Converge! Network Digest

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Verizon Looks to Software-defined Networking

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Google. Blueprint, OpenFlow, SDN, Service Providers, Verizon

Dr. Stuart Elby, VP -- Network Architecture at Verizon, discusses software-defined networking (SDN) at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California.

1. Does Verizon see software defined networking as a new management tool or does it represent a big shift in network architecture?

2. Is Verizon using SDN now in its network?

3. In the LTE network, is SDN supporting IMS?

4. About Verizon's new Innovation Center focused on SDN.

http://www.verizon.comGoogle Links Data Centers with Software-defined Networking
WAN economics to date have not made Google happy, said Urs Hoelzle, SVP of Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow, speaking at the Open Networking Summit 2012 in Santa Clara, California. Ideally, the cost per bit should go down as the network scales, but this is not really true in a really massive backbone like Google's. This scale requires more expensive hardware and manual management of very complex software. The goal should be to manage the WAN as a fabric and not as a collection of individual boxes. Current equipment and protocols do not allow this. Google's ambition is to build a WAN that is higher performance, more fault tolerant and cheaper.

Some notes from his presentation:

Google currently operates two WAN backbones. I-Scale is the Internet facing backbone that carries user traffic. It must have bulletproof performance. G-Scale is the internal backbone that carries traffic between Google's data centers worldwide. The G-Scale network has been used to experiment with SDN.

Google chose to pursue SDN in order to separate hardware from software. This enables it to choose hardware based on necessary features and to choose software based on protocol requirements.

SDN provides logically, centralized network control. The goal is to be more deterministic, more efficient and more fault-tolerant.

SDN enables better centralized traffic engineering, such as an ability for the network to converge quickly to target optimum on a link failure.

Determinist behavior should simplify planning vs over provisioning for worst case variability.

The SDN controller uses modern server hardware, giving it more flexibility than conventional routers.

Switches are virtualized with real OpenFlow and the company can attach real monitoring and alerting servers. Testing is vastly simplified.

The move to SDN is really about picking the right tool for the right job.

Google's OpenFlow WAN activity really started moving in 2010. Less than two years later, Google is now running the G-Scale network on OpenFlow-controlled switches. 100% of its production data center to data center traffic is now on this new SDN-powered network.

Google built their own OpenFlow switch because none were commercially available. The switch was built from merchant silicon. It has scaled to hundred of nonblocking 10GE ports.

Google's practice is to simplify every software stack and hardware element as much as possible, removing anything that is not absolutely necessary

Multiple switch chassis are used in each domain.

Google is using open source routing stacks for BGP and ISIS.

The OpenFlow-controlled switches look like regular routers. BGP/ISIS/OSPF now interfaces with OpenFlow controller to program the switch state.

All data center backbone traffic is now carried by the new network. The old network is turned off.

Google started rolling out centralized traffic engineering in January.

Google is already seeing higher network utilization and gaining the benefit of flexible management of end-to-end paths for maintenance.

Over the past six months, the new network has seen a high degree of stability with minimal outages.

The new SDN-powered network is meeting the company's SLAs.

It is still too early to quantify the economics.

A key benefit is the unified view of the network fabric -- higher QoS awareness and predictability.

The OpenFlow protocol is really barebones at this point, but it is good enough for real world networks at Google scale.
100% of traffic carried on the new network.

The Open Networking Summit is planning to post a video of their conference following the event.

Stanford's Nick McKeon: Making SDNs Work

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 OpenFlow, SDN, Service Providers

"Indeed, the world has just changed in the way that we design and build networks," said Nick McKeown, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford, in reference to Google's announcement that it has leveraged software defined networking (SDN) to link its data centers.

Dr. McKeown, who has led much of the software defined networking projects at Stanford University, said that as the industry moves to a horizontal integration model with open interfaces, we will all be better off for it. The new abstraction layers enable a global view of the network and this will open up new opportunities.

McKeown's talk at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California focused on how SDN can allow us to verify that networks are behaving correctly, to identify bugs, find their causes and root them out. Other industries, such as semiconductors, have many processes to de-bug errors before the product is delivered. To date, the networking industry has been fairly poor in preventing problems. Administrators face a maze of complexity in understanding how things are really performing.

