Cisco VNI: big shifts in traffic patterns

In the first part of this article, the remarkable 26% CAGR that the latest Cisco VNI report is predicting for 2017-2021 was noted. A 26% CAGR is steep in any field let alone the already massive Internet that exists today. Perhaps the most important observation was that the growth rate is accelerating. This part will look at some of the shifting patterns for Internet traffic as seen in the study. Here are the key observations for this part of the article: (1) Traffic is moving closer to the edge; (2) regional traffic trends are uneven; (3) business continues to invest in ways to segment traffic from the public Internet and that the fastest such area of growth is SD-WAN.

Moving toward the edge

With the widespread availability of content delivery networks (CDNs) and related caching technologies, the volume of IP traffic traversing long-haul networks should be declining. Much of this traffic growth is video. In fact, the Cisco VNI study predicts that video will represent 80% of all Internet traffic by 2021, up from 67% in 2016. Globally, there will be nearly 1.9 billion Internet video users (excluding mobile-only) by 2021, up from 1.4 billion in 2016. Much of this content works well in a CDN. However, currently there are a handful of super-sized Internet content providers (ICPs) that are operating a fairly small number of hyper-scale data centres. Facebook, for instance, serves over a billion daily users, with major European data centres located near the Arctic Circle in Luleå, Sweden. Because Facebook feeds are customised for user, each session for European users pretty much ensures that traffic is traversing the core network and long-haul backbone. The story is pretty much the same for AWS, Google and Microsoft. However, each of these ICPs is undergoing a rapid build-out of data centres, meaning more facilities closer to users. By late 2018, Facebook should have three European data centres in operation (construction of two new Facebook data centres is underway in Clonee, Ireland and Odense, Denmark). By 2021, it is likely that Facebook could have five or six European data centres. This alone would redirect significant traffic off the long-haul network to northern Sweden and onto more regional networks.

Below are some key Cisco VNI findings:

·         End-user Internet traffic is moving closer to the edge; over one-third of traffic will bypass core by 2021.

·         Globally, 35% of Internet traffic will be carried metro-to-metro by 2021, up from 22% in 2016.

·         Globally, 23% of Internet traffic will be carried on regional backbones (without touching cross-country backbones) by 2021, compared to 20% in 2016.

·         Globally, 41% of Internet traffic will traverse cross-country backbones by 2021, compared to 58% in 2016.

The second observation is that regional differences in IP traffic growth will remain with us in 2021 and likely for more years in the future. Even though the latest mobile phone models somehow spread to cities all around the world remarkably fast, global economic development is uneven and network infrastructure reflects it. By 2021, 5G rollouts will be underway in many countries with robust economies but will come later to others. The figures gathered by the Cisco VNI, show the APAC region leading with the greatest IP traffic load by 2021, North America follows, but with a much smaller population compared to APAC, per capita bandwidth intensity remains highest in North America. The Cisco VNI figures, specifically regional IP traffic growth 2016 – 21, show:

•   APAC: 107.7 exabytes/month by 2021, 26% CAGR, 3.2-fold growth.

•   North America: 85 exabytes/month by 2021, 20% CAGR, 2.5-fold growth.

•   Western Europe: 37.4 exabytes/month 2021, 22% CAGR, 2.7-fold growth.

•   Central Europe: 17.1 exabytes/month by 2021, 22% CAGR, 2.75-fold growth.

•   Latin America: 12.9 exabytes/month by 2021, 21% CAGR, 2.6-fold growth.

•   Middle East and Africa: 15.5 exabytes/month by 2021, 42% CAGR, 5.8-fold growth.

Business IP traffic volume

The latest Cisco VNI report also predicts that global business IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 21% from 2016 to 2021. Since this figure is based on current metrics from Cisco's service providers (as well as other sources as discussed in the study’s methodology), it is clear that networks are filling up and that they are doing so at an accelerated rate. More businesses are sending/receiving traffic to the Internet, mostly likely due to increased use of video and accessing cloud services over the public Internet. Cisco expects advanced video communications in the enterprise segment to cause business IP traffic to grow by a factor of 3 between 2016 and 2021.

The Cisco VNI report has a separate category for IP WAN, which is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 10%, compared with a CAGR of 20% for fixed business Internet and 41% for mobile business Internet. This category could include Layer 2 and VPN services. Increasing numbers of service providers are offering direct connection options for AWS and Microsoft Azure, and as the general movement of corporate data into the public clouds increases, one would expect that the traffic load on these private connections to grow substantially. However, Cisco is predicting business IP traffic in North America to grow at a CAGR of 23%, a faster pace than the global average of 21%. In volume terms, in Asia Pacific will have the largest amount of business IP traffic in 2021, at 17 EB per month, with North America second at 14 EB per month.

One area of intense activity now being tracked by Cisco VNI is global enterprise SD-WAN traffic, which is now predicted to grow at a CAGR of 44% compared to 5% for traditional WAN. Cisco predicts that SD-WAN will increase six-fold over the forecast period and represent 25% of WAN traffic by 2021. This is good news for Cisco, given that it recently agreed to acquire Viptela, a start-up specialising in SD-WAN, for $610 million in cash and assumed equity awards. Cisco's SD-WAN portfolio also includes its home-grown intelligent WAN (Iwan) solution and Meraki cloud platform.

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New Zealand's Spark partners with Nokia

Nokia and telco Spark announced a partnership to prepare networks in New Zealand for future demands arising from the move to 5G, ultra-broadband and IoT services through upgrading the capacity, flexibility and agility of Spark's national core and backhaul IP/MPLS network.

Spark, which serves around 2 million residential customers as well as businesses, stated that it is committed to making New Zealand a leading country in the adoption of 5G, and noted it has experienced a ten-fold increase in network traffic following the introduction of its broadband over wireless service, which is based on a Nokia IP/MPLS network. As part of this effort, the operator plans to expand the capacity and flexibility of its transport network over the next two years in preparation for 5G.

The company noted that the adoption of 5G will also help to meet the national government goal of extending broadband services in rural areas, as well as helping it to reduce the costs of delivering broadband services.

The upgrade project with Nokia specifically covers a 3-year strategic partnership through which the vendor will supply advanced IP and optical networking equipment and software, including the new Nokia 7250 Interconnect Router R6 (IXR-R6)platform.

