching to our rapidly growing base of consumer, SMB, enterprise, and government customers throughout North America."http://www.hughes.com/

• Hughes has built a scalable Network Operations and Control Center (NOCC), installed at its Germantown Maryland headquarters, which anchors control functions for network addressing, registration, network security, admission control and multicasting. The NOCC also provides satellite payload management, capacity planning, terminal management, customer care and network management functions. The SPACEWAY architecture can scale up to two million terminals per satellite and will provide coverage with multiple spot beams across the U.S. including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, as well as in selected areas in Canada, Mexico, and major cities in South America.



• SPACEWAY 3 was built by Boeing and is based on the company's 702 satellite platform.

Read More

Seagate Delivers First 1TB Drive with SAS Interface

Seagate announced the first commercial shipment of its 1 terabyte (TB) enterprise-class Barracuda ES.2 hard drives with a Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) interface. Applications addressing rich media content and collaborative applications like email can benefit from the average 135% performance boost over SATA-interface drives. SAS also enables greater system-design and integration flexibility.


"The explosion of content in enterprise environments is driving the need for faster data access and bandwidth that Seagate's 1TB Barracuda ES.2 drives can deliver with a SAS interface," said Sherman Black, Seagate senior vice president and general manager, Seagate Enterprise Compute Business. http://www.seagate.com

Read More

Verizon to Phase out Local Analog Simulcasts on FiOS

Verizon announced that it is phasing out a small number of duplicate analog channels on the FiOS TV service so all customers will enjoy better-quality, all-digital viewing experiences on every set in their homes. Until now, Verizon has provided these duplicate channels to allow digital subscribers to view some limited programming in an analog format without using a set-top box.


The company also has a small number of customers who subscribe to a service that solely offers these duplicate analog channels. For these customers, Verizon will provide a free digital adapter.


"As we phase out our local analog simulcasts this year, we want to make sure that our small number of affected customers can continue receiving this programming on sets they are using without a set-top box," said Michelle Minus Swittenberg, Verizon vice president of sales and marketing for the New York region. http://www.verizon.com

Read More

Wasabi Adds 10Gb Ethernet Support to iSCSI SANs

Wasabi Systems is adding 10Gb Ethernet capabilities for its Storage Builder network storage operating system. The 10Gb Ethernet allows users to aggregate storage traffic from multiple servers on a 1 Gbps network into the 10 Gbps capable VMX 2000sx Series iSCSI SAN appliance.


"Although already less expensive than Fibre Channel, we expect that the cost of 10Gb Ethernet will decrease substantially during 2008, leading to widespread adoption in storage and other applications that can benefit from a fat pipe," said Kirk Roller, Wasabi's Senior Vice President, Worldwide Sales and Marketing. http://www.wasabisystems.com

Read More

Motorola Reaches Truce with Carl Icahn

Motorola reached and agreement with activist shareholder Carl Icahn under which William R. Hambrecht, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of WR Hambrecht + Co. and co-founder of Hambrecht & Quist, and Keith Meister, a managing director of the Icahn investment funds and principal executive officer of Icahn Enterprises, will be nominated for election to Motorola's Board of Directors.


As part of the settlement agreement, all pending litigation between Motorola and Carl Icahn will be dismissed. In addition, Motorola has agreed to seek input from Mr. Icahn in connection with significant matters regarding the intended separation of the Mobile Devices business, including the search for a new CEO to head the Mobile Devices business. http://www.motorola.com/.

Read More

EC Clears Way for In-flight Mobile Calls over Europe

The European Commission cleared the way for mobile communication services on aircraft over Europe. This allows people to receive and make calls and messages with their own mobile phones on-board aircraft during flights. Passengers' phones will be linked to an onboard cellular network connected to the ground via satellite. The system will at the same time prevent phones from connecting directly to mobile networks on the ground below. This will ensure that transmission powers are kept low enough for mobile phones to be used without affecting the safety of aircraft equipment or the normal operation of terrestrial mobile networks.


