By Michael Howard, senior research director carrier networks, IHS Markit

Bottom Line

• Three-quarters of carriers participating in the IHS Markit software-defined networking (SDN) survey say they have already deployed or will deploy SDN in 2016; 100 percent plan to deploy the technology at some point
• The top drivers for service provider SDN investments and deployments are simplification and automation of network and service provisioning, as well as service automation
• Most operators are moving from SDN proof-of-concept (PoC) evaluations to commercial deployments in 2016 and 2017

IHS Analysis

In our fourth annual survey of carrier SDN strategies, it’s clear that service providers around the globe are investing in SDN as part of a larger move to automate their networks and transform not only their networks, but also internal processes, operations and service offerings.

Service providers believe that SDN will fundamentally change telecom network architecture and deliver benefits in service agility, time to revenue, operational efficiency and capex savings.

And these operators want SDN in most parts of their networks. Survey respondents’ top three SDN-targeted network domains for deployment by the end of 2017 are within data centers, between data centers and access for businesses.

Still, carriers are starting carefully with SDN, biting off small chunks of their networks called “contained domains” in which they will explore, trial, test and make initial deployments. Momentum is strong, but it will be many years before bigger parts of networks or entire networks are controlled by SDN—although a few operators are leading the way including AT&T, Level 3, Colt, Orange Business Systems, SK Telecom and Telefónica, among others.

The industry is still in the early stages of a long-term transition to SDN and network functions virtualization (NFV) architected networks. Much continues to be learned as each year passes, and various barriers and drivers have become more prominent as operators inch closer to commercial deployment. In this year’s survey, for example, respondent operators indicated that their top barriers to deployment are the lack of carrier-grade products and integration of virtual networking into their existing physical networks. Nonetheless, they rated virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE) managed services as the top SDN/NFV application for producing new sources of revenue.

Carriers are learning that some avenues are not as fruitful as expected, and telecom equipment manufacturers and software suppliers may well invent new approaches that open up new applications. IHS Markit will conduct the fifth annual SDN survey in 2017, and it will be interesting to see what new issues emerge and which problems get resolved in the additional commercial deployments planned for 2016.

SDN Survey Synopsis

The 22-page IHS Markit SDN strategies survey is based on interviews with purchase-decision makers at 28 service providers around the world that control 53 percent of world’s telecom capex and are deploying or plan to deploy SDN in their networks in the future. Operators were asked about their strategies and timing for SDN, including deployment drivers and barriers, target use cases, applications and more.

How to Buy this Report

For information about purchasing this report, contact the sales department at IHS Markit in the Americas at (844) 301-7334 or [email protected]; in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at +44 1344 328 300 or [email protected]; or Asia-Pacific (APAC) at +604 291 3600 or [email protected].

Previous IHS SDN Forecast Chart:

Author’s Opinion:

While there may be pockets of SDN deployed in carrier networks this year and next, we maintain it won’t present a large business opportunity for any carrier vendor/suppliers.  That’s because each network (and cloud service) provider has their own version of SDN, with none compatible with any others!  That in turn is due to the fragmentation of the market due to too many versions of SDN and no solid standards for multi-vendor interoperability.

We think the CORD project and mobile CORD have a much better opportunity because vendors are collaborating under various open source consortiums to disaggregate hardware of network elements, specify functional groupings and inter-module communications.  IMHO, the dis-aggregation/network equipment virtualization trend is irreversible.

Here are a few references:

CORD: REINVENTING CENTRAL OFFICES FOR EFFICIENCY & AGILITY

Threat of Disaggregated Network Equipment – Part 3

CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Datacenter): the killer app for SDN & NFV

Highlights of Light Reading’s White Box Strategies for Communications Service Providers (CSPs)

Introduction:

Two talks are summarized in this second HOTi summary article.  The first examines different topologies for High Performance Computing (HPC) networks with an assumption that Data Center (DC) networks will follow that topology. The second talk was a keynote on the impact of SDN, NFV and other Software Defined WAN/ open networking schemes.