The 7250 IXR-R6 solution is designed to address key requirements relating to traffic growth and major architectural changes to support the transition towards 5G. The platform features terabit capacity and high-port density in a compact, ruggedised form factor. Nokia's 7250 IXR-R6 also offers security features and a range of interconnectivity options, including legacy SDH/SONET and latency-sensitive Ethernet for next-generation fronthaul interface (NGFI).

The 7250 IXR-R6 is designed to enable the cost-effective transport of latency-sensitive and 'bursty' traffic, making it suitable for the delivery of both ultra-broadband and future IoT-based services.

Nokia noted that this latest agreement with Spark follows the operator's launch of 200 Gbit/s per-wavelength connectivity utilising its PSS1830 Optical Transport Network platform last year. For that project, Spark deployed what was claimed as the country's first 200 Gbit/s per-wavelength production fibre link to connect its core network with its global gateway using Nokia's PSS1830 OTN.

http://www.nokia.com/en_int/news/releases

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Canadian data centre company eStruxture raises C$80m

Montreal-based eStruxture Data Centers, a new network and cloud-neutral data centre operator, has announced the development of its Canada-wide platform, designed to meet the growing demand for large, energy efficient data centres that is being driven by the adoption of cloud services and demand for data storage within Canada.

The company stated that it has raised an initial C$80 million in capital through a funding round led by Canderel and Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The funding will be used to expand its footprint across Canada, both through the acquisition of existing data centre operators and new data centre development.

As part of this growth strategy, eStruxture also announced the completion of its first acquisition with the purchase of the assets of Netelligent Hosting Services, a major data centre operator in Montréal.

Netelligent provided colocation, cloud, managed services and bandwidth to more than 850 customers and had developed a cloud-neutral ecosystem that allowed customers to access diverse private and public cloud providers. The acquired downtown data centre facility enables eStruxture to offer customers high-density power of up to 30 kW per cabinet.

eStruxture was established to provide network and cloud-neutral data centre solutions designed to offer the capacity, performance and flexibility required for demanding enterprise applications. The company offers colocation, private cloud, managed services, bandwidth and security and support services to customers of all sizes.

eStruxture is led by president and CEO Todd Coleman, who co-founded Cologix, where he also served as COO. Mr. Todd has held a number of senior positions at companies including Level 3 Communications, where he held the roles of SVP of Data Centers, SVP of Media Operations and president of Level 3 Communications Europe.

http://news.centurylink.com/

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CenturyLink launches Managed Enterprise with Cisco Meraki service

CenturyLink has announced the availability of CenturyLink Managed Enterprise with Cisco Meraki, a new service designed to enable customers to more efficiently deploy and monitor WiFi networks, security, wireless, phone, video surveillance and SD-WAN services using a single administrative dashboard.

Based on products from Cisco Meraki, the managed solution allows single- or multi-site customers to utilise CenturyLink for the provision of components including devices, licenses, connectivity, management and support.

The new solution is designed, configured, monitored and maintained by CenturyLink and offered with fixed, monthly per-device pricing. Customers can select from the available components when initially ordering the solution and subsequently add or remove components as needed.

The new managed Meraki solution is designed to be integrated with other CenturyLink offerings such as Managed Office, Fiber + and Location-Based Analytics, a fully managed customer engagement solution that provides businesses with insight into real-time data and helps them to create more personalised services leveraging analytics and marketing tools.

CenturyLink Managed Enterprise with Cisco Meraki is also available to CenturyLink Alliance program partners. The company plans to extend availability to international customers later in the year.

CenturyLink introduced its Location-Based Analytics mobile engagement, analytics and marketing solution for use by operators in locations where customers congregate in 2016. The solution leverages the CenturyLink Managed WiFi solution that features Cisco Meraki WiFi access points and security appliances and is designed to enable high speed connectivity and reliable coverage for equipment sensors and  mobile devices.

http://news.centurylink.com/

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China Mobile and ZTE Demo 2.1 Gbit/s using 3 CA + 3D-MIMO

ZTE and China Mobile Quanzhou Branch announced that they have completed the commercial deployment of 3D-MIMO, also termed Pre5G Massive MIMO in the city of Quanzhou in Fujian province.

ZTE stated that with 16 commercial terminals connected, the single-carrier downlink peak cell rate has been increased to 730 Mbit/s, with a single-carrier 16-stream downlink peak rate using 3D-MIMO of up to 700 Mbit/s achieved. In addition, a three-carrier rate of up to 2.1 Gbit/s was achieved. ZTE claims that these speeds mark a record for a commercial environment, and build on three-carrier, 8-stream downlink rate with 3D-MIMO of 1 Gbit/s, also working with China Mobile.

ZTE explained that using the key 5G technology massive MIMO on the same bandwidth, 3D-MIMO base stations are able to deliver a peak throughput 7x higher than existing 4G macro stations, enhancing services and enabling reliable video transmission.

Quanzhou Mobile and ZTE noted that they have commercially deployed 3D-MIMO in 'big video' environments and verified the peak cell rate, representing a milestone towards the commercialisation of massive MIMO technology. The partners plan to continue to work together to expand the 5G-like Internet experience to more end users.

China Mobile and ZTE stated that they have been jointly developing and verifying 3D-MIMO technology since 2015, and in 2016 conducted 3D-MIMO pre-commercial verification in 50 cities across 29 provinces of China. The new-generation 3D-MIMO product is claimed to be suitable for engineering installation in macrocell and hotspot scenarios. The product provides support for multiple bands (3.5, 2.6 and 2.3 GHz), multiple carriers and multiple bandwidths and can be integrated with existing networks.

ZTE's Pre5G strategy is based on applying key 5G technologies such as massive MIMO to existing commercial 4G networks, as well as the enhancement of LTE-A Pro technologies within a 3GPP architecture via technology such as carrier aggregation (CA), unified delivery network (UDN), 256QAM, licensed assisted access (LAA), LWA (LTE and WLAN aggregation) and NarrowBand IoT (NB-IoT). ZTE claims that to date its Pre5G-related solutions have been deployed on over 60 networks in 40 countries.

http://www.zte.com.cn/global/about/press-center/news

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Verizon completes Yahoo! acquisition for $4.48bn, launches Oath

Verizon Communications announced the completion of its acquisition of the operating business of Yahoo!, and that it has combined these assets with its existing AOL business to create a new subsidiary, Oath, comprising more than 50 media and technology brands worldwide.

Verizon acquired the Yahoo! operations for approximately $4.48 billion through an agreement originally announced in July last year. Closing of the agreement was delayed as the companies assessed the effect of two data breaches disclosed by Yahoo! after the transaction was announced. The agreement originally value Yahoo! at approximately $4.8 billion in cash.