"Pan-European telecom services, such as in-flight mobile telephony, need a regulatory 'one-stop shop' to operate throughout Europe and this is why the Commission has acted today. One regulatory decision for all European airspace was required for this new service to come into being," said Viviane Reding, the EU's Telecoms Commissioner. "Now we expect operators to be transparent and innovative in their price offerings. In-flight mobile phone services can be a very interesting new service especially for those business travelers who need to be ready to communicate wherever they are, wherever they go. However, if consumers receive shock phone bills, the service will not take-off. I also call on airlines and operators to create the right conditions on board aircraft to ensure that those who want to use in-flight communication services do not disturb other passengers."


Now that the technical requirements for the safe deployment of in-flight mobile communication services are complete, national licenses will be granted to individual airlines by the Member State in which they are registered, The licenses will be recognized throughout the EU. For example, an aircraft registered in France or Spain will be able to offer mobile communication services on aircrafts to passengers when flying over Germany or Hungary without any additional licensing procedures.http://www.europa.eu

Read More

Xtera Acquires Meriton for its Metro Optical Solutions

Xtera Communications, a supplier of optical transmission gear, has acquired Meriton Networks,
a supplier of metro optical solutions, for an undisclosed sum. Both are privately-held companies.


Xtera supplies Optical, IP performance and service solutions to terrestrial and sub-sea global service providers. The company is based in Allen, Texas.


Meriton's product portfolio includes Packet Optical Edge/Metro and Metro/Regional ROADM solutions. Meriton's platform delivers both cross-connect and ROADM switching, together with sub-wavelength grooming capabilities. Meriton was founded in 2000 and is based in Ottawa, Canada.


Xtera said it has been strategically extending both its product portfolio and global reach to complement its existing core business with a number of previously announced acquisitions. The acquisition of Meriton is the latest move in the company's announced growth strategy of strengthening its global position in the converged IP and optical communication market.http://www.xtera.comhttp://www.meriton.com

• In November 2007, Xtera Communications acquired Azea Networks, a privately held company based in the UK and focused on delivering substantial capacity gains to existing undersea repeatered links, for an undisclosed sum. Xtera said the acquisition extends its subsea product portfolio from the unrepeatered market to include repeatered subsea applications. Xtera's unrepeatered product line provides extended reach for new deployments and enables existing unrepeatered links to be upgraded to significantly higher capacities. Azea's product line provides similar benefit to repeatered upgrades and initial deployments. By upgrading their existing repeatered assets with these solutions, service providers are able to achieve the capacity of a new system at a fraction of the cost of a new deployment.

Read More

Indonesia's TELKOMNet Chooses Narus for DDoS Protection

TELKOMNet, a leading Internet service provider in Indonesia, has deployed Narus' NarusInsight Secure Suite (NSS) to protect its network from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) and other malicious attacks. Narus, working closely with Cisco and Datacomm, an Indonesian systems integrator, to provide TELKOMNet with a fully managed detection and mitigation security system.


Narus is a member of the Cisco Technology Developer Program. Through participation in the program, NSS provides direct value to service provider customers; the suite enables carriers to detect attacks including day-zero attacks, abuse and behavioral anomalies in real time and to direct actions that can help prevent security breaches, attack propagation, loss of productivity and network outages. http://www.narus.com

Read More

Narus Debuts Two Traffic Intelligence Products

Narus introduced two new products for real-time traffic intelligence: NarusInsight Traffic Management Suite (NTMS) and NarusInsight Traffic Intelligence Platform (NTIP). The first is designed for detecting, analyzing and mitigating gray or unmanaged VoIP traffic. The second is a customizable, high-performance traffic intelligence application development platform for service providers and governments. Both are based on Narus' NarusInsight technology and both are now available.


The NarusInsight Traffic Management Suite (NTMS) provides real-time IP traffic classification, analysis and mitigation with a particular focus on detecting gray or unmanaged VoIP traffic. Gray VoIP traffic includes calls used to avoid tariffs and toll charges. NTMS is able to detect, mitigate and report on the traffic (including asymmetric traffic) going through a carrier's network; generate VoIP alerts; and record "black lists" and access list activity. Narus estimates service providers are losing millions of dollars in revenue due to Gray VoIP traffic.


The NarusInsight Traffic Intelligence Platform (NTIP) is aimed at organizations that need traffic intelligence but wish to develop custom applications to address unique problems. Narus is offering the platform to service providers and governments.


