Xelerated Xpress

Xelerated Nominated to Prestigious Award – Stora Teknikpriset

The Swedish technical paper, Ny Teknik, nominated three finalists to Stora Teknikpriset – Xelerated, Ericsson and SAAB (the defense company). In preparation for the award ceremony there were both articles written and videos taken (in Swedish only) to explain and give some good background to three leading innovations from Sweden.

As always, when competing in the technology business it is hard to rank one  innovation in a specific field to another which applies to a different segment.  At the end of the day it will be the commercial success that will be the ultimate referee. Still, it is a great honor to be nominated to such a prestigious award as Stora Teknikpriset.  It serves as a strong testimony to the innovative technology we provide here at Xelerated, while acknowledging the team’s hard work and dedication of designing a unique packet processing architecture and bringing it to commercial success.

Xelerated didn’t get the gold medal this time around. Instead, I’d like to take the opportunity to congratulate Ericsson for winning the award for their development of “Turbo 3G,” enabling mobile broadband across the world.

by Thomas Eklund on Oct. 30th, 2009

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Hyper Giants Shift the Networking Industry

Network World’s Jeff Caruso refers to an upcoming report by Arbor Networks on how the Internet is undergoing a major architectural shift. While we tend to think about the Internet as a diverse interconnected network of networks, the truth is that a selection of hyper giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft drive most of the traffic. The rise of hyper giants impacts the networking industry in several ways:

• The core is evolving. The traffic is increasingly exchanged between the large content providers as well as regional and local Internet Service Providers at the Edge and through Content Distribution Networks (CDN).
• Applications continue to migrate to the web. Arbor notes that web traffic is regaining momentum and now shows greater growth than peer-to-peer traffic.
• Service providers are changing their business models and service offerings to adapt to the new environment. Tier one international transit providers have started to offer cloud computing and content distribution services. In addition, national ISPs continue to broaden their offerings in new areas.

As the traffic pattern on the Internet shifts, new innovations are called upon to make content distribution more efficient than today. Intelligent caching integrated to the switching infrastructure is one area of special interest. The first major inroads for this technology took place a few years back when the first generation of IPTV services were rolled out. Some access systems integrated local caching to allow for decreased zapping times, and frames to be resent in case of packet loss in the last mile. These systems were built to support a specific IPTV service, managed and controlled by the ISP. To support content providers and global services, these capabilities must be enhanced to support other services and evolving business models.

More information on Internet traffic patterns can be found in the press announcement.

by Thomas Eklund on Oct. 26th, 2009

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Building to Ethernet Expo in New York

I’m starting to look forward to the upcoming Ethernet Expo Americas. This well-attended conference hosted by Light Reading (being held November 3-4 in New York) is a key industry event for anyone in the Carrier Ethernet business.

Building up to the conference, Stan Hubbard, Heavy Reading’s Carrier Ethernet analyst, yesterday announced some encouraging new market data about the Carrier Ethernet Access Equipment. And it is booming.

The Carrier Ethernet Access market grew at 12 percent quarter-to-quarter in Q2 2009, and is up 17 percent year-over-year to $935 million in the rolling four-quarter period ending in the second quarter.

Most of the Carrier Ethernet access players will be at Light Reading Ethernet Expo. I look forward to some interesting discussions and will return with a report.

by Johan Sandell on Oct. 23rd, 2009

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Excuse Me, What is the Time (Solution)?

Today my colleague, Tord Haulin, and I participated in a Packet Synchronization seminar arranged by Chronos and its partners, primarily U.S.-based Symmetricom. Being players in the timing distribution world, they have spent a few years now preserving synchronization during the packet migration for mobile backhaul. So what are they saying, and what response did they get from the Swedish operators? Here are a few of my reflections:

• Synchronous Ethernet and PTP are the standards gaining a lot of momentum, and all players are eagerly putting support for these on to their products. (Yes, Xelerated is one of them.)
• There is no need to bet on which of these technologies will actually will become most popular. As some of the big fives in Europe have backed Synchronous Ethernet, it is likely it will find its way to the market. One of the comments at the break was that BT is planning to use Synchronous Ethernet in Open Reach, the UK model for local loop undbundling. If this is the case, all major vendors must support it. And PTP is already in trials with a number of operators.
• PTP v2/2008 is likely to be rolled out in trials with limited on-path support. I see this as an interim solution, while waiting for switch and router vendors to support PTP in hardware. At that point, not too far away, the technology has the scale and reach to depend upon for synchronization services.
• Operators are actively looking for a solution that allows them to can their TDM synchronization services. The pace of adoption will vary widely of course. Expect alternate providers to pave the way.
• Time stamping in hardware is being asked for not only for synchronization services, but also for performance monitoring. I will revisit this area, but as a general point, it is obvious for anyone that router and switch vendors have been getting away with limited capabilities in this area. Integrated probe functionalities have been more of a tick in the box, and haven’t propelled up to the show stopper level in the technical evaluation processes. This is about to change.

There was a good mix of people at the seminar – some representing the vendor side and an equal share from the larger Swedish operators. Notably most of them haven’t been focusing on synchronization for the last ten years, but are now actively getting their heads around the strategies for years to come. Packet technologists and TDM architects are now coming together.  And in a few years, we will know the outcome.

by Per Lembre on Oct. 6th, 2009

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Colt, Orange and Verizon Taking the Lead

Top ranked global Ethernet business providers as ranked by Vertical Systems Group:

1. Colt
2. Orange Business Services
3. Verizon
4. AT&T
5. NTT Communications
6. Reliance Globalcom

Global interconnect for Business Ethernet is all about service footprint. Colt and Orange are addressing global enterprise application requirements by capitalizing on existing fiber infrastructures in major commerce centers, according to the research firm.

While much of the Carrier Ethernet focus is on how to improve fiber access and metro networks, there are still a number of global interconnect enhancements that need careful attention to scale Ethernet services beyond local areas. Business models where players share risk and rewards for these heavy investments need technology backing. Flexible multi-lateral agreements among providers to reach sites and enable services across access, backbone, and content domains is still an unsolved business issue.

There are huge business opportunities for the players in the global Ethernet leaderboard above. But competition will be intense. Let’s support them by providing technologies that allow for shared infrastructure investments.

by Per Lembre on Oct. 2nd, 2009

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