As a subsidiary of Verizon, Oath will focus on building its brands. The company reaches over one billion people worldwide, offering a group of over 50 media and technology brands. The new Oath portfolio includes HuffPost, Yahoo Sports, AOL.com, MAKERS, Tumblr, BUILD Studios, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Mail.

The business, part of Verizon's Media and Telematics organisation, will be led by Tim Armstrong, former CEO of AOL. Mr. Armstrong has been leading integration planning teams since the Yahoo transaction was announced in July 2016.

Tim Armstrong is also leading efforts to continue to build an advanced and open advertising technology solutions, with brands such as ONE by AOL and BrightRoll spanning mobile, video, search, native and programmatic ads.

Verizon stated that following the changes to former Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer's role with Yahoo as a result of the closing of the transaction, Ms. Mayer has resigned from the company.

Commenting on the transaction, Marni Walden, president of Media and Telematics, said, "The close of this transaction represents a critical step in growing the global scale needed for Verizon's digital media company... the combined set of assets across Verizon and Oath, from VR to AI, 5G to IoT, from content partnerships to originals, will create new ways to (address) audiences globally".

http://www.verizon.com/about/media-center

• In April this year, Verizon announced it would adopt a new operating structure focused on three areas: Media and Telematics, Network and Technology, and Customer and Product Operations.
• Verizon also announced the appointment of: Marni Walden as EVP of the Media and Telematics business; Hans Vestberg, former CEO of Ericsson, as EVP of the new Network and Technology operation; and John Stratton as EVP of the Customer and Product Operations unit.

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Profile of Orange, a global operation with big ambitions – Part 3

Preamble

Orange SA is perhaps the global carrier with operations in the most diverse geographies and cultures. From its headquarters in Paris, Orange (formerly France Telecom) now serves 265.162,000 subscribers worldwide with mobile, broadband, fixed telephony, TV and a range of advanced enterprise services. In Part 1 of this series, the company's recent performance indicators were covered; in Part 2 the two growth segments, Africa and mobile money, were profiled. Part 3 will cover Orange's innovation activities and growth opportunity in Spain.

The inertia of incumbency

By any measure, Orange is enormous. With 155,000 employees supporting 265 million customers in 29 countries, the management challenge of guiding such a large enterprise must be considerable. Like many formerly fully-state owned, incumbent, fixed line operators, the former France Telecom has a certain inertia due to its heritage and ongoing regulatory and social obligations. Earlier this year, Orange reached a labour agreement with the main trade union representing it workers in France. The contract provides an average wage increase of 2.3% and offers some special incentives to support young employees who have joined the company in recent years. Orange has about 95,000 employees in France.

Given the large employee base, it may seem incongruous to think of Orange as an innovation leader, but this has clearly been the ambition of the company's management for many years. Of course some of the company's history coincides with pioneering telecommunication technologies that were developed in France. The Minitel comes to mind - the iconic online videotext service that scaled to millions of terminals across France in the years before the Web. France Telecom officially retired the Minitel service in June 2012. Today, Orange has approximately 650 employees directly in the R&D programmes and the company is involved in 100 research partnerships with universities and public laboratories in France and abroad.

Looking for start-ups

Orange Fab is the company's international accelerator or start-ups. The program, launched in 2013 and now active in 14 countries, creates commercial partnerships between chosen start-ups and business units inside of Orange. It functions as a launch pad by providing business advice as well as local and international visibility. The latest location for an Orange Fab is Belgium/Luxembourg, where the company hopes to cultivate specialists in Big Data, AI, IoT and all the hot topics of the industry. To date, Orange Fab has contributed to the development of nearly 250 start-ups worldwide.

In April, Orange and Facebook kicked off a program designed to support start-ups focused on network infrastructure development. Orange, a member of the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) initiated by Facebook, said this new partnership would identify and support start-ups focused on network infrastructure technology. The Orange Fab, France Telecom Track accelerator, will support and guidance from experts at Orange, TIP and Facebook, as well as facilitate collaboration and investment opportunities. The project is managed through Orange Fab France, Orange's established accelerator program for start-ups located at the Orange Gardens campus in Paris.

Expansion on its southern border

Outside its home market, Spain is perhaps the most important region of focus for Orange, where the company has the ambition to reach 14 million connected homes by the end of 2019 - a major incursion into Telefonica’s home market. Already, Orange has more fibre-connections in Spain than it does in France. Currently, a total of 21.5 million households had fibre connectivity across the group's footprint at the end of March 2017 (up 53% year on year), of which 10.0 million were in Spain, 7.4 million in France, 2.1 million in Romania (following the cross-network-sharing agreement with Telekom Romania), 1.7 million in Poland and 352,000 in Slovakia.

In Spain, despite heavy discounting from competitors since last December, Orange's overall Q1 2017 revenue grew by 8.5%, suppressing the 7.9% the group achieved in Q4 2016 and more broadly over the full year 2016 where Orange widely over performed its two closest competitors. Mobile revenue accelerated to more than 8%, driven by a 5.4% growth in the contract base, and 4.6% growth in mobile quarterly ARPU, supported by recent service upgrades, the latest on the Jazztel brand and on the Orange brand. The company also reported strong results for commercial sales in both fixed broadband with 196,000 net fibre sales for the quarter (1.806 million fibre customers at March 31, 2017) and mobile contracts with 119,000 net sales.

As of the first quarter of 2017, Orange Spain had a total of 8.2 million customers. The contract customer base grew 3.2% year on year to 11.297 million customers and the quarterly ARPU of contracts rose 4.0%. Growth was also significant in mobile services provided to other carriers, in particular the growth of MVNOs and network sharing. Fixed services rose 7.5% in the first quarter, led by continued strong revenue growth in fixed broadband (up 8.5%). Fixed broadband had 4.2 million customers at the end of March (up 5.4% year on year), and quarterly ARPU rose 3.0%. TV services also rose rapidly, with 537,000 customers at the end of March, led by the success of content offers and notably the broadcasts of football championships.