1.  Network topologies for large-scale compute centers: It’s the diameter, stupid!   Presented by Torsten Hoefler, ETH Zurich 

Overview: Torsten discussed the history and design tradeoffs for large-scale topologies used in high-performance computing (HPC). He observed that Cloud Data Centers (DCs) are slowly following HPC attributes due to a variety of similarities, including: more East-West (vs North-South) traffic, the growing demand for low latency, high throughput, and lowest possible cost per node/attached endpoint.

• Torsten stated that optical transceivers are the most expense equipment used in DCs (I think he meant per attachment or per network port).  While high speed copper interconnects are much cheaper, their range is limited to about 3 meters for high bandwidth (e.g. N x Gb/sec) interfaces.

• HPC state of the art topology is known as Dragon Fly, which is based on a collection of hierarchical meshes. It effectively tries to make the HPC network look “fatter.”
• A high-performance cost-effective network topology called Slim Fly approaches the theoretically optimal (minimized) network diameter.  For a smaller diameter topology, there are less cables needed to traverse nodes and fewer routers/switches are needed, resulting in lower system cost.
• Slim Fly topology was analyzed and compared to both traditional and state-of-the-art networks in Torsten’s HOTi presentation slides.
• Torsten’s analysis shows that Slim Fly has significant advantages over other topologies in: latency, bandwidth, resiliency, cost, and power consumption.
• In particular, Slim Fly has the lowest diameter topology, is 25% “better cost at the same performance” than Dragon Fly and 50% better than a Fat Tree topology (which is very similar to a Clos network).
• Furthermore, Slim Fly is resilient, has the lowest latency, and provides full global bandwidth throughout the network.
• Here’s a Slim Fly topology illustration supplied post conference email by Torsten:

• Torsten strongly believes that the Slim Fly topology will be used in large cloud resident Data Centers as their requirements and scale seem to be following those of HPC.
• Conclusion: Slim Fly enables constructing cost effective and highly resilient DC and HPC networks that offer low latency and high bandwidth under different workloads.

Slim Fly and Dragon Fly References:

https://htor.inf.ethz.ch/publications/img/sf_sc_slides_website.pdf

http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/publications/index.php?pub=251

http://htor.inf.ethz.ch/publications/index.php?pub=187

https://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/mi/2009/01/mmi2009010033-abs.html (Dragon Fly)

2.  Software-Defined Everything (SDe) and the Implications for Interconnects, by Roy Chua, SDx Central

Overview: Software-defined networking (SDN), software-defined storage, and the all encompassing software-defined infrastructure have generated a tremendous amount of interest the past few years. Roy described the emerging trends, hot topics and the impact SDe will have on interconnect technology.

Roy addressed the critical question of why interconnects₁ matter.  He said that improvements are needed in many areas, such as:

• Embedded memory performance gap vs CPU (getting worse)
• CPU-to-CPU communications
• VM-to-VM and container-to-container

It’s hoped and expected that SDx will help improve cost-performance in each of the above areas.

Note 1.   In this context, “interconnects” are used to describe the connections between IT equipment (e.g. compute, storage, networking, management) within a Data Center (DC) or HPC center.  This is to be distinguished from DC Interconnect (DCI) which refers to the networking of two or more different DCs.  When the DC is operated by the same company, fiber is leased or purchased to interconnect the DCs in a private backbone network (e.g. Google).

When DCs operated by different companies (e.g. Cloud Service Provider DCs, Content Provider DCs or Enterprise DCs) need to be interconnected, a third party is used via ISP peering, colocation, cloud exchange (e.g. Equinix), or Content Delivery Networks (e.g. Akamai)

SDx Attributes and Hot Topics:

• SDx provides: agility, mobility, scalability, flexibility (especially for configuration and turning up/down IT resources quickly).
• Other SDx attributes include:  visibility, availability, readability, security and manageability.
• SDx hot topics include:  SDN and NFV (Network Function Virtualization) in both DCs and WANs, policy driven networking, applications driven networking (well accepted API’s are urgently needed!)

Important NFV Projects:

• Virtualization across a service providers network (via virtual appliances running on compute servers, rather than physical appliances/specialized network equipment)
• CORD (Central Office Re-architected as a Data center)
• 5G Infrastructure (what is 5G?)

