It’s always interesting (and dangerous) to lay out some predictions for the future of technology, so here are a few visions:
The exponential growth of broadband data is driving wireless (and wired) communications systems to more effectively use existing bandwidth. Mobile data traffic continues to grow, driven both by increased smartphone subscriptions and a continued increase in average data volume per subscription, fueled primarily by more viewing of video content. Ericsson forecasts mobile video traffic to grow by around 50% annually through 2022, to account for nearly 75% of all mobile data traffic. Social networking is the second biggest data traffic type. To make effective use of the wireless channel, system operators are moving toward massive-MIMO, multi-antenna systems that transmit multiple wide-bandwidth data streams—geometrically adding to system complexity and power consumption. Total mobile data traffic is expected to grow at 45% CAGR to 2020.
5G cellular technology is still in development, and is far from ready in 2017. As international groups set 2020 deadline to agree on frequencies and standards for the new equipment, anything before that is pre-standard. Expect to see many 5G announcements that might not be what 5G will actually be when standard is ready. The boldest statement is that Nokia & KT plan 2017 launch of world’s first mobile 5G network in South Korea in 2017: commercial trial system to operate in the 28GHz band. Wireless spectrum above 5 GHz will generate solutions for a massive increase in bandwidth and also for a latency of less than 1 ms.
CableLabs is working toward standardization of an AP Coordination protocol to improve In-Home WiFi as one access point (AP) for WiFi often is not enough to allow for reliable connection and ubiquitous speed to multiple devices throughout a large home. The hope is that something will be seen mid-2017. A mesh AP network is a self-healing, self-forming, self-optimizing network of mesh access points (MAPs).
There will be more and more Gigabit Internet connections in 2017. Gigabit Internet is Accelerating on All Fronts. Until recently, FTTH has been the dominant technology for gigabit. Some of the common options available now include fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 over cable’s HFC plant, G.Fast over telco DSL networks, 5G cellular, and fiber-to-the-building coupled with point-to-point wireless. AT&T recently launched its AT&T Fiber gigabit service. Cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 are cheaper and less disruptive than FTTH in that they do not require a rip-and-replace of the existing outside plant. DOCSIS 3.1, which has just begun to be deployed at scale, is designed to deliver up to 10 Gbps downstream Internet speeds over existing HFC networks (most deployments to date have featured 1 Gbps speeds). G.Fast is just beginning to come online with a few deployments (typically 500 meters or less distance at MDU). 5G cellular technology is still in development, and standards for it do not yet exist. Another promising wireless technology for delivering gigabit speeds is point-to-point millimeter wave, which uses spectrum between 30 GHz and 300 GHz.
There are also some trials for 10 Gbit/s: For example Altice USA (Euronext:ATC) announced plans to build a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network capable of delivering broadband speeds of up to 10 Gbps across its U.S. footprint. The five-year deployment plan is scheduled to begin in 2017.
Interest to use TV white space increases in 2017 in USA. The major factors driving the growth of the market include providing low-cost broadband to remote and non-line-of-sight regions. Rural Internet access market is expected to grow at a significant rate between 2016 and 2022. According to MarketsandMarkets, the global TV white space market was valued at $1.2 million in 2015 and is expected to reach approximately $53.1 million by 2022, at a CAGR of 74.30% during the forecast period.
The rapid growth of the internet and cloud computing has resulted in bandwidth requirements for data center network. This is in turn expected to increase the demand for optical interconnects in the next-generation data center networks.
Open Ethernet networking platforms will make a noticeable impact in 2017. The availability of full featured, high performance and cost effective open switching platforms combined with open network operating systems such as Cumulus Networks, Microsoft SoNIC, and OpenSwitch will finally see significant volume uptake in 2017.
Network becomes more and more software controlled in 2017.NFV and SDN Will Mature as Automated Networks will become Production systems. Over the next five years, nearly 60 percent of hyperscale facilities are expected to deploy SDN and/or NFV solutions. IoT will force SDN adoption into Campus Networks.
SDN implementations are increasingly taking a platform approach with plug and play support for any VNF, topology, and analytics that are instrumented and automated. Some companies are discovering the security benefits of SDN – virtual segmentation and automation. The importance of specific SDN protocols (OpenFlow, OVSDB, NetConf, etc.) will diminish as many universes of SDN/NFV will solidify into standard models. More vendors are opening up their SDN platforms to third-party VNFs. In Linux based systems eBPF and XDP are delivering flexibility, scale, security, and performance for a broad set of functions beyond networking without bypassing the kernel.
For year 2016 it was predicted that gigabit ethernet sales start to decline as the needle moving away from 1 Gigabit Ethernet towards faster standards (2.5 or 5.0 or 10Gbps; Nbase-T is basically underclocked 10Gbase-T running at 2.5 or 5.0Gbps instead of 10Gbps). I have not yet seen the result from this prediction, but that does not stop from making new ones. So I expect that 10GbE sales will peak in 2017 and start a steady decline after 2017 as it is starts being pushed aside by 25, 50, and 100GbE in data center applications. 25Gbit/s Ethernet is available now from all of the major server vendors. 25 can start to become the new 10 as it offers 2.5x the throughput and only a modest price premium over 10Gbit/s.
100G and 400G Ethernet will still have some implementation challenges in 2017. Data-center customers are demanding a steep downward trajectory in the cost of 100G pluggable transceivers, but existing 100G module multi-source agreements (MSAs) such as PSM4 and CWDM4 have limited capacity for cost reduction due to the cost of the fiber (PSM4) and the large number of components (both PSM4 and CWDM4). It seems that dual-lambda PAM4 and existing 100G Ethernet (100GE) solutions such as PSM4 and CWDM4 will not be able to achieve the overall cost reductions demanded by data-center customers. At OFC 2016, AppliedMicro showcased the world’s first 100G PAM4 single-wavelength solution for 100G and 400G Ethernet. We might be able to see see 400GE in the second half of 2017 or the early part of 2018.
As the shift to the cloud is accelerating in 2017, the traffic routed through cloud-based data centers is expected to quadruple in the next four years according to the results of the sixth annual Global Cloud Index published by Cisco. Public cloud is growing faster than private cloud. An estimated 68 percent of cloud workloads will be deployed in public cloud data centers by 2020, up from 49 percent in 2015. According to Cisco, hyperscale data centers will account for 47 percent of global server fleet and support 53 percent of all data center traffic by 2020.
The modular data center market has experienced a high growth and adoption rate in the last few years, and is anticipated to experience more of this trend in years to come. Those data centers are typically built using standard 20 ft. container module or standard 40 ft. container module. Modular data center market is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 24.1% during period 2016 – 2025, to account for US$ 22.41 billion in 2025. Also in 2017 the first cracks will start to appear in Intel’s vaunted CPU dominance.
The future of network neutrality is unsure in 2017 as the Senate failed to reconfirm Democratic pro-net neutrality FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, portending new Trump era leadership and agenda Net neutrality faces extinction under Trump. Also one of Trump’s advisers on FCC, Mark Jamison, argued last month that the agency should only regulate radio spectrum licenses, scale back all other functions. When Chairman Tom Wheeler, the current head of the FCC, steps down, Republicans will hold a majority.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
IEEE hones 802.11ah standard for smart grid IoT future, bettering wireless range and energy efficiency in sub 1 GHz band
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/07/ieee-ah-iot.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-17
- IEEE and the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE-SA), have announced the availability of the IEEE 802.11ah-2016 standard amendment, providing for an extended range Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) in the sub 1 GHz band.
According to a press release, IEEE 802.11ah-2016 significantly lowers propagation loss through free space, walls and other obstructions, and offers a networking alternative to augment the heavily congested 2.4 GHz band and the shorter-range 5 GHz band used today. Further, IEEE 802.11ah-2016 defines a narrow-band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) physical layer (PHY) operating in the license-exempt bands below 1 GHz, making it suitable for several potential applications, such as Internet of Things (IoT), smart grid, healthcare, smart appliances and wearables.
The IEEE 802.11ah-2016 standard amendment offers multiple low rates modes (starting from 150 kb/s) for extended range (up to 1 km outdoors) and higher rate modes (up to 347 Mbps) for applications requiring higher throughput. It supports outdoor deployment and can provide robust performance in large delay spread environments. Low rate modes are suitable for IoT applications, and provide whole-home coverage for battery-operated, small form-factor devices, such as temperature and moisture sensors. Higher rate modes support plug-in devices with a power amplifier, such as video security cameras.
Additionally, the IEEE 802.11ah-2016 standard amendment is optimized for long battery life and serving an increased number of devices with a MAC layer that enables increased scalability, higher power efficiency, and relay operation (single hop or multi-hop).
More than 300 individuals from equipment and silicon suppliers, service providers, systems integrators, consultant organizations and academic institutions from more than 20 countries participated in the development of IEEE 802.11ah-2016.
Tomi Engdahl says:
T & T: Finnish companies buy their own bypass buses in order to escape the net odds
More and more companies are buying direct access to their service provider or cloud service to overcome the congestion of the Internet or to protect their connection.
Equinix, a US data center and telecommunications service provider, has settled this issue internationally.
The total bandwidth installed for direct connections will increase this year to approximately 1600 terabytes per second, of which the United States accounts for about 40%, the EU is about 29% and Asia is about 21%.
For the most part, about 78% are direct connections from companies to operators and from operators to backbone operators. Slightly less than 5 percent are connections with cloud and information technology service providers.
Equinix predicts that private telecommunications between businesses will increase almost twice as much as public Internet traffic. Private traffic is six times in 2020, at about 5000 terabytes per second. At the same time, the volume of global internet traffic would be below this level, at around 855 terabytes per second.
Equinix predicts that very high growth will come into contact with cloud computing centers, as more and more applications such as operating and production control applications are exported to the network.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kaikki_uutiset/t-t-suomalaisyritykset-ostavat-omia-ohituskaistoja-valttaakseen-nettiruuhkaa-6669942
Tomi Engdahl says:
What is IoT?