In 2015, Orange acquired Jazztel, a network operator offering broadband and triple play services in Spain, for approximately Euro 3.4 billion. With Jazztel, Orange's fibre network reached 9.6 million connectible homes as of December 31, 2016. A joint investment agreement with MasMovil in July 2016 established the second largest fixed high-speed network. The latest figures from Q1 2017 show the incumbent, Movistar (Telefonica), losing some 25,000 subscribers, while Orange, MasMovil and Vodafone each gained subscribers.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

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Profile of Orange, a global operation with big ambitions – Part 4

Preamble

Orange SA is perhaps the global carrier with operations in the most diverse geographies and cultures. From its headquarters in Paris, Orange (formerly France Telecom) now serves 265.162,000 subscribers worldwide with mobile, broadband, fixed telephony, TV and a range of advanced enterprise services. In part 1 of this article, we looked at the company’s recent performance indicators. Part 2 discussed two growth segments for Orange: Africa and mobile money; Part 3 discussed the spirit of innovation inside Orange and its growth in Spain. Part 4 will examine forward-looking aspects of the carrier’s network architecture, especially SDN and NFV, which will be critical to building a fully-integrated, global super-carrier infrastructure. These platforms are being deployed by Orange Business Services (OBS) now, putting the carrier ahead of many industry peers.

An early mover with network virtualisation

Orange Business Services (OBS) delivers the company's enterprise portfolio over networks deployed by the group (fibre, 4G, WiFi, software defined networking). It is a truly global operation with 21,000 employees in 220 countries and territories. Orange's international IP transit network, which it calls the Open Transit Internet (OTI) network, has 24 major PoPs (12 in Europe, two in Asia, eight in North America, one in Africa and one in the Middle East); interconnects between these major PoPs run at up to 100 Gbit/s. By mid-2016, Oranges says peak traffic loads reached 4.2 Tbit/s across its OTI.

In the red-hot sector of SDN, NFV and SD-WAN, Orange has indicated on various occasions that it has been developing its own technology. Orange is a leading player in industry standards organisations and several vendor partnerships have been announced. When it comes to building the next layer of network virtualisation, the carrier has played a key role. Orange was a founding member of the network functions virtualisation (NFV) initiative that became an Industry Specification Group (ISG) within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in 2013. A key research partnership was formed with France’s the National Institute of research in Computing and Automation (INRIA) in 2015, leading to the creation of <I/O Lab>, a joint research laboratory for virtualisation, network convergence and cloud computing.

In March 2015, Orange Business Services launched an early pilot deployment of virtualised network functions for small and medium enterprises (SMBs). The pilot enabled SMBs (with up to ten sites) to test an SDN-enabled system that lets users manage their Intranet and Internet service in real-time. Users could order and customize new virtualised application services of their choice: Internet content filtering, advanced security and anti-virus. Orange used its own SDN controller to managed the virtualised services.

In mid-2016, Orange and AT&T agreed to collaborate on SDN and NFV. Later, it emerged that Orange would become the first carrier to test AT&T’s Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) platform. AT&T’s ECOMP has since been merged into the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP) project under The Linux Foundation of which Orange is a platinum member.

Orange has also been working with MEF and TM Forum to release the first set of standard application programming interfaces (APIs) for orchestrated Carrier Ethernet services later this year. This initiative uses MEF's LSO (Lifecycle Service Orchestration) framework and TM Forum's Open API framework to enable SDN architectures from different network service providers to interoperate with each other. There are plans to standardize 8 API definitions. This builds on the industry-agreed Open APIs developed by TM Forum members. Various other carriers are also part of this initiative, including AT&T Colt Technology Services, Comcast, Level 3, PCCW Global, TI Sparkle and Verizon.

In November 2016, Orange Business Services officially launched its Easy Go Network, which provides fully-virtualised network functions (VNF) using SDN, in 75 countries by the end of 2016. The Easy Go Network service, which underwent a year-long trial with customers, allows enterprises to instantly provision VNFs for branch offices with full digital self-service ordering, customer care and reporting functions. The service includes a plug-and-play router on site, eliminating truck rolls for more flexibility and rapid deployment. Orange says the key benefits of its Easy Go Network is that the service is on-demand and fully flexible with no upfront investment and no minimum revenue commitment. Billing is offered under a month to-month contract.

In March 2017, Orange Business announced plans integrate Riverbed SteelConnect technology into its hybrid network portfolio. The two companies are working together to develop a virtual network function (VNF) that customers will be able to deploy on universal customer premise equipment (uCPE) at their site. Full compatibility will be maintained with existing services as enterprises transition applications to the cloud. Riverbed said its SD-WAN offering, SteelConnect, provides an intelligent and simplified approach to designing, deploying and managing hybrid networks. Application performance is improved by real-time routing using the optimum links available between different networks. SteelConnect also enables zero-touch provisioning, allowing enterprises to set-up global networks quickly with easy management, providing a cost effective and superior end user experience. The first Orange pilot customers will be connected during the second quarter 2017 using managed SteelConnect appliances. The VNF of the service is scheduled to be available at the end of 2017. This will provide full virtualisation and orchestration managed through an easy-to-use ‘self-care’ portal to administer and prioritise applications.

Easy Go brings integration opportunities

For many years, Orange Business Services has been delivering MPLS WAN services for multinational with operations throughout the globe. Often, these have been complex WAN solutions that integrate all an organisation's voice, video conferencing and data communications with QoS provided for mission-critical applications.  For instance, OBS manages a private cloud on behalf of the European Space Agency, linking eight sites across the continent over a converged IP/MPLS infrastructure.  Another such high-profile project is the private IP/MPLS network that OBS manages on behalf of the European Commission, linking more than 250 sites across all EU member nations.

With SD-WAN, OBS now has the possibility of integrating access from other carriers. In May, OBS signed a four-year contract with Heraeus, a leading technology group headquartered in Hanau, Germany to centralize all services on a homogenous and stable network linking Heraeus' 110 locations around the world. Under the contract, Heraeus will unify all services currently provided by almost 100 different providers under Orange Business Services. While the announcement did not specify which WAN technologies would be put to use, it is likely that the new SD-WAN implementation will be employed in locations where an IP/MPLS node is not viable either from a local access perspective or simply for economics.

Orange remains a Layer 1 network operator with significant terrestrial fibre, subsea resources

It should be noted that while many carriers may offer virtualised network services such as Easy Go, Orange continues to operate a very significant fibre network both in Europe and internationally (18,000 km), not to mention one of the largest IP/MPLS backbones and conventional VPN services for multinational organisations.