Note:  Roy didn’t mention the Virtualized Packet Core for LTE networks, which network equipment vendors like Ericsson, Cisco and Affirmed Networks are building for wireless network operators.

SDx for Cloud Service Providers may address:

• Containers
• Software Defined Storage
• Software Defined Security
• Converged Infrastructure

Other potential areas for use of SDx:

• Server to server/ToR switch communications- orchestration, buffer management, convergence, service chaining
• Inter DC WAN communications (mostly proprietary to Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Alibaba, Tencent, and other large cloud service providers
• Software Defined WAN [SD-WAN is a specific application of SDN technology applied to WAN connections, which are used to connect enterprise networks – including branch offices and data centers – over large geographic distances.]
• Bandwidth on Demand in a WAN or Cloud computing service (XaaS)
• Bandwidth calendering (changing bandwidth based on time of day)
• XaaS (Anything as a Service, including Infrastructure, Platform, and Applications/Software)
• 5G (much talk, but no formal definition or specs)
• Internet of Things (IoT)

NFV Deployment and Issues:

Roy said, “There are a lot of unsolved problems with NFV which have to be worked out.”  Contrary to a report by IHS Markit that claims most network operators would deploy NFV next year, Roy cautioned that there will be limited NFV deployments in 2017 with “different flavors of service chaining” and mostly via single vendor solutions.

–>This author strongly agrees with Roy!

Open Networking Specifications Noted:

• Open Flow ® v1.4 from the Open Network Foundation (ONF) is the “southbound” API from the Control plane to the Data Forwarding plane in classical SDN.  Open Flow ® allows direct access to and manipulation of the Data Forwarding plane of network devices such as switches and routers, both physical and virtual (hypervisor-based).

[Note that the very popular network virtualization/overlay model of SDN does not use Open Flow.]

• P4 is an open source programming language designed to allow programming of packet forwarding dataplanes. In particular, P4 programs specify how a switch processes packets. P4 is suitable for describing everything from high- performance forwarding ASICs to software switches.  In contrast to a general purpose language such as C or Python, P4 is a domain-specific language with a number of constructs optimized around network data forwarding.

• Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) from the Open Compute Project:  Microsoft, Dell, Facebook, Broadcom, Intel, Mellanox are the co-authors of the final spec (v2) which was accepted by the OCP in July 2015.

Roy’s Conclusions:

• SDx is an important approach/mindset to the building of today’s and tomorrows IT infrastructure and business applications.
• Its requirement of agility, flexibility and scalability drives the need for higher-speed, higher-capacity, lower latency, lower cost, greater reliability interconnects at all scales (CPU-memory, CPU-CPU, CPU-network/storage, VM to VM, machine to machine, rack to rack, data center to data center).
• Interconnect technology enables new architectures for SDx infrastructure and innovations at the interconnect level can impact or flip architectural designs (faster networks help drive cluster-based design, better multi-CPU approaches help vertical scalability on a server).
• The next few years will see key SDx infrastructure themes play out in data centers as well as in the WAN, across enterprises and service providers (SDN and NFV are just the beginning).

Postscript:

I asked Roy to comment on an article titled: Lack of Automated Cloud Tools Hampers IT Teams.  Here’s an excerpt:

“While most organizations are likely to increase their investments in the cloud over the next five years, IT departments currently struggle with a lack of automated cloud apps and infrastructure tools, according to a recent survey from Logicworks. The resulting report, “Roadblocks to Cloud Success,” reveals that the vast majority of IT decision-makers are confident that their tech staffers are prepared to address the challenges of managing cloud resources. However, they also feel that their leadership underestimates the time and cost required to oversee cloud resources. Without more cloud automation, IT is devoting at least 17 hours a week on cloud maintenance. Currently, concerns about security and budget, along with a lack of expertise among staff members, is preventing more automation.”

One would think that SDx, with its promise and potential to deliver: agility, flexibility, zero touch provisioning, seamless (re-)configuration, scaleability, orchestration, etc. could be effectively used to automate cloud infrastructure and apps. When might that happen?