Beyond being a network of online, connected, smart devices, the internet of things it can be a nightmare for IT
http://www.networkworld.com/article/3207535/internet-of-things/what-is-iot.html
The Internet of Things, at its simplest level, is smart devices – from refrigerators that warn you when you’re out of milk to industrial sensors – that are connected to the Internet so they can share data, but IoT is far from a simple challenge for IT departments.
For many companies, it represents a vast influx of new devices, many of which are difficult to secure and manage. It’s comparable to the advent of BYOD, except the new gizmos are potentially more difficult to secure, aren’t all running one of three or four basic operating systems, and there are already more of them.
A lot more, in fact – IDC research says that there are around 13 billion connected devices in use worldwide already, and that that number could expand to 30 billion within the next three years. (There were less than 4 billion smartphone subscriptions active around the world in Ericsson’s most recent Mobility Report.)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Rachael King / Wall Street Journal:
How Cisco lost key customers to Arista Networks, turning Arista CEO Jayshree Ullal, who was once close to John Chambers, into a fierce rival
Cisco’s Feud With Former Star Executive Turns Personal—and Costly
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ciscos-feud-with-former-star-executive-turns-personaland-costly-1502980362
Arista Networks’s CEO Jayshree Ullal, who was once close to John Chambers, is grabbing Cisco’s networking business and winning over customers
Tomi Engdahl says:
5G is getting to use faster than any other network technology
Standardization of 5G technology is expected to be ready in 2020. However, the first networks will be launched in the previous year. 5G will be the fastest growing networking technology in the history, estimates Juniper Research.
In 2019, the number of 5G users is about one million. In practice, this means that fast millisecond connections can be used in a few online and very locally.
By 2025, in just six years, the number of 5G users has increased to 1.4 billion. 55 percent of all 5G connections are currently in use in China, the United States and Japan. Europe can wait for its own 5G data.
At an annual level, the number of 5G users is thus increasing at 232 percent. This is a bit faster than the 4G, where a billion users were reached in seven years.
Source: http://etn.fi/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6702&via=n&datum=2017-08-21_14:03:40&mottagare=31202
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aerohive unveils combo wallplate wireless AP, switch with embedded IoT capability
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2017/08/aerohive-embedded-iot.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-21
Aerohive Networks (NYSE:HIVE) has unveiled the AP150W, billed as the “first small form factor wallplate access point and switch combination with embedded IoT capability.” Designed both for Ethernet-jack wall mounting or placement on a desktop, the AP150W can be installed in less than two minutes, contends the company.
Every AP150W has anti-counterfeit and platform-integrity measures that protect network secrets and prevent operation without valid access verification. For greater use-case flexibility, the AP150W can power VoIP phones, IoT sensors, and cameras through its integrated PoE switch and Passive Passthrough Port, which provides investment protection for existing cabling and switch infrastructure.”
“Wi-Fi has become the primary connectivity at work, home, and play,” notes Alan Amrod, senior vice president, Products Organization, Aerohive Networks. “By packing 802.11ac Wave 2 Wi-Fi, Gigabit Ethernet switching, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and ZigBee technologies into a small form factor that can be installed in less than two minutes, Wi-Fi in every room has finally become affordable and easy.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Spirent tests Wi-Fi performance via network emulation with O2 at the Coca-Cola London Eye
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2017/08/spirent-wifi-test.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-21
Spirent Communications announced that its Landslide E10 network test platform has been used with O2 to validate the Wi-Fi network performance and capacity at the Coca-Cola London Eye, before the launch of a new smartphone application last month. According to a press release, “Merlin Entertainments plc, operator of the London Eye, wanted to measure its Wi-Fi network performance, to ensure its infrastructure could provide an excellent experience for users of the new app, which puts increased demands on the Wi-Fi network.”
Spirent Landslide enables Wi-Fi providers to test their network performance and capacity by emulating users with a range of different devices, and the network traffic that they might generate. “Spirent Landslide allows providers to check their networks and test application scale and performance before users access them,” said David Stehlin, General Manager of Lifecycle Service Assurance at Spirent. “Wi-Fi has become an integral part of the experience in stadiums and public venues. Ensuring the application performance is critical to brand value for sports teams, advertisers and venues.”
Spirent notes that its Landslide E10 has been used with a number of different operators to proactively test the network from the end customer’s perspective, to assure the quality of experience for all customers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM Cloud employs 4,000 mi. of fiber at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium to support IoT-connected systems
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/08/ibm-cloud-employs-4-000-mi-of-fiber-at-atlanta-s-mercedes-benz-stadium-to-support-iot-connected-syst.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-21
“The Atlanta Falcons football team and Atlanta United soccer team have a new home — the glass-encased Mercedes-Benz stadium that is located next to their former home in the Georgia Dome. The new stadium uses IBM Cloud as the basis of a converged network with more than 4,000 miles of fiber on a passive optical network to support IoT-connected systems throughout the building.”
The 71,000-seat stadium has 90 miles of audio cabling and nearly 2,000 wireless access points for Wi-Fi connectivity. The stadium includes a 360-degree, 63,000-square-foot HD Video Halo Board and more than 2,000 video displays throughout the building. The IT infrastructure is the heart and brain to the immense video presence within the stadium.
Going high tech with IBM Cloud at Atlanta’s new Mercedes-Benz stadium
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/going-high-tech-with-ibm-cloud-at-atlantas-new-mercedes-benz-stadium/
The newest professional sports stadium opens next week in Atlanta, and it’s filled with new tech to improve the fan experience as a result of the team’s partnership with IBM.
The new stadium uses IBM Cloud as the basis of a converged network with more than 4,000 miles of fiber on a passive optical network to support IoT-connected systems throughout the building. The 71,000-seat stadium has 90 miles of audio cabling and nearly 2,000 wireless access points for Wi-Fi connectivity.
Fiber instead of copper means energy savings
There’s also a sustainability angle, with power and cooling savings to lower the carbon footprint while increasing operational efficiency.
“In the core data center, on the network there, we replaced switches virtually instead of having hundreds and hundreds of ethernet switches. It came down to three paths of optical network OLP controllers that are all on one rack. There’s several hundred racks in the data center, but instead of having hundreds of switches of normal copper ethernet, we were able to use that converged network to make it simplified. We were able to save the Falcons space by reducing the number of wiring closets and provide them more space for some of the strategic areas,” Compitello said.
By reducing the number of wiring closets, and therefore reducing the amount of switching equipment, it saved up to 30% of the normal power usage. With copper ethernet you can go only 300 feet, but with fiber you can go 12 miles without a switch, he said.
The stadium also houses a neutral host distributed antenna system (DAS) and all four major carriers—AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile—have signed on to it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Relighting West Baden Springs Hotel: Where modernization meets preservation
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-25/issue-8/features/technology/relighting-west-baden-springs-hotel-where-modernization-meets-preservation.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-21
Retrofitting for the past and future
When the Cook Group took over the West Baden Springs Hotel in 1996, it sought to continue the resort’s long tradition of enhancing its guest experience with modern, innovative technologies. “I think being on the leading edge of technology is what guests expect of our resort, both historically and now,” says Brent Conner, director of architecture and engineering for Cook Group. “Our philosophy, in general, has been staying on the front edge of that technology. In the past, the spa and the steam baths were cutting edge in their day. Today, I think that still carries through. Today’s guests expect top quality. They expect a friendly atmosphere. Cook Group has tried to make sure that happens.”
Seeking to boost operational efficiencies and improve its guest experience, the Cook Group sought the expertise of Superior Essex and Platformatics in retrofitting the atrium with the latest intelligent LED lighting technologies. Together, they provided a connected lighting solution that offered West Baden Springs Hotel significant increases in energy efficiency and customizability, while also establishing a foundation for future converged network applications that will continue to add value as the hotel expands its in-building network. “Platformatics came to us and gave us a really great presentation of what abilities and capabilities are out there with regard to PoE lighting,” says Conner. “We felt like this was the perfect application for what we needed and what they were trying to do.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mobile Now Act proceeds through U.S. Congress
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/08/mobile-now-act-proceeds-through-u-s-congress.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-21
“The Mobile Now Act, a bill aimed at opening more spectrum for 5G services, has moved one step closer to becoming law after the Senate approved the measure Thursday.”
The bill aims to cement in law President Obama’s goal of making 500 MHz of spectrum – including 255 MHz of federal and non-federal airwaves below 6 GHz and 100 MHz of unlicensed spectrum – available for mobile and fixed wireless broadband use by the end of 2020…Additionally, the Mobile Now Act would give the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) 18 months to assess spectrum in the 3 GHz band and millimeter wave frequencies to determine the feasibility of deploying licensed or unlicensed wireless broadband services in those bands…
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cisco (just) meets Q4 earnings estimates
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/08/cisco-just-meets-q4-earnings-estimates.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-21
Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) reported fourth-quarter fiscal 2017 non-GAAP earnings (including stock-based compensation) of 55 cents per share, in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate
Revenues declined 4% year over year to $12.13 billion, slightly better than the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Management had anticipated revenues to decline in the range of 6-4% on a year-over-year basis.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Home> Community > Blogs > Absolute EDA
Product how-to: Moving to virtual emulation for software-defined networking
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/absolute-eda/4458740/Product-how-to–Moving-to-virtual-emulation-for-software-defined-networking?utm_content=buffer2c756&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
Tremendous shifts in networking research and development over the last few years have resulted in a whole new class of networking devices, more widely known as Software Defined Networking (SDN) switches and routers. Developments using Reconfigurable Match Tables (RMT) and other Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) style architectural choices have transitioned network switch System on a Chip (SoC) designs from fixed-function topologies into highly configurable match action devices.