Since the earliest days to telecom, the group has been involved in long-haul cables. Currently, Orange is involved in over 40 undersea fibre cables and consortia projects representing some 450,000 km of fibre cables. One such project is the recently commissioned SE-ME-WE5 cable linking Marseille to Singapore. Orange was one of the lead consortium members.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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Part 5

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OIF approves virtual transport network service IA

The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF), which met recently in Ljubljana, Slovenia for a quarterly technical committee conference, announced that it has approved an implementation agreement (IA) for an optical virtual transport network service (VTNS) and also made progress on the 400G-ZR project.

VTNS IA

A virtual transport network service (VTNS) constitutes the creation and delivery of a virtual network (VN) by a provider to a user based on the virtualisation of transport network resources. VNs can be dynamically created, deleted or modified, while users are able to perform connection management, monitoring and protection within the VN.

In specifying the new VTNS IA, OIF aims to identify the requirements and characteristics of different virtual network service types, such as dynamic and static behaviours. The new IA is also intended to define the attributes and parameters required for these service types and the requirements for support of service recovery and OAM.

The OIF noted that different types of VTNS could be associated with operators offering, for example, bandwidth-on-demand (BoD) services, network-as-a-service (NaaS) or network slicing for 5G networking.

400G-ZR update

The OIF's 400G-ZR interoperability project, launched in November 2016, was formed to address both 400 Gbit/s ZR and short-reach DWDM multi-vendor interoperability requirements, such as might be required for cloud-scale data centre interconnect (DCI) applications. It noted that the project has now received 10 technical contributions relating to areas including power consumption of DSP, FEC proposals, and experimental demonstrations.

In addition, it was announced that at the recent quarterly meeting the OIF elected Tad Hofmeister of Google to its board of directors, filling a vacant seat on the board.

http://www.oiforum.com/documents/press-room/

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GTT establishes Enterprise, Carrier, EMEA Divisions

GTT Communications, a global cloud networking provider to multinational clients, which in January completed the acquisition of Hibernia Networks, announced it has established three new divisions - Enterprise, Carrier and EMEA - intended to accelerate sales growth and enhance services for customers.

Each of the new divisions is responsible for the primary customer experience functions, including sales, quoting, ordering, service delivery and collections.

In conjunction with forming the new divisions, GTT has appointed three division presidents:

1.         Eric Warren is to lead the Enterprise division, including all enterprise customers across the Americas and U.S. government clients; Mr. Warren recently joined GTT having previously held senior executive roles at companies including Windstream and tw telecom.

2.         Jeff Beer will lead the Carrier division, including all carrier accounts in the Americas and GTT's largest web-centric clients; Mr. Beer has held a number of executive roles at GTT during the past eight years, having joined the company via its acquisition of Tinet.

3.         Martin Ford is to head the EMEA division, encompassing enterprise clients in EMEA and carrier clients across EMEA and APAC; Mr. Ford joined GTT's leadership team through its acquisition of Hibernia Networks, and previously served with Level 3.

https://www.gtt.net/news-and-events/press-release/

• GTT has recently announced the launch of Optical Transport and Managed SD-WAN services. The Optical Transport offering is designed to provide customers with scalable bandwidth and low latency connectivity for the transport of data and cloud-based applications between financial markets, data centres, media hubs and service provider networks.
• The Managed SD-WAN service, using technology from VeloCloud, offers features including dynamic bandwidth management, optimised application performance and the ability to integrate network technologies into the corporate WAN.
• Hibernia Networks and GTT announced in early January this year the completion of the transaction under which GTT acquired Hibernia. The companies originally announced a transaction in early November 2016, through which GTT was to purchase Hibernia for $590 million, including $515 million in cash and approximately 3.3 million shares of GTT common stock valued at around $75 million.
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Profile of Orange, a global operation with big ambitions, slow, steady growth – Part 2

Preamble

Orange is perhaps the global carrier with operations in the most diverse geographies and cultures. From its headquarters in Paris, Orange (formerly France Telecom) now serves 265.162,000 subscribers worldwide with mobile, broadband, fixed telephony, TV and a range of advanced enterprise services. Part 1 covered the company’s recent performance indicators, this part will cover two growth segments for Orange: Africa and mobile money.

Ambitions for Africa

Orange currently is the No.1 or No.2 mobile network by market share in 21 countries across Africa and the Middle East, where it has more than 120 million customers. As of last August, Orange had launched 4G in 9 of these countries, with network upgrades planned or underway in all of these markets. The stated ambition is for Orange revenue in Africa and the Middle East to grow 20% over the 2015 to 2018 time frame. For 2016, Orange reported Euro 5.2 billion in revenue from Africa and Middle East (12% of the group total). The company views this region as a strategic priority given the young and growing population, as well as the lower mobile penetration and broadband adoption rates compared with developed markets in Europe.

One obstacle to overcome in the region is the lack of financial services for large segments of the population. For the past few years, Orange is striving to develop a mobile money service that could turn this situation into a strategic differentiator for its mobile networks. Orange Money is its flagship capability for money transfers and mobile financial services, currently available in 17 countries and with more than 31 million customers. To manage risk associated with its electronic money operations, Orange has set up a dedicated organization, CECOM, based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. CECOM reports to the Orange Group and provides second-level control for the Orange Money business, which exceeded one billion Euros of transactions in June 2016.

For many subscribers, Orange Money is their first experience with an electronic bank but, over time, Orange Money is moving beyond basic banking. Earlier this year, Orange Money announced a partnership with Vivo Energy that enables customers to cash in and cash out money from their Orange Money account and pay in any of the 1,000+ Shell service stations operated by Vivo Energy. The services are already available in Mali, Cote d’Ivoire and Madagascar. Orange Money expects to have this operational across the rest of its common footprint by mid-2017.

The latest project in Africa is the expansion of the Orange brand in May 2017 to Liberia, where the former Cellcom Liberia has just become Orange Liberia. This was accomplished via acquisition of the Liberian operator Cellcom by Orange Côte d’Ivoire. Cellcom Liberia, founded in 2004, claimed over 1.6 million customers at the end of February 2017. The Republic of Liberia, which has a population of about 4.5 million, has a relatively low mobile penetration rate of 70%. Cellcom Liberia launched its 4G LTE network last year, with the construction of 29 sites. Now that it has taken over operations, Orange plans to accelerate the 4G network upgrade across the country, including in areas that are still awaiting basic telecom services. Approximately three-quarters of the population resides outside of the capital city of Monrovia.

Previously, in 2016 Orange acquired the second largest mobile operator in Burkina Faso from Airtel. Burkina Faso, with a population of approximately 18 million, has one of the strongest growth rates (5.8%) in the Economic Community of West African States, and a mobile penetration rate of about 80% as of last year. The deal with Airtel brought 4.6 million customers.