McKeown highlight projects underway at Stanford to enable SDN with independent and automatic network checking and de-bugging. SDN can be used to detect hardware error (memory or ASICS), link failure, or malicious programs that violate network policies. Automatic Test Packet Generation leverages a minimum set of test packets to verify every rule in every table. These test packets can find any failure and isolate its cause. It only takes 4,000 packets sent by end-hosts or switches to verify 750,000 rules. This means the network could self-test 10x per second using less than 1% of link utilization.

Slides from this presentation have been posted to the Open Networking Summit website. http://opennetsummit.org

NTT Comm: Expectations for SDN in Carrier Networks

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Japan, NTT, ONF, OpenFlow, Packet Systems, SDN, Service Providers

Software defined networking will play a key role in the rollout of global cloud services, said Yukio Ito, SVP Service Infrastructure for NTT Communications, at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California. NTT Communications, which is already using OpenFlow in some of its data centers, said its top three expectations for SDN are (1) quicker time to market (2) service differentiation and (3) CAPEX-OPEX reduction.

Ito said NTT Comm's ambition is to provide comprehensive cloud services around the world, built on a global virtualized server service. A cloud virtualization service that leverages SDN will be launching this summer.
Some other key points of his talk:

A virtualized network enables automated network configuration changes.

Centralized and automated control interface is a key benefit of the Virtualized Network.

SDN is expected to deliver auto-scale out of workflows to multiple data centers. Normally, this scaling is limited to a single data center.

NTT Comm's portal website will provide unified controls from cloud to server/application interaction, such as status visualization.

NTT Comm is testing an OpenFlow Switch and OpenFlow Controller on a trans-Pacific link between data centers. OpenFlow enables virtual machines to be automatically replicated between the data center in Japan and the one in the United States.

NTT Comm. is looking to expand OpenFlow from the data center to its end-to-end networking services. The key reason to do this would be simplification of the network layers -- each layer typically has it own management systems and this is cumbersome.

A primary lesson from the great earthquake last year was that damaged routes must be restored quickly. NTT Comm believes virtualized technology could significantly speed-up this process.

Following last year's great earthquake, NTT Comm's trans-Pacific capacity dropped from 490 Gbps to 180 Gbps but was restored to 340 Gbps in 6 days.

Slides from this presentation have been posted to the Open Networking Summit website.http://opennetsummit.orghttp://www.ntt.co.jp

Mellanox Posts Revenue of $89 Million, up 61% YoY

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Earnings, Financials, Infiniband, Israel

Mellanox Technology reported record revenue of $88.7 million for first fiscal quarter ended 31-March-2012, up 22.1 percent from $72.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, and up 61.2 percent from $55.1 million in the first quarter of 2011.GAAP gross margins in the first quarter of 2012 were 67.4 percent, compared with 64.0 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 and 64.7 percent in the first quarter of 2011.

"Our strong quarterly revenue growth reflects the increased penetration of our high-performance InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect solutions in new markets, in addition to our traditional High Performance Computing (HPC) market, specifically, the Web 2.0, database, storage and cloud markets," said Eyal Waldman, chairman, president and CEO of Mellanox Technologies. “The recent launch of Intel Romley and Sandy Bridge-based server and storage platforms has created a significant industry-upgrade and end-user demand for high-performance interconnects. Our FDR 56Gb/s InfiniBand and 10/40GbE interconnect solutions provide these end-users with industry-best performance and return-on-investment."http://www.mellanox.com

Verizon Wireless Announces Spectrum License Sale

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 700MHz, Mobile, Service Providers, Spectrum, Verizon Wireless

Verizon Wireless announced plans to sell all of its 700 MHz A and B spectrum licenses, covering dozens of major cities across the country, as well as a number of smaller and rural markets. The company described the sale as a rationalization of its spectrum holdings. Its nationwide LTE network uses 700 MHz upper C spectrum. Verizon Wireless is also seeking to acquire additional AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) spectrum licenses from cable operators. It plans to use this AWS spectrum in conjunction with its 700 MHz upper C band spectrum to deploy additional LTE capacity. Therefore, the plans to sell the 700 MHz A and B spectrum licenses are contingent upon completing the AWS deal, which is currently under review by the FCC and Department of Justice.

Verizon Wireless obtained the 700 MHz A and B licenses, as well as nationwide 700 MHz upper C licenses (with the exception of Alaska which has since been acquired), in FCC Auction 73 in 2008.

The sale will be managed by Stephens Inc., an independent financial services firm based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

http://www.verizonwireless.com

Verizon Integrates LTE with Private IP

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Access, LTE, Service Providers, Verizon

Verizon Enterprise Solutions has started offering 4G LTE access into private IP corporate networks. Verizon Wireless now has LTE coverage in 230 markets across the United States and by the end of the year the footprint will cover more than 400 markets.