In order to operate, an SDN device must be managed using a SW application that downloads its configuration. This is done most commonly using a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) interface. Networking SoC verification has traditionally relied on PCIe as an essential interface for simple device access, configuration and runtime case management. PCIe has been the dominant networking SoC management channel of choice for decades.
However, SDN SoCs introduce significantly greater interaction between the host application SW state and the SoC HW state being managed over PCIe.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Verizon To Start Throttling All Smartphone Videos To 480p or 720p
https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/08/22/144226/verizon-to-start-throttling-all-smartphone-videos-to-480p-or-720p
Verizon Wireless will start throttling video streams to resolutions as low as 480p on smartphones this week. Most data plans will get 720p video on smartphones, but customers won’t have any option to completely un-throttle video.
1080p will be the highest resolution provided on tablets, effectively ruling out 4K video on Verizon’s mobile network. Anything identified as a video will not be given more than 10Mbps worth of bandwidth. This limit will affect mobile hotspot usage as well. Verizon started selling unlimited smartphone data plans in February of this year, and the carrier said at the time that it would deliver video to customers at the same resolution used by streaming video companies.
Verizon to start throttling all smartphone videos to 480p or 720p
No 4K video allowed—new bandwidth limits apply to mobile hotspots, too.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/verizon-to-start-throttling-all-smartphone-videos-to-480p-or-720p/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Verizon’s good unlimited data plan is now three bad unlimited plans
Cheapest plan limits video to 480p, and there’s no way to watch 1080p on a phone anymore
by Chris Welch Aug 22, 2017, 6:00am EDT
https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/22/16181362/verizon-new-unlimited-data-plan-video-throttling-net-neutrality
Well, now we know why Verizon Wireless was “testing” reduced Netflix streaming speeds last month. Today the biggest US carrier announced that its existing unlimited data plan is being divided into three new options: Go Unlimited (starting at $75 for a single line), Beyond Unlimited ($85 for first line), and Business Unlimited. Unlike the relatively straightforward unlimited plan that Verizon surprised customers with in February, these new monthly plans are chock-full of fine print and caveats. And in a move sure to anger net neutrality advocates, the regular “Go Unlimited” plan throttles all smartphone video streaming to 480p / DVD-quality. The new plans go into effect beginning tomorrow, August 23rd, so this change is happening fast. Existing postpaid customers can keep their current plan, but some things will change even for them.
How does this compare to the previous unlimited data plan?
Before this latest change, the unlimited data plan placed no limits on mobile video whatsoever.
If you don’t mind the possibility of slowed down data speeds or DVD-quality video, you can opt for the Go Unlimited plan and save a few bucks compared to the plan introduced in February, which started at $80 for a single line. But new customers who do care about those things will be paying more money each month for essentially the same service. Beyond Unlimited starts at $85 for the first line and remains more expensive as you add additional lines. A Verizon spokesperson told me that the old price was an “introductory” price that was inevitably going to change.
All customers are getting moved over to throttled video.
This is what’s likely going to enrage Verizon customers most. No matter what plan you’re on — whether it’s the old, grandfathered unlimited data plan or a tiered plan or the new unlimited plan — Verizon is taking a tighter grip over video streaming. “Moving forward, HD video on all legacy plans will also match Beyond Unlimited’s HD quality.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Molex expands zSFP+ Interconnect System for 56 Gbps Ethernet, Fibre Channel applications
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2017/08/molex-expands-56.html
Molex has expanded its zSFP+ Interconnect System to support 56 Gbps PAM-4 channels in a stacked 2xN port configuration, allowing next-generation Ethernet and Fibre Channel applications to receive standout signal integrity. The product is the first of its kind on the market, claims Molex.
Per the company, “OEMs requiring high-density interconnect applications now have the ability to utilize channels with individual lane data rates up to 56 Gbps PAM-4 in a stacked 2xN configuration. While providing those high speeds, the updated Molex product still maintains a low insertion loss, crosstalk, thermal and electromagnetic interference (EMI) containment that users are accustomed to from the previous zSFP+ Interconnect System.”
The updated system has multiple features that allow for greater flexibility and lowered costs for users. The 56 Gbps PAM-4 channel products include EMI ganged cages-which are available in multiple port sizes from 2×1 through 2×12-allows for flexibility of PCB signal routing of LEDs.
For more information about the Molex zSFP+ Interconnect System, visit http://www.molex.com/link/zsfp+.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Storage networking market driven by familiar forces: hyperscale, software-defined
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-25/issue-8/features/data-center/storage-networking-market-driven-by-familiar-forces-hyperscale-software-defined.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-22
Some recent market reviews and forecasts focused on storage networking echo familiar tunes: Hyperscale data centers largely dictate a market’s ebb and flow, and just about everything is becoming software-defined.
Reporting on the first quarter of 2017, International Data Corp. (IDC) found the global enterprise storage market was essentially flat, coming in at a 0.5-percent decrease year-over-year at $9.2 billion. The analyst detailed, “Total capacity shipments were up 41.4 percent year-over-year to 50.1 exabytes during the quarter. Revenue growth increased within the group of original design manufacturers (ODMs) that sell directly to hyperscale data centers. This portion of the market was up 78.2 percent year over year to $1.2 billion. Sales of server-based storage were down 13.7 percent and accounted for $2.7 billion in revenue. External storage systems remained the largest market segment, but the $5.2 billion in sales represented a modest decline of 2.8 percent year over year.”
Liz Conner, research manager for storage systems with IDC, observed, “The enterprise storage market closed out the first quarter relatively flat, yet adhered to a familiar pattern. Spending on traditional external arrays continues to slowly shrink while spending on all-flash deployments once again posted strong growth and helped to drive the overall market. Meanwhile, the very nature of the hyperscale business leads to heavy fluctuations within the market segment, displaying solid growth in 1Q17.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
TIA-942-B Data Center Cabling Standard is updated
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2017/08/tia942-b-updated.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-22
Arlington, VA – August 9, 2017: The Telecommunications Industry Association TR-42 Telecommunications Cabling Systems Engineering Committee approved the TIA-942-B Data Center Cabling Standard. To help data centers address current and future needs, the updated standard includes several substantial changes from the previous version. TIA represents the companies that supply high-tech communications networks and is a global leader in developing industry standards across a range of ICT segments.
“We made a significant update to ANSI/TIA-942-B in order to keep pace with the rapid technology changes in the data center environment,” said Jonathan Jew, editor of TIA-942-B.
The TIA-942-B standard includes the following, among other, changes from the “A” revision:
Incorporates TIA-942-A Addendum 1, which addresses data center fabrics
Adds 16- and 32-fiber MPO-style array connectors as an additional connector type for termination of more than two fibers. The 16- and 32-fiber connectors were standardized when ANSI/TIA-604-18 was published.
Adds Category 8 as an allowed type of balanced twisted-pair cable, and changes the recommendation for Category 6A balanced twisted-pair cable to Category 6A or higher.
Adds OM5 (wideband multimode fiber) as an allowed fiber type. The TIA-492.AAAE standard specifies OM5 fiber, which is designed to support short-wave wavelength division multiplexing.
TIA-942 is often used with TIA-606, the administration standard. In the newest version of TIA-606-C, published June 2017, Annex D provides additional guidelines for administration of cabling supporting remote powering, including cable bundle identifier scheme. This most recent version replaces Addendum 1 to ANSI/TIA-606-B with a reference to ANSI/TIA-5048, which is adapted from ISO/IEC 18598 Information technology — Automated infrastructure management (AIM) systems — Requirements, data exchange and applications. This is an important development because it allows automatic infrastructure management systems from different manufacturers to work together.
TIA-942 is also commonly used in conjunction with BICSI-002, which addresses best practices, rather than minimum requirements, for the design and implementation of data centers.
Tomi Engdahl says:
VPN: Proceed with caution
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/brians-brain/4458752/VPN–Proceed-with-caution
Along with enjoying the significantly enhanced bandwidth of broadband Internet access versus the POTS-based dial-up modem precursor, consumers have also appreciated (and grown to expect) cable, DSL, and fiber’s always-on characteristics. Always-on is beneficial when you’re trying to access the WAN from your LAN, of course, since you don’t need to endure a lengthy log-on process each time you want to go online. But consumers quickly realized that always-on was also beneficial when they wanted to access something on their LAN (such as a networked printer, storage device, or webcam) from a WAN connection, i.e. from a Starbucks hotspot or any other time they were away from home.
Only one problem: most consumer broadband service tiers are dynamic, versus static, i.e. each time your broadband modem reconnects to your ISP’s access servers (and sometimes even more frequently than this), it’s assigned a different WAN IP address.
If you have an always-on computer on your LAN, for example, client-installed update utilities will sense each time your WAN IP address changes and send the new information to their servers. By accessing your WAN via a dynamic DNS service provider-assigned URL instead of an IP address string, you’re assured of always being able to find your router (and therefore what’s behind it) on the Internet.
What’s this all got to do with VPN (virtual private network) services? Short answer; they’re becoming known to (and popular with) consumers, too.
Recently, however, VPNs have gained more widespread awareness, even domestically within the United States. Why? Back in October 2016, at the tail-end of the Obama administration’s second term, the then-Democrat-dominated FCC issued a ruling that required ISPs to obtain opt-in consent from consumers before sharing their Web browsing data and other private information with advertisers and other third parties.
Privacy advocates were up in arms about this turnabout of fortunes, despite the fact that the earlier FCC ruling they advocated hadn’t even gone into effect yet.
So, like many consumers, I began researching VPN services, as a means of tunneling my traffic through a source-and-destination obscuring proxy service intermediary … and promptly ran into multiple roadblocks.
For one thing, a proxy server can seriously clobber your effective bandwidth, especially when it’s heavily loaded. For another, who’s to say that the VPN provider won’t sell your traffic analytics, even if it promises not to (sure, you can build your own VPN server, but I daresay that’s beyond the reach of the masses)?