Also in 2016, the Orange brand replaced the Méditel brand in Morocco. Orange’s Moroccan subsidiary had 14.2 million customers at the end of September 2016, the second largest total within the group’s Middle East and African footprint, after Orange Egypt, and contributing close to 10% of its revenue in this region. The group's interest in Morocco goes back to 2010, when France Telecom invested Euro 640 million to acquire a 40% stake in Méditel. The Méditel network includes more than 5,400 km of optical fibre and more than 4,000 radio sites throughout the kingdom.

However, despite the many new markets and growing subscriber counts, the volatility of political and economic conditions in Africa always remains a worry. Over the past year, Orange said it was impacted by difficult conditions in Egypt and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Orange Brings mobile banking from Africa to Europe

Interestingly, several years after launching its Orange mobile banking service in African markets, Orange is now ready to bring it to Europe. In October 2014, Orange Finanse was introduced in Poland in partnership with mBank, the fourth largest retail bank. The company says Poland is where NFC (near field communication) has developed most fully in Europe, with 80% of payment terminals already equipped for contactless payments and more than 3 million users routinely using mobile payment services (Poland has a population of about 38 million).

Starting in July, Orange is launching a mobile bank for its home market of France. Launch materials distributed to the press state this new business is organised as Orange Bank SA, with capital of Euro 297,575,712 and a commercial relationship with Visa. In addition to standard banking services, Orange will provide money transfers via SMS, as well as a virtual assistant driven by artificial intelligence. Ultimately, Orange Bank aims to have more than 2 million customers in France, where it currently has around 30 million mobile users. Orange's ambition is to reach Euro 400 million in revenue in 2018 in the financial services field across all markets.

Stéphane Richard, chairman and CEO of Orange has commented that the commercial launch of Orange Bank for the general public in July marks an important new chapter in the group's history, with Orange also a bank that places customer experience at the heart of its business model. He added that Orange Bank will build on the professional skills of its banking experts, the disruptive capability of its partnerships with start-ups and the traditional assets of Orange: its distribution network, its expertise in digital services and financial strength. By bringing together these different sources of energy, it aims to meet the expectations of customers in a way that will enable it to adapt as their needs evolve.

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Fran

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How to Scale IoT?

There are two stages to scaling IoT solutions, says Mobeen Khan, IoT Strategy& Project Management, AT&T.  The first happens during the prototyping and second when you've figured out what you are going to build and now need to deploy hundreds of thousands of end devices.

See video:  https://youtu.be/2CV0TD1kotw

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Shaw purchases 700/2500 MHz spectrum, divests ViaWest

Canada's Shaw Communications announced it has entered into a series of transactions designed to enhance long-term growth opportunities, specifically a share purchase agreement with GI Partners portfolio company Peak 10 to sell its subsidiary ViaWest for approximately C$2.3 billion ($1.675 billion) and an agreement with Quebecor Media to acquire 700 MHz and 2,500 MHz wireless spectrum licences for $430 million.

ViaWest transaction

ViaWest is a provider of hybrid IT solutions including colocation, cloud computing and security and compliance for North American enterprises. Under the agreement, ViaWest is being acquired by Peak 10 for approximately C$2.3 billion. Shaw noted that it originally invested $1.2 billion (approximately C$1.3 billion at the exchange rate at the time) in the operation.

Shaw expects to realise net cash proceeds from the ViaWest transaction of approximately C$900 million after the repayment of ViaWest level indebtedness of approximately $580 million, repayment of the $380 million Shaw credit facility borrowings associated with the original investment and subsequent INetU acquisition, and estimated transaction expenses and taxes.

The ViaWest transaction is subject to customary conditions, including U.S. regulatory approval, and is expected to close in fiscal year 2017, which ends in August. The transaction is not subject to a financing condition.

Spectrum transaction

Shaw also announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Quebecor Media for the acquisition of 700 MHz and 2,500 MHz wireless spectrum licences for a sum of $430 million. The spectrum licences being acquired comprise the 10 MHz licences of 700 MHz spectrum in each of British Columbia, Alberta, and Southern Ontario, as well as the 20 MHz licences of 2,500 MHz spectrum in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto.

In addition to the spectrum acquisition cost, capex associated with the deployment of the acquired spectrum are estimated at approximately C$350 million. The company expects the bulk of the capital for the network build to be incurred during fiscal 2018. The spectrum transaction will be funded using a combination of cash proceeds from the ViaWest transaction, cash on hand and/or Shaw's existing credit facility.

The company stated that the spectrum transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals from the Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) and under the Competition Act. The transaction has received all required internal approvals at Shaw and Quebecor and is not subject to approval by the shareholders of Shaw or further approval by shareholders of Quebecor. The transaction is expected to close in the summer 2017.

Regarding the transactions, Brad Shaw, CEO of Shaw, said, "With the acquisition of WIND, now Freedom Mobile, in 2016, Shaw has more synergistic investment opportunities as a leading enhanced connectivity provider in its Canadian footprint… I believe this incremental investment in the wireless business, particularly the addition of 700 MHz spectrum, will materially improve the long-term wireless customer experience and further enable Shaw to offer converged network solutions…".

https://newsroom.shaw.ca/

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Nokia demos AirScale to support 5G

Nokia announced that testing has highlighted the flexibility, upgradeability and scalability of its AirScale radio portfolio to adapt to support the frequency bands that will be used for the initial applications of 5G technology.

By demonstrating the ability of the AirScale platform to support both low and high bands, Nokia stated that operators will be able to provide both wide area and indoor coverage for early 5G operations without the need to carry out complicated network reconfigurations.

Nokia noted that 5G promises to change connectivity by delivering lower latency, increased spectral efficiency and improved energy efficiency, while the range of applications enabled by 5G, such as improved connectivity in dense urban environments to Industry 4.0 applications and fixed wireless access, will require the use of high-band frequencies (millimetre and centimetre wave) as well as the evolution of existing low-band frequencies.

At the 5G World Summit in London, UK, Nokia will showcase how AirScale, a core component of its 5G FIRST solution, can leverage its Flexi RF units that are already deployed by operators to enable the continued use of existing radio technology as they prepare to transition networks to 5G. During the event Nokia will also outline the use of different spectrum bands, ranging  from sub-1 GHz to millimetre wave, to meet expectations in terms of depth of coverage and higher capacity and data rates promised by 5G.