The new Private IP Wireless (LTE) securely extends corporate applications directly to mobile workforces and machine-to-machine applications. The service is being introduce immediately in both managed and unmanaged options, across the nationwide LTE footprint.

Verizon said Private IP Wireless (LTE) will be a catalyst for increased machine-to-machine communications, fueling the growth of the "Internet of Things" across various industries. Working with a growing number of strategic partners to develop industry-specific applications, Verizon is accelerating transformation across both private industry and the public sector. For example:

Transportation -- Verizon private network solutions keep trains running safely and on time with minimal human intervention.

Automotive – Verizon is teaming with the auto industry to create for consumers new experiences with their vehicles.

Media and Entertainment – Verizon is helping media and entertainment companies to create new remote broadcasting opportunities and change the face of digital signage to increase audience engagement with advertisers.

Retail – Retailers are employing Private IP wireless as a viable backup solution across their distributed locations, as well as using the service to enable point-of-sale transactions.

Distribution – Vending machines can now alert distributors about when to replace high-demand products, and collect valuable data about customer tastes and preferences.

http://www.verizon.com

Ascent Raises $107 Million in Debt Financing for Chicago Data Centers

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Data Center, Start-ups

Ascent Corporation has closed on $107 million in debt financing from a lending group headed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch with participant banks Royal Bank of Scotland and Cole Taylor Bank, to fund the expansion of their multi-tenant development model Dynamic Data Center Suites in suburban Chicago as well as new markets.

Ascent offer autonomous data center suites within a multi-tenant facility. Suite sizes range from 10,000-250,000+ square feet, and customers have the option to fit-out and maintain autonomous Powered Suites themselves or lease space on a Turnkey Infrastructure Suite basis.

http://www.ascent-corp.com

Qualcomm Posts Q2 Revenue of $4.94 billion, up 28% YoY

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Earnings, Financial, Qualcomm

Qualcomm reported Q2 revenue of $4.94 billion, up 28 percent year-over-year (y-o-y) and 6 percent sequentially, while operating income came in at $1.51 billion, up 6 percent y-o-y and down 2 percent sequentially. Diluted earnings per share: (GAAP) $1.28, up 117 percent y-o-y and 58 percent sequentially.

"I am pleased to report another quarter of record revenues and earnings per share, driven by strong demand for 3G- and 4G-enabled devices across both developed and emerging regions," said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm. "We are excited to see the continued growth of 3G and 4G smartphones, as well as new mobile computing devices. We are increasing our operating expenses to facilitate additional 28 nanometer supply and to continue to position our industry-leading chipset solutions for the opportunities ahead."

MSM chip shipments: 152 million units, up 29 percent y-o-y and down 3 percent sequentially.

Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities totaled $26.6 billion at the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2012, compared to $22.1 billion a year ago and $22.0 billion at the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2012. http://www.qualcomm.com

Telstra Provides NBN Update

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Australia, Financial, Service Providers, Telstra

In an Investor Update presentation, Telstra described the NBN agreement as an opportunity to take the next step in corporate simplification, improving processes, and reducing the complexity associated with the old copper infrastructure. Under the NBN arrangement, Telstra is going to be paid to decommission its copper and HFC broadband
networks, giving it the opportunity to enter new digital markets. The increase in free cash flow that Telstra is predicting is in part a consequence of the timing of the NBN financials.

Subject to the NBN rollout, Telstra is targeting to operate in a CAPEX-to-sales ratio of 14%.

Over the duration of the NBN arrangements, that run for many years, Telstra expects $11 billion post tax net present value, which is offset by a number of costs and lost revenue.
http://www.telstra.com

Telstra Foresees Additional Free Cash Flow

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Australia, Financial, Telstra

Telstra expects to generate AUS$2 to 3 billion in excess free cash over the next three years, subject to the NBN roll out schedule and market conditions. However, the company is not increasing its 2012 financial year guidance and reinforced its intention to pay a 28 cent per share fully-franked dividend in 2012 and 2013.
http://www.telstra.com

BRICS Envision a 34,000km Cable Linking Developing Nations

Tuesday, April 17, 2012 Brazil, China, India, Russia, South Africa, Submarine Cable

The governments of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa unveiled plans for a new 34,000 submarine cable linking their nations to the United States. The proposed BRICS Cable would be a 34 000 km, 2 fibre pair, 12.8 Tbps capacity, fibre optic system linking Russia, China, India, South Africa, Brazil to Miami.