In my particular case, after doing a bunch of research, I’d planned on going with Private Internet Access; this particular VPN provider seems to be highly regarded (NordVPN is another compelling option I found, by the way), and I could even set up the service on my Merlin firmware-based ASUS router. But the Netflix, etc. block was a deal-breaker, no matter that I could always log into my router and disable VPN whenever I wanted to watch a movie. I could do it; I wouldn’t think of asking my wife to jump through similar hoops.
So at least for now, Comcast can still see (and profit from) everything we do online. And if you’re a network equipment provider who’s considering adding VPN support to your devices, following in the footsteps of the dynamic DNS support you’ve already added, consider yourself duly warned. While the concept of VPN sounds good, the content-access and other roadblocks I’ve mentioned here will likely be showstoppers for your customers, too.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Moving to virtual emulation for software-defined networking
Ronald Squiers -August 18, 2017
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/absolute-eda/4458740/Product-how-to–Moving-to-virtual-emulation-for-software-defined-networking
Tremendous shifts in networking research and development over the last few years have resulted in a whole new class of networking devices, more widely known as Software Defined Networking (SDN) switches and routers. Developments using Reconfigurable Match Tables (RMT) and other Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) style architectural choices have transitioned network switch System on a Chip (SoC) designs from fixed-function topologies into highly configurable match action devices.
In order to operate, an SDN device must be managed using a SW application that downloads its configuration. This is done most commonly using a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) interface. Networking SoC verification has traditionally relied on PCIe as an essential interface for simple device access, configuration and runtime case management. PCIe has been the dominant networking SoC management channel of choice for decades.
However, SDN SoCs introduce significantly greater interaction between the host application SW state and the SoC HW state being managed over PCIe. SW reconfigurations are rapid, frequent and can support thousands of individual switching profiles. HW and SW co-verification has emerged as a must have methodology in order to satisfy these larger validation objectives.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why did NB-IoT like worth to wait?
The number of IoT applications is in an explosive growth. For example, factory production systems are constantly gaining new features that take advantage of the new opportunities brought by IoT.
The first launched IoT technologies operate on unlicensed frequencies and are initially developed by one company. These Low Power Wide-Area (LPWAN) solutions for low power consumption and wide coverage include, for example, Sigfox and Lora. The unlicensed frequency allowed rapid entry into the closed ecosystem.
However, the future of these IoT technologies is uncertain, and many of these WiMax fates . WiMax was well ahead of the 4G technologies (DC-HSPA and LTE) in the market, and was ejected 10 years ago as the future of wireless broadband technology. Today, 4G has completely overwhelmed Wimax.
Narrowband IoT, shorter NB-IoT, is one of the evolutionary poles of 4G network technologies. This 3GPP standardized LPWAN technology has been part of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, including Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and Intel. Its standard was not completed until summer 2016.
The bearish price promises growth
There are several weaknesses in IoT technologies that are not licensed: technology is only owned by one company, limited component manufacturers, network coverage and business models are overwhelming.
By contrast, open technologies with broad global support make it possible to achieve full scale scalability.
NB-IoT is now available for upgrading to the whole of Finland’s 4G network.
High quality communication
The 4G network is designed to serve mobile data connectivity needs also in the indoor environment. NB-IoT utilizes this same base station network with added new standard functionality.
Energy saving, easier maintenance and better security
NB-IoT offers many significant benefits compared to traditional mobile technology, one of the most important of which is energy efficiency. The connection is idle when it is not used, which extends the battery life considerably.
Technology also enables over-the-air (OTA) software upgrades.
The advantages of NB-IoT are so significant that, for example, Ericsson has predicted the number of devices connected to the network to rise to 30 billion in five years. This means that new business models will start to flow rapidly to the market.
Source: http://www.tivi.fi/Kumppaniblogit/dna/miksi-nb-iot-ta-kannatti-odottaa-6670507
Tomi Engdahl says:
The new high-speed wifi reaches the Christmas market
If your Wi-Fi router is currently the hottest technology, its back cover reads 802.11ac. The new Ax standard is already on its way. Broadcom has introduced its first chipset supporting its new technology.
Broadocm has launched its 802.11ax product for its own marketing name. In the future, the fastest circuits are known as MaxWiFi. They find their way to the next generation routers, laptops circuit cards and smart phones over the next six months.
The BCM43684 circuit for Broadcom’s ax circuits for home routers brings four parallel ax striations. In practice this means the raw data rate of 4.8 gigabytes. Enterprise devices have their own BCM43694 chipset.
The speed of growth is primarily based on OFDMA technology
Source: http://www.etn.fi/index.php/13-news/6728-uusi-huippunopea-wifi-ehtii-joulumarkkinoille
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T’s slow 1.5Mbps Internet in poor neighborhoods sparks complaint to FCC
AT&T refusal to boost Internet speed violates discrimination ban, complaint says.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/atts-slow-1-5mbps-internet-in-poor-neighborhoods-sparks-complaint-to-fcc/
AT&T is facing a complaint alleging that it discriminates against poor people by providing fast service in wealthier communities and speeds as low as 1.5Mbps in low-income neighborhoods.
The formal complaint filed today with the Federal Communications Commission says that AT&T is violating the Communications Act’s prohibition against unjust and unreasonable discrimination. That ban is part of Title II, which is best known as the authority used by the FCC to impose net neutrality rules. But as we’ve explained before, Title II also contains important consumer protections that go beyond net neutrality, such as a ban on discrimination in rates, practices, and offerings of services.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dell, BT alchemists turn bog-standard HW/SW to flexible, open networks
Playing the disaggregation game
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/24/dell_emc_and_bt_networks_project/
Dell EMC is supplying network switches to a proof-of-concept research project at BT Labs in Adastral Park, Suffolk.
The concept to prove is that programmable disaggregated open-switching hardware can create more adaptable and flexible networks than ones using proprietary integrated hardware and software network switches.
Dell EMC spokesperson David Graves said: “In general, I would say having the opportunity to work with an industry leader such as BT helps us gain insight and feeds into our future Open Networking product roadmap planning.”
The commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) switching hardware, using merchant silicon and not proprietary ASICs, is loaded with open-source or commercially available network operating system (NOS) software. BT is using a combination of Dell EMC disaggregated switches, principally Dell’s S-series for now, and such software to test the delivery of dynamic network services across fixed-line and wireless networks, saying it is applying virtualised server-like principles to switching.
Juniper is actually an integrated network switch supplier that is disaggregating by developing a Linux-based Junos software variant separate from its Junos NOS and switching hardware. It can see a whole raft of competing suppliers heading towards the SDN/disaggregated switch area, such as Ansible, Big Switch, Cumulus, Dell, Mellanox, Pluribus and others, and doesn’t want to miss this tide.
Juniper says this disaggregated software allows users to manage the data centre switch just like a server, and run third-party applications, tools, and virtualized services in a virtual machine (VM), or as containers directly on the switch. The switch is basically a COTS server with network ports.
The idea is that customers can buy network-switching hardware from any vendor they choose and then run network-switching software in it from any vendor they choose; similar to buying x86 servers today.
This is different from SDN – software-defined networking – but connected. SDN is about the controlling the management plane of a network, and about network automation and analytics. It talks to network devices, like switches.
An SDN can use disaggregated switches and, if they, as they should, have an API, make instant changes down at the switch level.
It is also different from NFV – network functions virtualisation – where, as we see it, services such as load balancing, intrusion prevention and firewalling are virtualized into an abstraction layer separate from the underlying hardware. An SDN system can, will, and should talk to the NFV, but the NFV won’t necessarily talk to switches unless their hardware/software combination carries out some underlying NFV function.
A disaggregated switch could, by running some network application software, easily run some NFV functionality and thus be simultaneously part of an SDN’s management domain and the NFV domain.
Graves said: “VMware NSX software is a Network Virtualization Overlay. NSX runs on servers, not on switches. Though not in scope for this exercise, NSX could be viewed as a complement.”
BT and Dell say the disaggregated switches in their project can be managed using the NETCONF protocol and YANG models, making the entire system inherently programmable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why We Need To Decentralize The Web
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/17/08/25/1815209/why-we-need-to-decentralize-the-web?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot%2Fto+%28%28Title%29Slashdot+%28rdf%29%29
There’s a good research report that was just published. It’s called “Defending Internet Freedom through Decentralization: Back to the Future?” (That’s a PDF so watch yourself.) What is decentralization? Take the web: Anyone can set up a web page and link to any other web page. That’s decentralized. Anyone can make a search engine to find those web pages. That’s centralized. The search engine can add blogging. That’s Google + Blogger. Now it’s both a publisher and a search engine. It has more power. Decentralized things are harder to manage and use. Centralized things end up easy to use and make money for relatively few people. The web is inherently decentralized, which has made it much easier for large companies to create large, centralized platforms. It’s a paradox and very thorny.
http://dci.mit.edu/assets/papers/decentralized_web.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google routing blunder sent Japan’s Internet dark on Friday
Another big BGP blunder
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/27/google_routing_blunder_sent_japans_internet_dark/
Last Friday, someone in Google fat-thumbed a border gateway protocol (GGP) advertisement and sent Japanese Internet traffic into a black hole.
The trouble began when The Chocolate Factory “leaked” a big route table to Verizon, the result of which was traffic from Japanese giants like NTT and KDDI was sent to Google on the expectation it would be treated as transit.
Since Google doesn’t provide transit services, as BGP Mon explains, that traffic either filled a link beyond its capacity, or hit an access control list, and disappeared.
The outage in Japan only lasted a couple of hours, but was so severe that Japan Times reports the country’s Internal Affairs and Communications ministries want carriers to report on what went wrong.
BGP Mon dissects what went wrong here, reporting that more than 135,000 prefixes on the Google-Verizon path were announced when they shouldn’t have been.