Narus also announced enhancements to its existing NSS and NIS applications. Service providers using NSS can now offer additional managed security services to their enterprise customers. Historically used for network security and attack mitigation, new NSS features include:

• Customer portal to view enterprise customers' real-time event and network usage


• Network security reports by customer outlining savings, amount of bandwidth saved and number of attacks addressed


• Reports by customer on application usage statistics and trends, in-and-out traffic usage statistics, and a list of users consuming the most bandwidth

Enhancements to NIS make it easier for service providers and governments to capture a larger variety of IP traffic and to manage their systems. Used for forensic analysis, surveillance or to satisfy regulatory compliance, new features of NIS include:

• Increased performance and enhanced user management and security capabilities


• Improved intercept management capabilities with added user types


• Enhanced Webmail features, such as the ability to capture Gawab 2.0 English and Arabic Webmail and Gmail 2008 Webmail


• Dynamic MPLS targeting capabilities.

http://www.narus.com

Read More

180Squared Offers Microsoft Mediaroom Expertise and Application Framework

180Squared, a start-up headed by former Microsoft Mediaroom architects, introduced its encapsulation interface into Mediaroom middleware for existing Billing/Operational Support System (B/OSS) applications and emerging third-party software.


The "180Squared Framework" is an encapsulation of Mediaroom subsystems that enables 180Squared applications, third-party applications, and operator B/OSS applications like Customer Resource Management (CRM) and billing to safely and transparently interact with Mediaroom. The Framework provides all message translation into Mediaroom and provides service assurance against faulty Mediaroom interactions that could degrade network performance or cause other scalability problems. Stateful integration and workflow assist carriers in applying existing systems and logic to Mediaroom services.


The 180Squared team, which developed key architectural elements for Mediaroom and contributed B/OSS integration services for Mediaroom installations at AT&T, Bell Canada, and Telmex, said it is leveraging its technical expertise and extensible integration framework to help carriers maximize the profitability of their Mediaroom service.


180Squared is working in partnership with carriers on IPTV planning and design. It can customize the carrier's IPTV offering with unique consumer applications like remote DVR and caller ID that competitive broadcasters cannot provide.


180Squared is also developing its own applications for Mediaroom, including a number of "Quickstart" application modules:

• Device Activation Module, to automate provisioning of customer CPE


• Billing Module, for integration into legacy billing and records systems


• Caller ID Module, a consumer value-added application


• EAS Module, supporting regulatory digital alert systems


• Web-based PVR Scheduling (RemoteDVR) Module, enabling service providers to offer DVR scheduling as a hosted or branded service.

http://www.180squared.com

• 180Squared is headquartered in Pleasanton, California.



• 180Squared is headed by Mark Cooper, who previously was director of solutions architecture at Microsoft, where he led the organization responsible for the deployment of Microsoft Mediaroom at Bell Canada, ATT, and ATT-SE (formerly Bell South).

Read More

Netronome and NetWitness Partner on SSL Inspection and Monitoring

Netronome Systems and NetWitness announced an interoperability agreement that allows organizations to identify threats hidden within Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)-encrypted communications. The goal is to remove the blind-spots in network security monitoring created by SSL and the lack of a full packet capture-based approach to network monitoring.


The companies said that although SSL-encrypted communications enable the use of Web-based technologies for many types of sensitive consumer and business transactions, new threats are emerging. Adversaries, including state-sponsored attackers and organized crime groups, are repurposing SSL technology to hide serious threats from traditional network monitoring approaches. These threats include hiding of command and control messages, data theft and exfiltration traffic, and other malware and exploit communications.


Netronome Systems develops high-performance intelligent networking solutions that provide content flow analysis, deep packet inspection and application acceleration for network and security appliances.


NetWitness provides network monitoring solutions for identification, investigation, and resolution of complex network threats.


The combined solution is comprised of:

• NetWitness' NextGen - a full packet capture and session reconstruction solution for automated threat alerting and reporting and interactive analysis of network traffic up to the application layer and beyond. NextGen can be used to address a range of security problems, such as insider threat management, data leakage protection, malware activity detection, network performance management, and compliance verification.



• The Netronome SSL Inspector - a high-performance transparent SSL proxy designed to provide networked security devices with access to the plaintext of SSL-encrypted communications. These capabilities ensure that malware threats, such as exploit code, spam, spyware and viruses, and unauthorized traffic including data theft or leakage and other forms of cyber crime or asset misuse are identified when transmitted inside of encrypted SSL flows.