Roy replied via email:  “Interesting article—my short immediate reaction is that we’re going through a transitionary period and managing the number of cloud resources can bring its own nightmares, plus the management tools haven’t quite caught up yet to the rapid innovation across cloud infrastructures.”

Thanks Roy!

Introduction:

The annual IEEE Hot Interconnects conference was held August 24-25, 2016 in Santa Clara, CA with several ½ day tutorials on August 25^th. We review selected presentations in a series of conference summary articles. In this Part I. piece, we focus on design considerations for large scale Data Centers (DCs) that are operated by Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). If there is reader demand (via email requests to this author: [email protected]), we’ll generate a summary of the tutorial on Data Center Interconnection (DCI) methodologies.

Building Large Scale Data Centers: Cloud Network Design Best Practices, Ariel Hendel, Broadcom Limited

In his invited HOTi talk, Ariel examined the network design principles of large scale Data Centers designed and used by CSPs. He later followed up with additional information via email and phone conversations with this author. See Acknowledgment at the end of this article.

It’s important to note that this presentation was focused on intra-DC communications and NOT inter-DC or the cloud network access (e.g. type of WAN/Metro links) between cloud service provider DC and the customer premises WAN/metro access router.

Mr. Hendel’s key points:

• The challenges faced by designers of large DCs include: distributed applications, multi-tenancy, number and types of virtual machines (VMs), containers [^1], large volumes of East-West (server-to-server) traffic, delivering low cost per endpoint, choice of centralized (e.g. SDN) or distributed (conventional hop by hop) Control plane for routing/path selection, power, cabling, cooling, satisfying large scale and incremental deployment.

Note 1. Containers are a solution to the problem of how to get software to run reliably when moved from one computing environment to another. This could be from a developer’s laptop to a test environment, from a staging environment into production and perhaps from a physical machine in a data center to a virtual machine in a private or public cloud.

• Most large-scale Data Centers have adopted a “scale- out” network model. This model is analogous to the “scale- out” server model for which the compute infrastructure is one size fits all. The network scale- out model is a good fit for the distributed software programming model used in contemporary cloud based compute servers.

• Distributed applications are the norm for public cloud deployments as application scale tends to exceed the capacity of any multi-processor based IT equipment in a large DC.

• The distributed applications are decomposed and deployed across multiple physical (or virtual) servers in the DC, which introduces network demands for intra-application communications.

• This evolving programming and deployment model is evolving to include parallel software clusters, micro-services, and machine learning clusters. All of these have ramifications on the corresponding network attributes.

• The cloud infrastructure further requires that multiple distributed applications coexist on the same server infrastructure and network infrastructure.

• The network design goal is a large-scale network that satisfies the workload requirements of cloud-distributed applications. This task is ideally accomplished by factoring in the knowledge of cloud operators regarding their own workloads.

• Post talk add-on: L3 (Network layer) routing has replaced L2 multi-port bridging in large scale DC networks, regardless of the type of Control plane (centralized/distributed) or routing protocol used at L3 (in many cases it’s BGP). Routing starts at the TOR and the subnets are no larger than a single rack. Therefore, there is no need for L2 Spanning Tree protocol as the sub net comprises only a single switch. There is absolute consensus on intra DC networks operating at L3, as opposed to HPC fabrics (like InfiniBand and Omnipath) which are L2 islands.

• Other DC design considerations include: North-South WAN Entry Points, Route Summarization, dealing with Traffic Hot Spots (and Congestion), Fault Tolerance, enabling Converged Networks, Instrumentation for monitoring, measuring and quantifying traffic, and Ethernet PMD sublayer choices for line rate (speed) and physical media type.

The concept of a DC POD [^2] was introduced to illustrate a sub-network of IP/Ethernet switches and compute servers, which consist of: Leaf switches which are fully mesh connected via 100 GE to Top of Rack (TOR) switches, each of which connects to many compute servers in the same rack via 25GE copper.