Since it leaked what the monitors call “a full table” to Verizon, the fat-thumb error also provided a “peek into what Google’s peering relationships look like and how their peers traffic engineer towards Google”.
BGP leak causing Internet outages in Japan and beyond.
https://bgpmon.net/bgp-leak-causing-internet-outages-in-japan-and-beyond/
A closer look at our data shows not only BGP hijack incidents but also a high number of BGP leak events. A random example is this one: 171.5.0.0/17 announced by AS45629 (Jastel out of Thailand), which all of a sudden became reachable with Google as a provider for Jastel.
In the example above we can see how Google accidentally became a transit provider for Jastel by announcing peer prefixes to Verizon. Since verizon would select this path to Jastel it would have sent traffic for this network towards Google. Not only did this happen for Jastel, but thousands of other networks as well.
Google is not a transit provider and traffic for 3rd party networks should never go through the Google network. Jastel has a few upstream providers and with the addition of Google and Verizon to the path, it’s likely only Verizon customers (which is still significant) would have chosen this path and only those that had no other alternative or specifically prefered Verizon over shorter paths. However this is just the start.
A word about traffic engineering
Google is one of the largest (CDN) networks in the world. It has an open peering policy and is extremely well connected with many peers. It’s also the source of a large amount of traffic with popular websites such as Youtube, Google search, Google Drive, Google Compute, etc. As a result many networks exchange a significant volume of traffic with just Google and those with direct peering with Google will want to make sure Google picks the right peering link with them. So as result large networks will start to deploy traffic engineering tricks to make sure traffic flows over the correct peering links with Google. The most powerful trick in the book is to start de-aggregating and announce more specifics. This means no matter the AS path length or whatever local-pref Google sets locally, the more specific prefixes are always preferred.
A unique insight into Google’s network
Since Google essentially leaked a full table towards Verizon, we get to peek into what Google’s peering relationships look like and how their peers traffic engineer towards Google. Analyzing this data set we find many more specific prefixes. Meaning prefixes that are not normally seen in the global Internet routing table (DFZ) and only made visible to Google for traffic engineering requirements.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Understanding Modern Digital Modulation Techniques
http://www.electronicdesign.com/communications/understanding-modern-digital-modulation-techniques?code=UM_Classics08217&utm_rid=CPG05000002750211&utm_campaign=12623&utm_medium=email&elq2=9200609716df4f66b380b1a026a62258
Fundamental to all wireless communications is modulation, the process of impressing the data to be transmitted on the radio carrier. Most wireless transmissions today are digital, and with the limited spectrum available, the type of modulation is more critical than it has ever been.
The main goal of modulation today is to squeeze as much data into the least amount of spectrum possible. That objective, known as spectral efficiency, measures how quickly data can be transmitted in an assigned bandwidth. The unit of measurement is bits per second per Hz (b/s/Hz). Multiple techniques have emerged to achieve and improve spectral efficiency.
Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK) and Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)
There are three basic ways to modulate a sine wave radio carrier: modifying the amplitude, frequency, or phase. More sophisticated methods combine two or more of these variations to improve spectral efficiency. These basic modulation forms are still used today with digital signals.
Here are two ways to further improve the spectral efficiency for both ASK and FSK. First, select data rates, carrier frequencies, and shift frequencies so there are no discontinuities in the sine carrier when changing from one binary state to another. These discontinuities produce glitches that increase the harmonic content and the bandwidth.
The idea is to synchronize the stop and start times of the binary data with when the sine carrier is transitioning in amplitude or frequency at the zero crossing points. This is called continuous phase or coherent operation. Both coherent ASK/OOK and coherent FSK have fewer harmonics and a narrower bandwidth than non-coherent signals.
A second technique is to filter the binary data prior to modulation. This rounds the signal off, lengthening the rise and fall times and reducing the harmonic content. Special Gaussian and raised cosine low pass filters are used for this purpose. GSM cell phones widely use a popular combination, Gaussian filtered MSK (GMSK), which allows a data rate of 270 kbits/s in a 200-kHz channel.
Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) And Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK)
A very popular digital modulation scheme, binary phase shift keying (BPSK), shifts the carrier sine wave 180° for each change in binary state
BPSK is very spectrally efficient in that you can transmit at a data rate equal to the bandwidth or 1 bit/Hz.
In a popular variation of BPSK, quadrature PSK (QPSK), the modulator produces two sine carriers 90° apart. The binary data modulates each phase, producing four unique sine signals shifted by 45° from one another. The two phases are added together to produce the final signal. Each unique pair of bits generates a carrier with a different phase
The maximum theoretical data rate or channel capacity (C) in bits/s is a function of the channel bandwidth (B) channel in Hz and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR):
C = B log2 (1 + SNR)
This is called the Shannon-Hartley law. The maximum data rate is directly proportional to the bandwidth and logarithmically proportional the SNR. Noise greatly diminishes the data rate for a given bit error rate (BER).
Multiple Phase Shift Keying (M-PSK)
QPSK produces two bits per symbol, making it very spectrally efficient. QPSK can be referred to as 4-PSK because there are four amplitude-phase combinations. By using smaller phase shifts, more bits can be transmitted per symbol. Some popular variations are 8-PSK and 16-PSK.
While Multiple Phase Shift Keying (M-PSK) is much more spectrally efficient, the greater the number of smaller phase shifts, the more difficult the signal is to demodulate in the presence of noise. The benefit of M-PSK is that the constant carrier amplitude means that more efficient nonlinear power amplification can be used.
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)
The creation of symbols that are some combination of amplitude and phase can carry the concept of transmitting more bits per symbol further. This method is called quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). For example, 8QAM uses four carrier phases plus two amplitude levels to transmit 3 bits per symbol. Other popular variations are 16QAM, 64QAM, and 256QAM, which transmit 4, 6, and 8 bits per symbol respectively
While QAM is enormously efficient of spectrum, it is more difficult to demodulate in the presence of noise, which is mostly random amplitude variations.
Amplitude phase shift keying (APSK), a variation of both M-PSK and QAM, was created in response to the need for an improved QAM.
APSK uses fewer amplitude levels. It essentially arranges the symbols into two or more concentric rings with a constant phase offset θ.
For example, 16APSK uses a double-ring PSK format (Fig. 5). This is called 4-12 16APSK with four symbols in the center ring and 12 in the outer ring.
APSK is used primarily in satellites since it is a good fit with the popular traveling wave tube (TWT) PAs.
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) combines modulation and multiplexing techniques to improve spectral efficiency. A transmission channel is divided into many smaller subchannels or subcarriers. The subcarrier frequencies and spacings are chosen so they’re orthogonal to one another.
The serial digital data to be transmitted is subdivided into parallel slower data rate channels. These lower data rate signals are then used to modulate each subcarrier. The most common forms of modulation are BPSK, QPSK, and several levels of QAM. BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, and 64QAM are defined with 802.11n. Data rates up to about 300 Mbits/s are possible with 64QAM.
An inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) generates the signal to be transmitted. An FFT process recovers the signal at the receiver.
OFDM is very spectrally efficient.
Currently, OFDM is the most popular form of digital modulation. It is used in Wi-Fi LANs, WiMAX broadband wireless, Long Term Evolution (LTE) 4G cellular systems, digital subscriber line (DSL) systems, and in most power-line communications (PLC) applications.
Some modulation methods are more immune to noise than others. Amplitude modulation methods like ASK/OOK and QAM are far more susceptible to noise so they have a higher BER for a given modulation. Phase and frequency modulation (BPSK, FSK, etc.) fare better in a noisy environment so they require less signal power for a given noise level
For example, the use of forward error correction (FEC) techniques can greatly improve the BER. Such coding methods add extra bits so errors can be detected and corrected.
These extra coding bits add overhead to the signal, reducing the net bit rate of the data, but that’s usually an acceptable tradeoff for the single-digit dB improvement in CNR.
Digital compression is another useful technique. The digital data to be sent is subjected to a compression algorithm that greatly reduces the amount of information.
Another factor affecting spectral efficiency is the use of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), which is the use of multiple antennas and transceivers to transmit two or more bit streams.
In the past, unique circuits implemented modulation and demodulation. Today, most modern radios are software-defined radios (SDR) where functions like modulation and demodulation are handled in software. DSP algorithms do the job previously assigned to modulator and demodulator circuits.
The DSP produces two baseband streams that are sent to digital-to-analog converters (DACs) that produce the analog equivalents.
These modulation signals feed the mixers along with the carrier. There is a 90° shift between the carrier signals to the mixers.
At the receiver, the signal from the antenna is amplified and downconverted to IF or directly to the original baseband signals.
The mixers produce the original baseband analog signals, which are then digitized in a pair of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and sent to the DSP circuitry where demodulation algorithms recover the original digital data.
First, the modulation and demodulation processes use two signals in quadrature with one another.
Second, the DSP circuitry may be a conventional programmable DSP chip or may be implemented by fixed digital logic implementing the algorithm.
Third, the PA in the transmitter needs to be a linear amplifier if the modulation is QPSK or QAM to faithfully reproduce the amplitude and phase information. For ASK, FSK, and BPSK, a more efficient non-linear amplifier may be used.
With spectrum being a finite entity, it is always in short supply.
Shortages now exist in the cellular and land mobile radio sectors
One of the most crowded areas of spectrum is the land mobile radio (LMR) and private mobile radio (PMR) spectrum
Most radio systems and handsets use FM analog modulation that occupies a 25-kHz channel. Recently the FCC has required all such radios to switch over to 12.5-kHz channels.
In the future, the FCC is expected to mandate a further change from the 12.5-kHz channels to 6.25-kHz channels, again doubling capacity
The new equipment can use either analog or digital modulation.
