GigaOM » Alcatel Lucent

Nuage Networks SDN aims for easy connections in the rack and beyond

Jordan Novet — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 16:00:30 +0000

Nuage Networks, a startup inside French network vendor Alcatel-Lucent, has come out with an overlay product for software-defined networking (SDN) inside and outside the data center and a plan for SDN-enabled wide-area networks for the enterprise. Carrying out that vision would show that the SDN concept can spread far beyond the data center.

Nuage’s Virtualized Services Platform, which executives hinted at in January, incorporates a controller, virtual routing and switching, and a virtualized services directory. It operates in layers two through four of the network stack, building tunnels between virtual machines running in the same server rack or even in different racks at different data centers as easily and quickly as one cell phone can connect to another one, said Lindsay Newell, head of portfolio marketing for Alcatel-Lucent’s networks group. It works with cloud-management software from OpenStack, CloudStack and VMware.

Trials of the Nuage software begin this month. Trial customers include telecommunications service providers SFR and Telus, as well as the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Nuage (French for “cloud”) will make the product commercially available within three months or so, Newell said.

As soon as next year, he said, Nuage will follow up with software for establishing software-defined virtual private networks. It should be able to connect multiple enterprise network locations, including private or public data centers, through a virtual, programmable wide-area network, avoiding the need for expensive and time-consuming manual provisioning.

That’s later. For now, Nuage will have to prove that its overlay product can deliver on its promises and do more than what it calls first-generation SDN offerings from Big Switch, Nicira and others.

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Fighting the capacity crunch, Orange and Alcatel-Lucent set 400 Gbps fiber link live

David Meyer — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:50:41 +0000

People have been messing around with this in the labs but now it’s real and in the field: Alcatel-Lucent and France Telecom-Orange have deployed a long-distance terrestrial 400 Gbps optical fiber link that, as it uses 44 such wavelengths, can carry a whopping 17.6 terabits per second (Tbps) of traffic in aggregate.

Why is this important? Because telecoms operators’ networks are always facing a capacity crunch, mainly thanks to the explosion in cloud and online video, and there’s always a need to pump more bits through the system. We’re now looking at the next generation of such connectivity, alive and kicking.

The link, which is based on Alcatel-Lucent’s 400 Gbps Photonic Service Engine, runs between Paris and Lyon, and the first tester is the French educational and research network Renater. The early use cases for this bump up from now-standard 100 Gbps wavelength technology will most likely be found in business and research, for services such as telepresence that will make good use of the boosted bandwidth.

“This link transports the bulk of France’s scientific data that passes through our network,” Renater MD Patrick Donath said in a statement. “This pilot phase also aims to test the latest switching equipment supplied by major OEMs on a network running at this capacity and will enable us the anticipate the architecture of Renater’s network in the coming years.

“A 400 Gbps network is an important step forward for the networks and research projects of tomorrow.”

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To scale, telcos must learn from the ops community

Stacey Higginbotham — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 16:35:38 +0000

There are as many small base stations out in the world as there are large base stations attached to cell phone towers, according to an Informa Telecoms & Media report released Wednesday. That doubles the number of equipment telcos must monitor and manage to help deliver a crystal clear signal on your cell phone, but it also creates a management nightmare and perhaps, an opportunity.

The report states that between October and November 2012, the number of small cells reached 6.1 million with macrocells worldwide totaling 5.9 million. Most of the small cells at 80 percent are inside people’s homes helping improve the cell signal inside the house. But others are in crowded venues like offices and stadiums where the smaller cells act as a backup and signal booster for larger cell towers nearby. Sprint by the way has deployed a million of those small cells–up from 250,000 in 2011.

For operators who now have up to four times as many base stations to manage, the network complexity can be daunting. Sure these small cells boost the quality of the subscriber experience but managing all of those end points comes at a cost. And who will pay it? Some operators charge users for their in-home femtocells, which can frustrate people who believe that the operator should provide quality coverage as part of the basic service.

More cells, more technologies bring more complexity

But the problem will only get worse as more cells and more technologies are added to the network, and that’s why operators must look to their data center operations to understand how to scale out their networks at commodity server prices — not telco gear prices. For example, data center operators ranging from Google to Facebook have relentlessly focused on their infrastructure to eke out optimal performance at the lowest cost. Part of that is because their cost of goods sold (i.e. ads) are dependent on how much it costs to show a user a page.

But as demand for data creeps up and if carriers want to maximize profits while continuing to invest, their current equipment and the way they manage it must change. It must become easier to put in the field (no more deploying engineers and spending a couple of weeks to adjust new base stations) and more automated. Vendors such as Alcatel Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks are trying to offer equipment that’s more flexible and can be deployed easily. Items such as Alcatel-Lucent’s LightRadio gear is an effort to make deployment easier. Gear from Intucell seeks to use self optimizing networks to make the network coverage more adaptive and automated.

And the same Informa report indicates that some operators are trying to build services that offer network access over small cells without the operator having to own the underlying assets. They call is Small Cells as a Service, or SCaaS, because of course they do. Virgin Media, Colt Telecom, Cloudberry Mobile and ClearSky are all testing products with a SCaaS model in mind.

Needed: Better and more programmability

Other than rethinking gear and introducing new business models borrowed from the cloud, telcos should also think about bringing more programmability into their core networks and operations. The software-defined networking craze in the data center could yield just as impressive benefits for carriers if they can bring themselves to adopt gear that uses commodity parts and relies more on the telco engineers as opposed to buying a box that Cisco or Juniper programmers tweak for them.