Nokia explained that 5G applications, such as connecting IoT devices, coverage for indoor environments and over large areas, necessitate the use of low-band frequencies. The company noted that the ability to utilise these bands has recently been verified in tests at its 5G labs in Finland, including the 700 MHz, 800 MHz and 850 MHz frequencies.

http://www.nokia.com/en_int/news/releases

• Nokia showcased its 5G FIRST end-to-end solution incorporating AirScale and AirFrame technology at the Mobile World Congress in February. The 5G FIRST solution specifically features Nokia's AirScale massive MIMO adaptive antenna for 3.5 GHz, 4.5 GHz, 28 GHz and 39 GHz frequency bands, cloud packet core and shared data layer and mobile transport elements. The solution is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2017.
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Aricent upgrades Intelligent Switching for web scale data centres

Aricent, a global design and engineering company, has announced at Computex 2017 in Taiwan its Intelligent Switching Solution (ISS) release 10.1 upgrade, designed to support web scale data centres that run thousands of servers and network port speeds up to 100 Gigabit Ethernet.

Aricent stated that together with Marvell it is well-positioned to address scale-out data centres that deliver high performance and low latency networks. Aricent's Intelligent Switching Solution offers advanced control plane capabilities including cloud-native features, telemetry, machine learning, event-driven border gateway protocol (BGP), tunnelling and hypervisor connectivity.

Aricent's latest ISS offering can be combined with Marvell's Prestera 98CX84xx family of integrated packet processors to help enable data centre transitions to 100 Gigabit Ethernet speeds while providing advanced data centre features, virtualisation, service assurance and support for traffic analytics.

The latest Aricent ISS offering can be combined with its ConvergedOS on the new Marvell Prestera chipsets, which is designed to support the features required for top-of-rack and leaf-and-spine applications in data centres, private clouds and enterprise networks, including:

1.         Network virtualisation overlay with VXLAN, MP-BGP-based EVPN.

2.         Advanced QoS.

3.         Traffic monitoring with sFLOW and remote mirroring.

4.         Multi-chassis link-aggregation group (MC-LAG).

5.         Event-driven BGP and time synchronisation for packet tracing.

6.         Port density and flexible port speeds spanning 10, 25, 40, 50 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet.

7.         Policy-based telemetry.

The Aricent ISS solution is a software-defined, performance-optimised networking infrastructure designed for the data centre, enterprise, SMB, industrial Ethernet and service provider markets.

https://www.aricent.com/about/news

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Plexxi launches 25/50/100 GBE switches

Plexxi, a provider of Hyperconverged Networking (HCN) solutions, announced the introduction of its new Switch 3eq 25/50/100 Gigabit Ethernet switches and the latest versions of its Plexxi Control software-defined network fabric control and Connect integration and workflow automation software, including an enhanced Nutanix Integration Pack.

Plexxi stated that with the update Nutanix customers are able to integrate its HCN fabric with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud environments to create a single, unified solution, featuring scalable compute, storage and networking for both VMware and Nutanix Acropolis environments.

Plexxi Connect 2.3 enables the same network automation of VM lifecycle events that Plexxi provides for VMware environments to Nutanix Acropolis AHV environments. The new Nutanix Acropolis AHV Integration capability enables customers to deploy an HCN fabric that is Nutanix-aware.

Plexxi's Connect Integration Pack is designed to eliminate resource intensive, time-consuming system integration and testing efforts by allowing off-the-shelf integration between Plexxi and applications and infrastructure such as Nutanix. Nutanix integration leverages the elements of the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform configuration, including: cluster nodes, hypervisors (Nutanix AHV or VMware ESXi) and Nutanix Controller Virtual Machine (CVM) information.

Additionally, the Plexxi Control software enables dynamic configuration and adapts the Plexxi network fabric in response to compute and storage events. A key capability is automatic detection of VMs that comprise the storage subsystem and allocation of secure, dedicated high-speed network over the converged fabric. This helps to ensure performance and service quality for diverse applications workloads and effective use of networking resources.

The Plexxi software also creates a graphical representation of the network topology that integrates with Nutanix Prism and displays its state and status to aid analysis of the network.

The enhanced Plexxi Control 3.1 offers increased control and security of the Plexxi HCN fabric and introduces users, roles and authentication for secure user access to Plexxi switches. It also allows users to identify the specific VLAN carrying traffic such as storage and create fabric paths dedicated to this traffic.

Finally, Plexxi Switch 3eq is the first switch in a new Switch 3 Entry Series family with support for 25/50/100 Gigabit Ethernet interface speeds. Based on the Broadcom Tomahawk chipset, Switch 3eq provides enhanced data centre port density of up to 128 x 10 or 25 Gbit/s interfaces, 64 x 50 Gbit/s or 32 x 40 or 100 Gbit/s interfaces in a 1U form factor.

http://www.plexxi.com/news/

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Coriant Lands Strategic Invesment by Oaktree

Oaktree Capital Management, a leading global investment firm with over $100 billion in assets under management, has made a strategic investment in Coriant.  Financial terms were not disclosed.

As part of the agreement, Oaktree has partnered with Marlin Equity Partners to provide additional growth capital and operational capabilities that will enable Coriant to further accelerate its growth by capturing an increasing share of market opportunities across the globe.

“Coriant is a proven leader in innovative networking solutions with a strong commitment to leapfrog R&D and high-quality customer service,” said Cass Traub, a managing director at Oaktree. “We are confident in Coriant’s ability to expand its global market share in this dynamic industry, and look forward to providing both financial and operational support to take the company to the next level of growth.”

“We are excited to welcome Oaktree to the Coriant family and share a commitment to providing even greater solutions for our customers to effectively capitalize on key market trends and surging end-user demands driving new business opportunities, including 5G, IoT, Internet video, and super high-speed data,” said Shaygan Kheradpir, CEO and Chairman of Coriant.

http://www.oaktreecapital.com/
http://www.coriant.com

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ADI introduces 16-channel 12/16-bit D/A converters

Analog Devices announced a pair of integrated 16-channel digital-to-analogue (D/A) converters designed to significantly reduce the system footprint for wired telecoms systems without affecting performance, specifically with the introduction of the 12-bit AD5767 and 16-bit AD5766 devices targeting coherent optical systems for medium- to long-haul deployments.

Both of the new ICs integrate an array of discrete components to provide the required voltage ranges and additional system functionality in a small footprint. The D/A converters are suitable for applications in optical modules and electro-optical functions such as bias control, including Mach-Zehnder modulator-bias control.