Notably, it would bypass Europe as well as the Suez canal corridor. It would interconnect with the WACS cable on the West coast of Africa, and the EASSY and SEACOM cables on the East coast of Africa.

http://bricscable.com

Sunrise Adds IPv6, 10G SONET/SDH, VoIP and Copper Tests

Monday, April 16, 2012 Packet Systems, Sunrise, Testing

Sunrise Telecom has enhanced its RxT Smart Productivity Test Platform with the addition of testing capabilities for IPv6, 10G SONET/SDH, VoIP, and copper:

IPv6 testing: The addition of IPv6 testing capabilities to the RxT 10GE module enables customers to migrate their networks from IPv4 to IPv6 and perform the same layer 2/3 service activation tests in IPv6-based networks.

PDH/SDH/SONET testing: The new RxT TEN Module combined with the already successful RxT SDH/SONET module allows the RxT platform to offer full PDH/SDH/SONET functionality, up to 10G from DS1/E1 to STM-64/OC-192 in a single platform.

SIP testing: The RxT platform now includes both a SIP phone client and packet capture application which enables basic end-to-end VoIP testing and analysis.

Copper testing: The RxT 2160 TDR/DMM Module for testing basic copper functions. The new module complements the RxT’s existing DSL test modules which already support ADSL2/2+, VDSL2 and SHDSL.bis testing.
http://www.sunrisetelecom.com

SOFTBANK MOBILE Awards LTE Contract to Ericsson

Monday, April 16, 2012 Ericsson, LTE, Mobile

Ericsson announced a contract to build an LTE radio access network for SOFTBANK MOBILE. The deployment will cover Japan's major cities - Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya - which together account for 70 percent of the country's total data and voice traffic. SOFTBANK MOBILE is currently Japan's third-largest mobile operator, with more than 29 million subscribers.

In addition, Ericsson will upgrade SOFTBANK MOBILE's packet core network, including systems integration and deployment of an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) solution, and build a new LTE radio access network using RBS 6000 multi-standard base stations. This will allow SOFTBANK MOBILE users to experience the best possible networks in one of the world's most densely populated areas such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya.

http://www.ericsson.com

Vyatta Debuts Vplane Forwarding Plane Software

Monday, April 16, 2012 Core, Packet Systems, Routing, Vyatta

Vyatta introduced a highly scalable forwarding plane software solution for next-generation enterprise and cloud network designs.

Vyatta vPlane's fast-path architecture promises far better performance than the company's previous generation software on the same off-the-shelf hardware. Leveraging the new fast-path architecture on an Intel Westmere-class system, Vyatta vPlane is capable of delivering more than 8 million packets per second per core, more than a 10x improvement over Vyatta without vPlane. Additionally, since vPlane scales linearly with the addition of cores, an entire Westmere system can deliver 35 million packets per second in only a single rack-unit of datacenter space.

A key advantage is the physical decoupling of the software forwarding plane from the control plane.

Vyatta said its implementation is able to accommodate new and emerging standards such as OpenFlow.

http://www.vyatta.com

MegaPath Expands Ethernet Over Copper Footprint Across U.S.

Monday, April 16, 2012 Access, Ethernet-over-Copper, Last Mile

As the result of its latest buildout in central offices across the country, MegaPath, the new local exchange carrier formed through the merger of Speakeasy, Covad Communications and MegaPath, now claims to be the largest provider of on-net Ethernet over Copper (EoC) services in the United States.

MegaPath offers EoC on its network in 19 major markets, including Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Dallas, Miami and San Francisco, reaching millions of businesses with symmetrical speeds up to 45 Mbpshttp://www.megapath.com/

Tellabs Appoints CFO

Monday, April 16, 2012 Packet Systems, People

Tellabs appointed Andrew Szafran as its new chief financial officer (CFO), replacing Timothy J. Wiggins, who resigned in December to accept the CFO position at DeVry.

Prior to joining Tellabs, Szafran served as senior vice president and CFO at APAC Customer Services, a leading BPO (business process outsourcing) firm, since 2008. Szafran previously served as vice president and CFO for Communications Supply Corp., a distributor of IP infrastructure products and solutions.
http://www.tellabs.com

Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Network Rollout Continues

Monday, April 16, 2012 LTE, Mobile, Verizon Wireless

This week, the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network is being activated in 27 new markets and expanded in 44 markets. With these activations, Verizon Wireless will have 4G LTE network coverage in 230 markets across the United States. By the end of 2012, the Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network will be available in more than 400 markets, and will be available to more than 260 million people in the United States.