The agreement coincides with the release of Netronome SSL Inspector 2.0. The new software release augments the product's existing support for in-line operation with a passive mode where the SSL Inspector can be deployed off a tap, span port or mirrored interface. This architectural flexibility provides additional deployment options that expand the network design choices available in deployments with NetWitness.http://www.netronome.comhttp://www.netwitness.com

• In November 2007, Netronome Systems, a start-up based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania focused on high-performance packet analysis solutions, announced a technology licensing, sales and marketing agreement will Intel focused on its IXP28XX product line of network processors.
  Under the exclusive deal, Netronome is licensed to continue sales and support of the Intel IXP2805 and the Intel IXP2855 network processors in new designs. In addition, Netronome is developing a next-generation line of IXP-compatible, high-end network flow processors that combine the Intel IXP28XX technology with Netronome's flow management and deep packet inspection architecture. The new network flow processors, which feature 16 microengines or cores, are designed for a variety of communications applications ranging from network switching and routing (L2-L3) to content and flow analysis for specialized network and security appliances (L2-L7).

Read More

Chelsio Delivers Microsoft TCP Chimney-enabled 10GbE Adapter

Chelsio Communications announced availability of its TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) technology fully supporting the Microsoft TCP Chimney architecture. Microsoft TCP Chimney allows Windows operating systems to offload network TCP processing from the CPU to the network controller.


Chelsio said TCP/IP processing consumes a high amount of server CPU cycles and at 10Gbps rates, it places a tremendous load on the memory subsystem and the need to offload this burden from the server becomes critical.


The Chelsio TCP Chimney-enabled adapter frees the host CPU from network processing. It also eliminates data copy and frees up memory bandwidth for processing of applications.


Chelsio also announced that it is licensing Alacritech Inc. patents to enable Chimney driver support.http://www.chelsio.com

Read More

Qwest's CFO to Step Down

John W. Richardson, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Qwest Communications, will be leaving the company. A search is underway for a successor.
http://www.qwest.com

Read More

CenturyTel Pursues Overlay of Existing Operations in 700 MHz

CenturyTel, which was the successful bidder for 69 licenses in the FCC's recent 700 MHz auction, said the newly-acquired spectrum will create a highly contiguous footprint that closely overlaps its existing local exchange and long-haul fiber networks. CenturyTel serves small-to-mid-size cities in 25 states. Key markets include Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, Ohio, Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon and Wisconsin.


The spectrum is being acquired at an average price per megahertz pop of $.70 and a total cost of $149 million. CenturyTel said it is paying an overall average price per MHz Pop of $.70 versus $1.92 national average for A & B blocks combined.


"While it is too early to discuss financial and operational details, we are acquiring spectrum that overlaps our core ILEC and fiber transport networks. This should enable us to utilize our existing operations, including our current distribution and technical support infrastructure, to cost-effectively deploy wireless services, both in our existing markets and in selective contiguous markets, where we believe profitable growth is achievable," said Glen F. Post, III, chairman and chief executive officer. http://www.centurytel.com

Read More

Verizon Wireless Anticipates LTE in 700 MHz Spectrum in 2010

Verizon Wireless plans to launch its LTE network in the 700 MHz spectrum in the 2010 timeframe. The company said the breadth of the national C-block spectrum footprint, all in a single band and with a depth of 22 MHz, provides a speed and performance advantage that will be ideal for connecting a variety of consumer electronics, from wireless phones to medical devices to gaming consoles.


In the recent FCC auction, Verizon Wireless was the winning bidder for a nationwide spectrum footprint (excluding Alaska) in the FCC-termed C-Block group of licenses, plus 102 licenses for individual markets around the country.


In all, the company will pay $9.36 billion for these licenses, which equates to $1.03 per MHz Pop, compared with the auction average of $1.20.


"We now have sufficient spectrum to continue growing our business and data revenues well into -- and possibly through -- the next decade, and this is the very best spectrum with excellent propagation and in-building characteristics. We also believe that the combination of the national, contiguous, same- frequency C-block footprint and our transition to LTE will make Verizon the preferred partner for developers of a new wave of consumer electronics and applications using this next generation technology," said Lowell McAdam, the company's president and CEO.http://www.verizonwireless.com

Read More