A mindset shift has to occur in the telecommunications world, but many are thinking about it both on the operator and on the vendor side. But as the complexity of networks increase most carriers know they have to do something.

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New solutions for the evolving mobile network

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 18:31:41 +0000

Cisco’s VNI graph shows mobile data growing 18 times over the next five years, and it makes a strong case for the need of mobile networks to evolve to reflect the transition from voice- to data-centric usage models. Yet to make these fundamental changes in operating networks, it is crucial to move beyond compelling graphics and understand what requirements new usage models impose on the network infrastructure. To successfully address the increase in data traffic, operators need to act on multiple fronts, because no single solution will be sufficient in isolation.

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Mobile 2012 and beyond

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 06:55:31 +0000

Few industries change at the pace mobile does. Whether it’s the iPhone 5, the importance of LTE, or BYOD trends disrupting the enterprise, there are always new technologies, trends, and companies changing the way we define mobile. Here, GigaOM Pro highlights a few segments of the mobile industry that will be important to watch in the coming months, from location-based shopping to wireless networks, and new business models for carriers.

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The Mobile 15: Our picks for the most innovative companies

GigaOM Staff — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:12:49 +0000

The mobile industry has changed radically in just a few years: We’ve had the smartphone revolution and the app revolution. And it was only three years ago that the tablet was written off as failed experiment. Now, it is testing the physical boundaries of the internet.

What’s next? Faster and cheaper mobile networks, an array of new devices to connect to those networks, disruptive payment models, and more captivating user interfaces. So which companies are likely to help power that new wave of innovation? Welcome to The Mobile 15.

These aren’t necessarily the most successful companies in the mobile world, though you could argue that a few of them might qualify for those lists as well. Rather, what we’re highlighting here is simply innovation: These are the companies, startups and giants alike, that are changing, or could potentially change, the mobile landscape in the most profound ways. We’ll be talking about this list — as well as many of broader themes and challenges in mobile– at Mobilize, our conference in San Francisco later this week.

The Mobile 15 includes some big brands, like Alcatel-Lucent and Samsung, but also some lesser-known names, like the printed memory company ThinFilm and crowdsourced traffic app developer Waze. Some of our picks may surprise you, like the inclusion of long-suffering Nokia. We know Nokia has hit a rough patch in recent years, but we think its attempts to radically reinvent itself with a new OS and new technologies are compelling — see more on our rationale below.

A word about our methodology: To create the list, we didn’t simply pick a bunch of names we liked and throw them into a spreadsheet. Our team — which included writers Katie Fehrenbacher, Kevin Tofel, Ryan Kim and Stacey Higginbotham– submitted dozens of candidates in categories ranging from app development to handset technologies to infrastructure vendors. We even included the Internet of Things — companies are turning everything from medical devices, energy-management systems and product packaging into small mobile computers.

We then graded every company on several different measures of innovation. Those with the highest total innovation scores earned a spot on our Mobile 15 list. Some of these companies, like Israeli startup Intucell, are working on one-time innovations, while others, like Apple, of course, have a longer track record of breakthroughs. What connects all the companies on our list is that they will have a big impact on the mobile industry.

So keep your eye on these companies in coming months. To the 15!

—Kevin Fitchard

Go to page 2 (of 16) on GigaOM .

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The promise of software-defined networking

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 06:55:56 +0000

The software-defined networking (SDN) market is expected to soar in size to $2 billion by 2016. Growth this fast may very well signify that SDN is the third epoch of computer networking, which will change everything. Large and small firms will be able to compete with established players like Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent by rapidly adding software features to low-cost merchant-silicon-based network products. And there is the promise of Stanford University’s OpenFlow protocol. This report provides the big ideas motivating a systemic change of the computer-networking industry, and it includes 10 observations and assessments that will guide readers toward open networking.

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Research In Motion: future scenarios for its fate

Wed, 01 Aug 2012 06:55:26 +0000

It’s all too easy to pile on to the Research In Motion–bashing bandwagon. The company’s decline is the stuff of water-cooler chatter, and RIM will doubtless end up as the subject of dozens of business-school case studies. But technology markets are always a little uncertain, so for now let’s get beyond the finger-pointing. RIM is a different firm today than it was in 2007. It has new management, a full awareness of the gravity of the situation, restless investors, an upcoming OS release and a number of lingering advantages that can still be leveraged. What might the future hold for RIM? CEO Thorsten Heins has said he plans to surprise critics with RIM’s transformation. But in case you don’t like surprises, here’s a brief look at the most likely scenarios for RIM going forward and their probability of occurring.

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Scaling Hadoop clusters: the role of cluster management

Paul Miller — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 07:01:22 +0000

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Opportunities with Communications-as-a-Service

davemichels — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 06:55:02 +0000

Communications-as-a-Service (CaaS) technology brings together business applications, the Internet and the world’s public-switched telephone network (PSTN) to provide businesses with new ways of enabling communication. The cloud-based technology delivers telephony infrastructure as a web service: scalable capacity, instantly available, with usage-based invoicing. This report will examine some basics of CaaS technology, including its benefits and drawbacks, and its importance when it comes to the new generation of API developers. Finally, it profiles two of the largest CaaS providers, Voxeo and Twilio, and offers considerations for employing those companies’ solutions.

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