"Verizon Wireless 4G LTE is the premier wireless data service in the nation, with more than six times the geographic coverage of our nearest competitor's 4G LTE network and now available to more than two-thirds of the nation's population," said David Small, chief technical officer of Verizon Wireless. "We will continue to introduce new markets and expand covered markets to ensure even more wireless users across the United States can take advantage of the benefits that 4G LTE brings to consumers, small businesses and enterprises."
http://www.verizonwireless.com

Verizon Financial Network Cuts Latency for Chicago - NYC

Monday, April 16, 2012 Service Providers, Verizon

Verizon has implemented a number of network enhancement to cut latency for ultra-fast financial trading along the key Chicago to New York City route. The Verizon Financial Network is now offering speeds as low as 14.5 milliseconds round-trip, one of the fastest speeds in the industry.

The performance gain is achieved in part with Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform. Verizon's premier service features full network monitoring and management for both latency and availability.

CME Group, the world's leading and most diverse financial derivatives marketplace, will be among the first customers for the Verizon Financial Network Premier Low-Latency Service and will use it in its Aurora, Ill., data and colocation center to enable companies in Chicago and New York to trade on CME Group's platforms and exchange market data in a low-latency environment.

http://www.verizonbusiness.com/us/solutions/finance/

NEC: "SDN is Ready to Go!"

Monday, April 16, 2012 Conference, NEC, OpenFlow, Packet Systems, SDN, Service Providers

NEC has made an early bet on OpenFlow and software defined networking (SDN), said Kaoru Yano, Chairman of the Board of NEC Corporation, in a keynote address at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California. The company has been involved in SDN since its early days at Stanford and has played a leading role in many OpenFlow projects in Japan and around the world. This pioneering effort is really an extension of the company's long term research in computers and communications.

Some key points from his presentation:

The value proposition of SDN can be summed up as follows: simple, fast, scalable, and open.

SDN's key function is to automatically manage network traffic and distribute it as needed.

SDN enables network traffic t0 be scaled and managed because network control is separated from network hardware.

SDN allows users to upgrade the network independently of the hardware.

NEC's OpenFlow formula is: Simplification + Virtualization + Visualization.

NEC's unique SDN proposition is a logical abstraction called the Virtual Tenant Network -- this enables the complete separation of the logical plane from the physical plane. Users can design the Layer 2/3 network as they wish and then this design will be automatically mapped to the physical hardware.

NEC's ProgrammableFlow enables drag-and-drop configuration of virtual tenants in a data center.

NEC currently has 100+ SDN system trials underway.

Current SDN applications will include academic networks, data centers, enterprise networks and the backbone infrastructure of telecom carriers.

Geneis Hosting Solutions is using SDN to provide flexible global IP address assignment. The deployment has achieved a 60% reduction in global IP address and saved 100 hours per week of service support. The network has achieved 99.999% availability.

Nippon Express using NEC's ProgrammableFlow to achieve virtualization flexibility and reduce service delivery time. The deployment reduced tithe rack space required for core switches by 70% and reduced power consumption by 80%.

NEC is using Programmable Flow for its own multi-purpose data center. Following last year's earthquake and tsunami, NEC needed to relocate data center facilities to western Japan due to power restrictions. ProgrammableFlow simplified this transfer process.

Software-defined networking can provide much smarter congestion control and recovery following a major disaster as experienced last year.

The Open Networking Summit is planning to post a video of their conference following the event.
http://www.convergedigest.com

Google Links Data Centers with Software-defined Networking

Monday, April 16, 2012 Conference, Data Center, Google, OpenFlow, Packet Systems, SDN

WAN economics to date have not made Google happy, said Urs Hoelzle, SVP of Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow, speaking at the Open Networking Summit 2012 in Santa Clara, California. Ideally, the cost per bit should go down as the network scales, but this is not really true in a really massive backbone like Google's. This scale requires more expensive hardware and manual management of very complex software. The goal should be to manage the WAN as a fabric and not as a collection of individual boxes. Current equipment and protocols do not allow this. Google's ambition is to build a WAN that is higher performance, more fault tolerant and cheaper.