New modulation techniques and protocols—including P25, TETRA, DMR, dPMR, and NXDN—have been developed to meet this need.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google made a tiny error and it broke half the internet in Japan
https://thenextweb.com/google/2017/08/28/google-japan-internet-blackout/
When an ISP makes a tiny mistake, the outcome could have immense repercussions – and this is precisely what happened in Japan last week.
Last Friday, half the internet in the country suddenly shut down after the Big G accidentally botched a Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) around noon local time. The origin of the blunder was a number of falsely announced peer prefixes sent to Verizon.
Shortly after the faulty rerouting request went through, numerous users of internet providers NTT Communications and KDDI Corp. were unable to connect to the web – or experienced significantly slower surfing speeds.
Google has since owned up to its mistake, assuming full responsibility for its role in the blackout.
“We set wrong information for the network and, as a result, problems occurred. We modified the information to the correct one within eight minutes,” a company spokesperson told The Asahi Shimbun. “We apologize for causing inconvenience and anxieties.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
5G-based Fixed Wireless Access market could hit $1 billion: Analyst
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/08/5g-based-fixed-wireless-access-market-could-hit-1-billion-analyst.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-28
The latest report from SNS Research (Dubai, UAE) indicates that service revenue associated with 5G-based FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) subscriptions will reach $1 billion by the end of 2019. “Commonly referred to as FWA, Fixed Wireless Access has emerged as one of the most predominant use cases for early 5G network rollouts,” states the analyst.
According to the report’s executive summary, “Multiple mobile operators and service providers are initially seeking to capitalize on 5G as a fixed wireless alternative to deliver last-mile connectivity – at multi-hundred Megabit and Gigabit speeds – in areas with insufficient fiber holdings.”
* 5G-based FWA subscriptions are expected to account for $1 billion in service revenue by the end of 2019 alone. The market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 84% between 2019 and 2025, eventually accounting for more than $40 billion.
* SNS Research estimates that 5G-based FWA can reduce the initial cost of establishing last-mile connectivity by as much as 40% – in comparison to FTTP (Fiber-to-the-Premises). In addition, 5G can significantly accelerate rollout times by eliminating the need to lay cables as required for FTTP rollouts.
* The 28 GHz frequency band is widely preferred for early 5G-based FWA deployments, as many vendors have already developed 28 GHz-capable equipment – driven by demands for early field trials in multiple markets including the United States and South Korea.
* Millimeter wave wireless connectivity specialists are well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for 5G-based FWA.
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T appears to waffle on definition of ‘public-safety-grade’ broadband services
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/08/at-t-appears-to-waffle-on-definition-of-public-safety-grade-broadband-services.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-28
As reported by Donny Jackson for IWCE’s Urgent Communications, “AT&T will meet FirstNet’s requirements for its nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN), but the carrier is ‘hesistant to say that there is complete definition set in stone’ about what constitutes a public-safety-grade system, according to a statement released by AT&T on Tuesday.”
AT&T issues statement regarding position in debate on public-safety-grade definition
http://urgentcomm.com/ntiafirstnet/att-issues-statement-regarding-position-debate-public-safety-grade-definition
AT&T will meet FirstNet’s requirements for its nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN), but the carrier is “hesistant to say that there is complete definition set in stone” about what constitutes a public-safety-grade system, according to a statement released by AT&T on Tuesday.
“We fully recognize and acknowledge the great work public safety has done to build requirements around broadband for this community,” according to a prepared statement provided by an AT&T spokesperson to IWCE’s Urgent Communications. “It not only informed the RFP that FirstNet put forth, but it also informed the customized State Plans the states are now reviewing. So we want to be very clear here – the FirstNet network will meet the requirements set forth by FirstNet.
“We recognize that FirstNet, NPSTC and other public-safety stakeholders and organizations like APCO will continue to work on and evolve requirements and standards.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Study forecasts total addressable market vs. actual deployments of indoor small cells in U.S.
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/08/study-forecasts-total-addressable-market-vs-actual-deployments-of-indoor-small-cells-in-u-s.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-28
Indoor small cells, which are used to improve mobile coverage within commercial and residential buildings, will be a large part of mobile operators’ networks as they densify their LTE networks and prepare for 5G.
Indoor small cell solutions can include Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS), Distributed Radio Systems (DRS), picocells (enterprise small cells) and femtocells (residential small cells). These solutions provide many benefits to enterprises, including more “bars” of voice and data coverage within all area of buildings, higher data throughput, and faster data connections. In other words, they provide an improved “quality of experience” for the mobile subscribers within a building.
What is the total addressable market for U.S. indoor small cells and how many indoor small cells are expected to be deployed in the next five years? iGR, a market research consultancy focused on the wireless and mobile industry, has recently published a new market study that answers these questions.
New iGR study forecasts the Total Addressable Market and the Actual Deployments of Indoor Small Cells in the U.S.
http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/new-igr-study-forecasts-total-addressable-market-actual-deployments-indoor-small-cells-2230959.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
Standard sets specifications for securing the physical network
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-25/issue-8/features/installation/standard-sets-specifications-for-securing-the-physical-network.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-28
Published in February 2016, the ANSI/TIA-5017 Telecommunications Physical Network Standard covers the security of telecommunications cables, pathways, spaces, and other elements of the physical infrastructure, according to the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA). The standard “includes design guidelines, installation practices, administration, and management,” the association continues. “This standard addresses guidelines for new construction as well as renovation of existing buildings. The standard also provides installation guidelines for implementing security cabling systems for premises security systems with an integrated security approach.”
Sections of the standard cover security planning and risk assessment, design and installation guidelines, other guidelines and recommendations, physical network security guidelines, intelligent building systems for security, and administration considerations for security. It recognizes three levels of cabling infrastructure security: SL1 (basic security installation), SL2 (tamper-resistant installation), and SL3 (critical security installation).
Tomi Engdahl says:
FCC: LEO ISPs A-OK
OneWeb gets green light to pipe internet through 720 orbiting satellites
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/23/fcc_approves_leo_isp/
America’s broadband watchdog, the FCC, has approved OneWeb’s proposal to launch an ISP on the backs of 720 orbiting satellites.
The regulator said it would allow the ISP to offer its service in the US once it makes good on the plan to send 720 satellites into low earth orbit (LEO) and bounce data transmissions around the world.
Specifically, the FCC’s order [PDF] grants OneWeb the right to transmit over six wireless bands (10.7-12.7 GHz, 14-14.5 GHz, 17.8-18.6 GHz, 18.8-19.3 GHz, 27.5-29.1 GHz, and 29.5-30 GHz) and creates a procedure for the company to build and operate the base stations that relay transmissions.
FCC approval has been critical to the plan, as it would be nearly impossible to invest in the launches without the guarantee of a market for the service.
“Today, we grant OneWeb’s petition for US market access,” said FCC chairman Ajit Pai.
Tomi Engdahl says:
She’s back! Jessica Rosenworcel returns to FCC as America’s net neutrality row heats up
Comms watchdog back up to full strength
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/03/rosenworcel_returns_to_fcc/
America’s broadband watchdog, the FCC, is finally back to its full complement of five commissioners following the confirmations of Brendan Carr and Jessica Rosenworcel by the US Senate.
The federal regulator, which is caught up in a controversial battle to get rid of net neutrality rules that it approved only a few years ago, has been working with just three commissioners since the beginning of the year.
One of the new commissioners – Rosenworcel – was in fact booted off the FCC when her confirmation became embroiled in a larger piece of partisan warfare last year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sales of disaggregated WDM systems for data center interconnect up 225% year-over-year: Dell’Oro
http://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/2017/08/sales-of-disaggregated-wdm-systems-for-data-center-interconnect-up-225-year-over-year-dell-oro.html?cmpid=enl_lightwave_lightwave_datacom_2017-08-29
According to Dell’Oro Group’s recently released “2Q17 Optical Transport Quarterly Report,” the employment of disaggregated WDM systems in data center interconnect (DCI) is booming.
“Disaggregation isn’t a new concept, but the strong adoption is,” said Jimmy Yu, vice president at Dell’Oro Group. “We estimate that in 2Q17, disaggregated WDM systems reached an annualized run rate of $400 million, growing 225% year-over-year. In most—if not all—purchases, we found that these new systems were being employed in DCI across both metro and long-haul spans. So far, the largest consumers have been Internet content providers that appreciate the platform for its simplicity, capacity, and power savings. Based on second quarter results, where disaggregated WDM systems represented nearly one-third of the optical DCI equipment purchases made, we have to say that disaggregated WDM systems are truly hitting the sweet spot for DCI.”
In the second quarter of 2017, Ciena, Cisco, and Infinera were the three manufacturers that secured most of the disaggregated WDM systems market, with a combined 85%, according to the report.
Meanwhile, the total WDM market, comprising WDM metro and DWDM long haul, experienced a 2% year-over-year growth in 2Q 2017. WDM adoption in the Asia Pacific region, especially China and India, was a primary driver of this growth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Calls for Network Drain-O
Data centers want better traffic shapers
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332214
A senior Google software engineer called for new techniques to clear clogs out of growing data center networks in a keynote at the annual Hot Interconnects event here. They could form a new app ripe for a silicon accelerator.
Nandita Dukkipati described traffic shaping software that’s slashing latencies while trimming CPU overheads for the search giant. One chip maker said it already has baked similar techniques into one of its Ethernet adapters at the request of Google’s rival Microsoft.
Today, many data centers manage traffic by creating queues to improve efficiency, but that approach is hitting a wall. Google described techniques using time-based isolation to prevent competing jobs from colliding.
“We should invest more in isolation techniques across the board in NICs, switches and hypervisors. We pay attention to efficiency, but not enough to isolation — we think of queues but let’s think of time,” Dukkipati told an audience of networking chip and systems engineers.
Queues eat up CPU time computing complex algorithms that use hefty data structures and require significant garbage collection. In addition, they are heavy users of memory and require synchronizing processes that can add as much as a second to latencies.