Note 2. PODs provide a unit of incremental deployment of compute resources whose chronological order is independent of the applications they eventually host. PODs can also be the physical grouping of two adjacent tiers in the topology so that such tiers can be deployed with sets of switches that are in close physical proximity and with short average and maximum length cable runs. In the diagrams shown, the adjacent tiers are Leaf and TOR plus the compute servers below each TOR (in the same rack).

Author’s Note for clarification: Most storage area networks use Fibre Channel or InfiniBand (rather than Ethernet) for connectivity between storage server and storage switch fabric or between fabrics. Ariel showed Ethernet used for storage interconnects in his presentation for consistency. He later wrote this clarifying comment:

“The storage network part (of the DC) differs across cloud operators. Some have file servers connected to the IP/Ethernet network using NAS protocols, some have small SANs with a scale of a rack or a storage array behind the storage servers providing the block access, and others have just DAS on the servers and distributed file systems over the network. Block storage is done at a small scale (rack or storage array) using various technologies. It’s scalable over the DC network as NAS or distributed file systems.”

In the POD example given in Ariel’s talk, the physical characteristics were: 3.2T TOR, 6.4T Leaf, 100G uplinks, 32 racks, 1280 servers.  Ariel indicated there were port speed increases ongoing to provide optimal “speeds and feeds” with no increase in the fiber/cabling plant. In particular:

• Compute servers are evolving from 10GE to 25GE interfaces (25GE uses the same number of 3m copper or fiber lanes as 10GE). That results in a 2.5x Higher Server Bandwidth Efficiency.
• Storage equipment (see note above about interface type for storage networks) are moving from 40GE to 50GE connectivity, where 50GE uses half the copper or fiber lanes than 40GE. That results in 2x Storage Node Connectivity, 25% More Bandwidth Per Node and 50% Fewer Cabling Elements versus 40GE.
• Switch Fabrics are upgrading from 40GE to 100GE backbone links which provides a 2.5X performance increase for every link in a 3-tier leaf-spine. There’s also Better Load Distribution and Lower Application Latency which results in an effective 15x increase in Fabric Bandwidth Capacity.

Ariel said there is broad consensus is the use of the “Leaf-Spine” topology model for large DC networks. In the figure below, Ariel shows how to interconnect the PODs in a leaf- spine configuration.

In a post conference phone conversation, Ariel added: “A very wide range of network sizes can be built with a single tier of spines connecting PODs. One such network might have as many as 80K endpoints that are 25GE or 50GE attached. More than half of the network cost, in this case, is associated with the optical transceivers.”

Ariel noted in his talk that the largest DCs have two spine tiers which are (or soon will be) interconnected using 100GE. The figure below illustrates how to scale the spines via either a single tier or dual spine topology.

“It is important to note that each two tier Spine shown in the above figure can be packaged inside a chassis or can be cabled out of discrete boxes within a rack. Some of the many ramifications of a choice between Spine chassis vs. Fixed boxes were covered during the talk.”

Ariel’s Acute Observations:

• Cost does not increase significantly with increase in endpoints.

• Endpoint Speed and ToR over subscription determine the cost/performance tradeoffs even in all

100G network.

• 100G network is “future proofed” for incremental or wholesale transition to 50G and 100G endpoints.

• 50G endpoint is not prohibitively more expensive than a 25G endpoint and is comparable at 2.5:1

over subscription of network traffic.

Our final figure is an illustration of the best way to connect to Metro and WAN – Edge PODs:

“When connecting all external traffic through the TOR or Leaf tier traffic is treated as any other regular endpoint traffic, it is dispersed, load balanced, and failed over completely by the internal Data Center network.”

Author’s Note: The type(s) of WAN-Metro links at the bottom of the figure are dependent on the arrangement between a cloud service and network provider. For example:

• AT&T’s Netbond let’s partner CSPs PoP be 1 or more endpoints of their customers IP VPN.
• Equinix Internet Exchange™ allows networks including ISPs, Content Providers and Enterprises to easily and effectively exchange Internet traffic.
• Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) lets the customer provision a logically isolated section of their Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud where one can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that’s customer define.

Other Topics:

Mr. Hendel also mapped network best practices down to salient (Broadcom) switch and NIC silicon at the architecture and feature level. Congestion avoidance and management were discussed along with DC visibility and control. These are all very interesting, but that level of detail is beyond the scope of this HOTi conference summary.