Analog Devices new D/A converters are available in both space-saving 4 x 4 mm WLCSP and a 6 x 6 mm LFCSP packages and provide a range of unipolar or bipolar output voltages from the user-supplied 2.5 V reference, with outputs adjustable down to −20 V or as high as +14 V.

The output buffers can sink or source up to 20 mA, and the D/A converter is able to impose low-frequency dithering on outputs, eliminating the need for external circuitry. In addition, an integrated output multiplexer allows each of the 16 channels to be monitored if required.

The pin- and footprint-compatible AD5766 is functionally identical to the AD5767 device, but offers 16-bit performance for applications that require the higher resolution. The AD5767 and AD5766 products employ a versatile 4-wire serial interface that can operate at clock rates of up to 50 MHz for write mode, and which is compatible with serial peripheral interface (SPI), QSPI, MICROWIRE and DSP interface standards.

Analog Devices' new converters are offered in 4 x 4 mm WLCSP and 6 x 6 mm LFCSP packages, with an operating temperature range of -40 to +105 degrees C, with the AD5766 product sampling now and scheduled to be available in August 2017; the AD5767 product is sampling and available immediately.

http://www.analog.com/en/about-adi/news-room/press-releases.html

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Nokia Unveils its Next Gen IP Routing Engine

Nokia unveils its fourth generation network processing silicon for powering the first petabit-class core IP routers.

The new FP4 silicon, which comes six years after the preceding FP3 chipset was announced, offers 2.4 Tb/s half-duplex capacity, or 6X more capacity than the current generation 400 Gb/s FP3 chipset. The FP4 will support full terabit IP flows. All conventional routing capabilities are included. Deep classification capabilities include enhanced packet intelligence and control, policy controls, telemetry, and security.


The FP4 could be used to provide an in-field upgrade to Nokia’s current line of core routers and carrier switches. It will also be used to power a new family of 7750 SR-s series routers designed for single-node, cloud scale density. In terms of specs, the SR-s boasts a 144 Tb/s configuration supporting port densities of up to 144 future Terabit links, 288 400G ports, or 1,440 100GE ports. Absolute capacity could be double for a maximum of 288 Tb/s configuration. It runs the same software as the company’s widely-deployed systems.  The first 7750 SR-s boxes are already running in Nokia’s labs. First commercial shipments are expected in Q4.

Nokia is also introducing a chassis extension option to push its router into petabit territory. Without using the switching shelf concept employed in the multi-chassis designs of its competitors, Nokia is offering the means to integrate up to six of its 7750 SRS-s routers into a single system. This results in 576 Tb/s of capacity, enough for densities of up to 2,880 100GE ports or 720 400G ports.

https://networks.nokia.com/ip-networks-reimagined

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Broadcom Brings Programmable Packet Processing to Trident 3 Switching Silicon

Broadcom unveiled a new generation of its widely-deployed Trident switching silicon for data center, enterprise, and service provider networks.

The new StrataXGS Trident 3 switch family, which is aimed at networks transitioning to high density 10/25/100G Ethernet, is manufactured in 16nm and designed to support fully programmable packet processing, while achieving significant cost and power efficiency. It builds on Broadcom's widely deployed StrataXGS Trident and Tomahawk switch products by offering fully programmable, line-rate switching. It supports new protocol parsing, processing, and editing for Service Function Chaining, Network Virtualization, and SDN. It offers programmable support for new switch instrumentation capabilities such as in-band and out-of-band network telemetry. The StrataXGS Trident 3 also retains complete functional compatibility to with StrataXGS Trident 2 and Trident 2+ based networks, which were widely adopted by network equipment manufacturers.


"The innovation in our StrataXGS Trident 3 Series is in delivering a fully programmable switching pipeline while maintaining backwards compatibility to the existing install base of StrataXGS Trident and Trident 2 based networks," said Ram Velaga, senior vice president and general manager, Switch Products at Broadcom. "Rather than a blank slate, our customers want a scalable, bulletproof network data plane that is reprogrammable to address future requirements, while continuing to aggressively drive down Ethernet cost and power. With Trident 3, we’ve uniquely delivered that solution. Our customers can leverage a single development to yield a complete line of programmable switching platforms, with the same rich feature set extending all the way from the service provider edge, to the data center, converged campus core, and wiring closet.”

Broadcom said the FleXGS architecture in Trident 3 comprises of new programmable parsing, lookup, and editing engines with associated reconfigurable databases. The engines are dimensioned and arrayed to maximize parallelism, performance, functional capacity and area/power efficiency to best address the diverse and concurrent needs of today’s evolving networks.  The pipeline can be programmed to handle software-defined network virtualization and service chaining protocols, including VXLAN, GPE, NSH, Geneve, MPLS, MPLS over GRE, MPLS over UDP, GUE, Identifier Locator Addressing (ILA) and PPPoE, among others.

StrataXGS Trident 3 Switch Series Key Features

• High density 1/2.5/5/10/25/40/50/100GbE port connectivity using best-in-class integrated 10/25Gbps NRZ SerDes
•  Example single-chip platforms and line cards include spine and converged campus core (32x100GbE), 25/100GbE Top-of Rack (48x25GbE + 8x100GbE) and 10/100GbE Top-of-Rack (48x10GbE + 6x100GbE) 
• 32MB on-chip, 100% fully shared packet buffer delivers up to 8X higher network burst absorption and congestion avoidance compared to previous generations
• Large, programmable on-chip forwarding databases for L2 switching, L3 routing, label switching, and overlay forwarding
• 3X increased ACL scale to support evolving policy/security requirements
• PCIe Gen3 x4 host CPU interface with on-chip accelerators improves control-plane update and boot performance by up to 5X
• Programmable support for enhanced network telemetry, including per-packet timestamping, Flow Tracker, microburst detection, latency/drop monitor, Active-probe-based in-band network telemetry, and in-band OAM processing; integrated with open-source BroadView v2 telemetry agent and analytics software
• Dynamic, State-Based Flow Distribution provides systematic and adaptive reduction in link congestion and traffic imbalances in large-scale Layer3/ECMP leaf-spine networks
• Adaptive Routing for dynamic traffic engineering in non-Clos topologies
• Full feature compatibility with previous generation Trident 2 and Trident 2+ devices

The first two members of the StrataXGS Trident 3 family are currently sampling: BCM56870 (3.2 Tbps) and BCM56873 (2.0 Tbps).

http://www.broadcom.com

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