“Today’s servers can hold hundreds of virtual machines, generating 25,000 flows to isolate. The numbers of VMs and queues are growing, and it’s not sustainable,” she said.
As an alternative to today’s traffic shapers, Dukkipati described two techniques Google aims to merge. Carousel is a new Google program that manages traffic at a single server. Timely is an older technique it uses to reduce latencies across its data centers.
Carousel improved network performance 8.2 percent over existing queuing-based traffic managers based on tests run on thousands of YouTube servers.
The Timely approach cut more than an order of magnitude off latencies compared to DCTCP, one of the most commonly used congestion-control algorithms in today’s data centers, she reported.
Dukkipati called for engineers to apply the techniques, noting they could be implemented in hardware or software that is distributed or centralized.
Tomi Engdahl says:
16 Views of Hot Chips ‘17
Cisco flexes some networking muscle
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1332192&page_number=13
Rounding out the program, an engineer from Cisco Systems’ ASIC group made a rare presentation describing a 400 Gbit/second network processor (above) made in a 28nm process.
In a sign of the group’s penchant for secrecy it would not name the chip, the system in which it currently ships or even when the design started. One indication of its heritage, however, was its extensive use of 12.5 Gbit/s serdes.
To its credit, the processor array which makes up nearly a third of the chip was designed by hand. The rest of the chip used automated place and route tools.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Guardian:
Over 21M comments have been submitted to FCC on its proposed neutrality roll-back as it closes submissions, although many are duplicates or created by spambots — The FCC has received nearly 22m comments on “Restoring Internet Freedom” with just hours left before the window for public feedback closes on Wednesday
FCC flooded with comments before critical net neutrality vote
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/30/fcc-net-neutrality-vote-open-internet
The FCC has received nearly 22m comments on “Restoring Internet Freedom” with just hours left before the window for public feedback closes on Wednesday
Tomi Engdahl says:
Integrated Photonics
https://semiengineering.com/integrated-photonics/
Experts at the Table, part 1: Are we there yet? Where is the demand coming from and which types of product will drive innovation?
E: For readers who are not actively working in this area, can you provide a brief summary of what Integrated Photonics means to you.
Korhost: Integrated photonics has been around for a long time. It is mainly applied today for long-haul telecommunications systems based on Indium Phosphide. In recent years, lots more R&D and product development has been put into integrated photonics solutions for shorter distances — data center communications, where links are created using silicon as a base material. With the promise of being able to create integrated photonics circuits on a silicon platform, the interest in this technology has been growing steadily. From a maturity standpoint, there are many applications served by integrated photonics in long-haul telecommunications systems, and what we see coming is real products for the data center and beyond.
Lamant: As an EDA provider, we started to hear from several major customers about two or three years ago. They were asking us to help them, saying ‘We can’t do it anymore and we need to move from lab research into production and have it work with our normal design teams’
De Vries: From our perspective it has been one of the bigger growth areas, where we see traditional photonics companies expanding their capabilities. They have done a number of things associated with photonics, and we have started to see integrated photonics becoming an emerging technology.
Optical communications for data center interconnect is the big new application where there is promise, and a number of large-scale organizations are acquiring technology to be able to commercialize it. It is really only the beginning of that, and there are a lot of places where it will extend farther—deeper integration, where we will see architectures for changing the way semiconductor devices are put together, the connectivity between them, processing in memory, board-level optical interconnect to alleviate bandwidth and power constraints.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Physical layer architectures for enterprise networks
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/print/volume-25/issue-8/features/design/physical-layer-architectures-for-enterprise-networks.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-2
When the concept of a structured cabling system emerged and took hold in corporate environment, user needs in enterprise networks were fairly straightforward. A wired voice line and wired data line to each desk connected each worker to the outside world as well as to internal network devices and applications such as email, intranets, and printers. To be prepared for future needs, some organizations specified one or two spare connections to each desk. Typically, most workers resided in open-office (cubicle) workspaces. Some resided in hard-walled offices, so the cabling-system design had to accommodate for these different physical workspaces.
Wireless networks theoretically operated in the range of double-digit Megabits/sec. But that’s shared throughput, so the handful of workers in an enterprise who had mobile work devices (e.g. laptop computers) shared that data rate when they gathered in a conference room that contained an access point.
Now that we have taken a trip down decades-old memory lane, we can compare and contrast characteristics of worker needs then with worker needs now. In many cases, the buildings and campuses have not changed much—drop ceilings, cubicles (albeit with different wall heights perhaps), conference rooms, walled offices for executives—but user requirements have changed significantly.
On one hand, speeds have increased. The scenario described earlier likely had 10-Mbit/sec data connections to the desktop initially, with 100-Mbit/sec network backbone speeds. When 100 Mbits/sec to the desk became practical and common, backbones had to accommodate by increasing to 1 Gbit/sec. For many organizations, the advent of the 1-Gbit/sec backbone also meant deploying fiber-optic cabling to support it. Today, some of those organizations have increased tenfold again, with 1-Gbit/sec connections to the desk and 10-Gbit/sec backbones. Wireless LANs have experienced multiple generations of advancement, to the point at which the (theoretical, shared) throughput capability today is multi-gigabits.
In addition to speed increases, modern networks are more demanding than earlier generations in that the number of applications requiring network support has increased.
The extension of service providers’ cellular wireless networks into the enterprise has brought dramatic change to the planning, design, installation and management of enterprise networks. Once predominantly the domain of high-profile gathering spots like stadiums and arenas, the on-premises distributed antenna system (DAS) is becoming a practical necessity for many organizations whose users’ personal mobile devices are business tools requiring ubiquitous connectivity.
Wireless connectivity, then, is a user-based application that has evolved and become more demanding over time.
Examining topologies
Designers, installers, and administrators of cabling and wireless systems used in today’s enterprise environments have far more to consider, and far greater demands to meet, than was the case when horizontal data-transmission speeds were 100 Mbits/sec. As such, the performance levels of cabling components and systems, as well as the physical structure of those systems, has evolved accordingly.
Concerning fiber types, CommScope adds, “The standard recognized transmission media for backbone cabling comprise multimode and singlemode fiber. Laser-optimized 50/125-µm (Om3 and Om4) multimode fiber is recommended and is typically installed for 10-Gbit/sec building backbones up to 300 meters and 550 meters, respectively … Singlemode fiber is typically installed where the channel lengths are expected to exceed the capabilities of multimode fiber—when exceeding the Om4 support distance for 550 meters for 10 Gbits/sec.
“With continued growth in data rates in the horizontal driven by applications such as 802.11ac and in-building wireless, the backbone should be designed to accommodate speeds of 40 Gbits/sec or 100 Gbit/sec,” CommScope concludes. “Planning for a seamless migration path ensures that the backbone will be able to support high-capacity wireless and other high-bandwidth applications that may emerge.”
In recent years the technology commonly called passive optical LAN has emerged as an enterprise network technology whose architecture differs from the hierarchical star recommended in TIA-568.3-D. Passive optical LAN, or simply optical LAN as it also is frequently called, is based on Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) and/or Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) point-to-multipoint architectures.
An industry group called the Association for Passive Optical LAN has advanced and advocated passive optical LAN deployment since the association’s founding in 2013.
“In a passive optical LAN solution, the router is retained in the topmost layer and the optical line terminal serves the same purpose as the campus aggregation switches,” the association continues. “The building aggregation switching is accomplished by the 1×32 (or 2×32 for equipment redundancy and fiber-route diversity) optical splitter, which is a passive device so there are no power requirements and little management while being highly reliable. The optical network terminals provide connectivity to the users and end devices.”
article on IOTInnovator.com titled “Passive Optical LAN: The perfect partner for the Internet of Things.” In that article he said, “The key characteristic that distinguishes POL from any alternative is its centralized architecture, intelligence and management. Essentially, POL works as one big switch with no other switches needed in between it and a vast number of end points. This means that to control a broad array of IoT products, as well as other corporate IT needs, often requires just one data center. With POL’s streamlined design, there is a reduction in space required as there are fewer telecom rooms, less cable mass and smaller and limited pathways required.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tony Romm / Recode:
Apple breaks its silence on net neutrality, urging the FCC not to roll back ban against fast lanes — It’s the company’s first comments in the 2017 debate. — Apple is breaking its silence on net neutrality, urging the Trump administration to preserve strong rules that prevent the likes of AT&T …
Apple to FCC: Protect net neutrality and don’t allow online fast lanes
It’s the company’s first comments in the 2017 debate.
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/31/16233606/apple-fcc-tim-cook-net-neutrality-trump-chairman-ajit-pai
Tomi Engdahl says:
Asterisk bugs make a right mess of RTP
IP telephony server discloses three vulns, one critical. You know what to do next
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/01/asterisk_admin_patch/
Admins of the popular IP telephony application Asterisk have a lovely end to the week ahead of them – there’s two moderate vulnerabilities, and one critical mess, that need patches.
The worst of the three is this one: a bug in the Realtime Transport Protocol (RTP) stack that exposes a system to information disclosure.
The problem came about as a result of a change to the system’s strict RTP implementation, designed to handle network issues more smoothly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
nbn™ adds premises to FTTC, HFC, slims down FTTN build
Build will end in 2020, stay in the financial envelope.
We promise, really, truly
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/01/nbn_new_corporate_plan/
There’s nothing wrong with fibre-to-the-node (FTTN), nothing at all – but nbn™, the company building Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN), has decided to move more than a million premises onto other technologies.
News of the change came in a new corporate plan released yesterday, which detailed how lucky householders who don’t get stuck with FTTN will instead get hybrid fibre-coax (HFC) or fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC). When the network is completed in 2020, nbn™ says, just under 40 per cent of premises will be offered FTTN connections. FTTC (more than a million premises, around 8.6 per cent of the total) and HFC (an expected 3.1 million, 26.7 per cent) will carry more of the load.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Somalia’s economy is sinking due to damaged undersea network cable
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/pt/2017/07/somalia-s-economy-is-sinking-due-to-damaged-undersea-network-cable.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-14
The government of Somalia has admitted that the country is essentially losing millions of dollars due to the lack of connectivity, after an undersea network cable serving the country was accidentally damaged by a container ship. The average loss that lack of internet services is about 10 million US dollars per day, according to reports cited by Datacenter Dynamics.
The lack of connectivity has had a disastrous effect on both businesses and government organizations.
“I have remained jobless due to lack of internet service. I have lost 1,300 dollars in the past two weeks due to lack of internet services,” Abdirashid Moalim Yusuf, a web developer, told Xinhua news.
The work to fix the cable is ongoing. Specialists from Oman are reportedly working to restore network services.
Somalia is losing millions due to damaged network cable
http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/content-tracks/core-edge/somalia-is-losing-millions-due-to-damaged-network-cable/98631.article
“The average loss that lack of internet services is about 10 million US dollars per day. We lost 130 million US dollars only in the past two weeks after missing the services which was the lifeline of our people,” Abdi Anshur Hassan, Minister of Posts, Telecommunication and Technology, told Chinese outlet Xinhua News.
Most of the international connectivity in Somalia is delivered using the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy), which came into operation in 2010. The 10,000km cable linking Somalia to eight African countries was damaged on June 24, with the outage mainly impacting south and central regions of Somalia, including its capital Mogadishu.
According to AFP, the fault was caused by Panama-flagged MSC Alice, as it was docking in the port of Mogadishu. The ship is believed to have accidentally dragged its anchor across the fiber optic cable.
The lack of connectivity has had a disastrous effect on both businesses and government organizations.
“I have remained jobless due to lack of internet service. I have lost 1,300 dollars in the past two weeks due to lack of internet services,” Abdirashid Moalim Yusuf, a web developer, told Xinhua.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wirewerks launches field-terminable RJ45 plug for Cat 6A performance ‘in under a minute’
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2017/08/wirewerks-field-rj45.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-14
Wirewerks has announced the launch of its Field Terminable RJ45 Plug. The new RJ45 plug combines the performance and reliability advantages of factory-terminated Category 6A plugs with the flexibility and on-site termination benefits of field-installable connectors, contends the company.
Edouard Tabet, Wirewerks’ head of engineering, comments, “Our new field terminable RJ45 plug is beneficial in any application where the required cable length is unknown. The plug also provides a simple, reliable solution for attaching IP-enabled devices to the network, including cameras and more. And the plug’s factory-equivalent terminated performance means that it can be used with complete confidence to solve the problems and delays caused by over/under-length cable runs in pre-terminated cabling systems.”
http://www.wirewerks.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
300Mbps SFP extender plugs legacy 2-wire, coax cable infrastructure into Ethernet
http://www.cablinginstall.com/articles/2017/08/transition-sfp.html?cmpid=enl_cim_cim_data_center_newsletter_2017-08-14
Data network integration specialist Transition Networks, Inc. (Minneapolis) has announced a new small form-factor pluggable (SFP)-based Ethernet extender (TN-EOT-xx) designed to connect distant workstations, devices, or workgroups to a corporate network using legacy copper cabling at up to 300Mbps.
The company says the new Ethernet extender provides the ability to leverage existing 2-wire or coax cable infrastructure to extend Ethernet service. The TN-EOT-xx device can extend Ethernet service on 2-wire cabling over distances up to 400 meters at 200Mbps bi-directional data rate, or extend Ethernet on coax cabling over distances up to 500 meters at 300Mbps bi-directional data rate. The device has a maximum data rate of 300Mbps, the fastest possible bandwidth for legacy cabling provided by an SFP device.
Otis added, “Transition Networks has helped customers evolve their networks quickly and more cost effectively for years, with a wide range of Ethernet extender products. This new SFP extender is a flexible way to leverage legacy coax and 2-wire cabling.”
The SFP-based extender is plug-and-play, requiring no configuration or set up on the host device. Transition says it is ideal for IP security camera applications where the legacy cabling used for analog CCTV cameras can be re-used for Ethernet-based cameras in both indoor and temperature-hardened environments.
https://www.transition.com/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Market Drivers: New cloud-based applications such as IoT, NFV, XaaS, video and virtual reality are driving an insatiable demand for bandwidth across service provider subsea, long-haul terrestrial, metro and data center interconnect (DCI) networks
Tomi Engdahl says:
New simplified network model: Building cloud scale transport combining elephant traffic flows (point-to-point Nx100G) and mice flows (mesh-oriented sub-100G). On-demand software defined capacity (SDC), automated optical engineering and a pay-after-you-deploy model, all supported via a rich set of SDN controls and unique hardware innovations.
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Shinal / CNBC:
Facebook has created a map of Earth that can pinpoint any man-made structures to a resolution of 5 meters, to help company’s Internet provision efforts
Facebook has mapped the entire human population of Earth as it prepares to build an internet in space
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/facebook-has-mapped-human-population-building-internet-in-space.html
Facebook used satellite-based data and government census information to map the Earth’s entire human population.
The data set has a resolution of five meters and knows where man-made structures are everywhere on the planet.
Facebook has been hiring aerospace engineers and has a new executive hired to forge partnerships with aerospace and satellite companies.
It now knows where 7.5 billion humans live, everywhere on Earth, to within 15 feet.
The company has created a data map of the planet’s entire human population by combining government census numbers with information it’s obtained from space satellites, according to Janna Lewis, Facebook’s head of strategic innovation partnerships and sourcing.
The mapping technology, which Facebook says it developed itself, can pinpoint any man-made structures in any country on Earth to a resolution of five meters.
Facebook is using the data to understand the precise distribution of humans around the planet.
That will help the company determine what types of internet service — based either on land, in the air or in space — it can use to reach consumers who now have no (or very low quality) internet connections.
“Satellites are exciting for us. Our data showed the best way to connect cities is an internet in the sky,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephanie Condon / ZDNet:
Qualcomm announces C-V2X chipset focused on handling vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure, and vehicle-to-pedestrian communications
New Qualcomm auto chipset advances vehicle-to-everything communications
http://www.zdnet.com/article/new-qualcomm-auto-chipset-advances-vehicle-to-everything-communications/
Qualcomm’s 9150 C-V2X chipset and reference design should bring automakers one step closer to deploying the communications systems needed for fully autonomous vehicles.
Qualcomm on Friday is introducing a new Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) chipset and reference design that should bring automakers one step closer to deploying the communications systems needed for fully autonomous vehicles.
The Qualcomm 9150 C-V2X chipset, expected to be available for commercial sampling in the second half of 2018, is based on specs from the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a collaboration between groups of telecommunications associations.
Meanwhile, Qualcomm’s C-V2X reference design will feature the 9150 C-V2X chipset, an application processor running the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) V2X stack, as well as a Hardware Security Module (HSM).
Qualcomm already has mulitple automotive partners endorsing the new chipset, including Ford, Audi, the PSA Group and SAIC.
“We welcome Qualcomm Technologies’ cellular-V2X product announcement, as the automotive industry and ecosystem work towards C-V2X implementation, and pave the path to 5G broadband and future operating services,”
C-V2X technology encompasses two transmission modes: direct communications and network-based communications. It’s key for both safety features and for implementing autonomous driving capabilities.
For instance, its direct communications capabilities improve a vehicle’s situational awareness by detecting and exchanging information using low latency transmissions. Relying on the globally harmonized 5.9 GHz ITS band, the 9150 C-V2X chipset can relay information on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) and vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) scenarios without the need for a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), cellular subscription or network assistance.
On top of that, C-V2X network-based communications (designed for 4G and emerging 5G wireless networks) supports telematics, connected infotainment and a growing number of advanced informational safety use cases
With extended communication capabilities and precise positioning, Malladi explained, a car will eventually be able to communicate not just with the cars next to it, but with all cars within a certain range.
The C-V2X chipset is Qualcomm’s latest demonstration of its interest in the automotive market. Last fall, Qualcomm reached a deal to acquire NXP Semiconductor for $47 billion to help it move into IOT and automotive. The deal, however, is still under review by regulators.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Which carrier is winning the IoT race?
https://enterpriseiotinsights.com/20170830/channels/fundamentals/20170830uncategorizedwhich-carrier-is-winning-the-iot-race-tag4
The internet of things is the next frontier for mobile network operators, as smartphone growth slows down and new mobile chips enable low-cost connections for all manner of assets and equipment. Companies in almost every industry are investigating the IoT, and carriers want them to choose cellular instead of an unlicensed spectrum alternative. All four nationwide carriers are in the process of rolling out dedicated IoT networks, and all of them have millions of connections already on their existing networks.
AT&T is the leader among U.S. carriers when it comes to IoT connections. The carrier ended the second quarter with 33.7 million IoT/machine-to-machine connections, according to Compass Intelligence. That’s a 4% increase from the first quarter, and more than twice the number of connections reported by Verizon and Sprint combined. Compass Intelligence reports that Verizon ended the second quarter with 18.2 million connections and Sprint has 13.2 million. T-Mobile US had an estimated 4.6 million IoT connections, down 22% from the first quarter, according to the analyst firm. Compass Intelligence estimates IoT connections at 65% of wholesale connections, which were down in Q2 at T-Mobile US due to the company’s decision to remove Lifeline subscriptions from its wholesale connections.
Wireless carriers hope to see their numbers of IoT connections skyrocket with the roll out of new network technologies that enable low-cost connections over LTE networks. Both AT&T and Verizon have activated LTE Category M1, which keeps costs low by transmitting and receiving very low amounts of data. Verizon and AT&T have IoT data plans in place already, and these prices could come down even further as technologies evolve.