Add-on: Important Attribute of Leaf-Spine Network Topology:

Such networks can provide “rearrangeable non-blocking” capacity by using traffic dispersion. In this case, traffic flows between sources and destinations attached to the leaf stage can follow multiple alternate paths. To the extent that such flows are placed optimally on these multiple paths, the network is non-blocking (it has sufficient capacity for all the flows).

Add-on: Other Network Topologies:

Actual network topologies for a given DC network are more involved than this initial concept. Their design depends on the following DC requirements:

1. Large (or ultra-large) Scale

2. Flat/low cost per endpoint attachment

3. Support for heavy E-W traffic patterns

4. Provide a logical as opposed to a physical network abstraction

5. Incrementally deployable (support a “pay as you grow” model)

Up Next:

We’ll review two invited talks on 1] DC network topology choices analyzed (it’s the diameter, stupid!) and 2] the impact of SDN and NFV on DC interconnects. An article summarizing the tutorial on Inter-DC networking (mostly software oriented) will depend on reader interest expressed via emails to this author.

Acknowledgment: The author sincerely thanks Ariel Hendel for his diligent review, critique and suggested changes/clarifications for this article.

by David Dixon of FBR &Co (edited by Alan J Weissberger)

Overview:

ZAYO Group has a global network which provides bandwidth and connectivity over fiber optics network infrastructure. Founded in 2007, Zayo has grown exponentially via acquisitions, taking advantage of transactional demand from hyperscale service providers for bandwidth infrastructure, with its meteoric rise driven by 37 acquisitions in its nine-year history. The company has assembled an attractive services mix, with potential for leveraging its dense metro, regional, and long-haul fiber networks. Industry bandwidth demand continues to increase.

ZAYO reported mixed fiscal 4Q16 results, with the Allstream acquisition driving consolidated revenue growth of 40.2% YoY. On April 1, 2016, Zayo acquired Clearview International, LLC, a Dallas-based collocation and cloud infrastructure services provider for $18.3M in cash. Clearview generated $2.3M in revenues and $0.7M in adjusted EBITDA in the March quarter.

Dixon’s Opinion:

Zayo’s ability to benefit from the exponential growth in bandwidth demand considering technology shifts in wireline and wireless segments, could be gating factors.

The company remains confident about achieving $3M in net installs and $7M in bookings in the next handful of quarters (excluding Zayo Canada).

Acquisition synergies ahead of plan; expected to continue.

As expected, Zayo is extracting significant cost savings from Zayo Canada through an aggressive head-count reduction of 1,700 employees (from 2,200 to 500) as part of the transformation of a mature relationship-based company to a transaction-based company. In the quarter, Zayo generated $7.3M in synergies ($29M annualized); we expect annualized synergies to peak by mid 2017. Management is in the heavy-lifting integration phase; our checks with signature accounts suggest a high likelihood of greater-than-expected high-margin enterprise revenue erosion, which we are closely monitoring.

Q&A:

1.  What is the impact of an architecture shift on Zayo business model? Do telecom and cable companies have sufficient metro fiber in place to deploy distributed compute networks?

We see limited competition from other dark fiber and mobile infrastructure providers but believe the real question is the impact of network technology changes underway on the outlook for demand for Zayo s products and services. In the metro fiber segment, we see a move underway within the telecom and cable segments toward distributed compute bandwidth and storage platforms, potentially on fiber infrastructure already in place. This will likely serve as the foundation for transferring data traffic from Internet content and applications from the core network to mini datacenters at the edge of the network in each metro location. This is similar to the content (not computing) challenge solved by Akamai in the early days of the Internet.

2. Are there wireless technology shifts underway disruptive to Zayo’s business model?

On the mobile infrastructure front, there are multiple trends underway: (1) more heavy lifting by low-cost super Wi-Fi-like indoor, versus outdoor, LTE deployments on commodity servers; (2) new cloud-based, shared spectrum bands; and (3) the use of wireless back-haul and front-haul in lieu of fiber connections to cell sites.

3.  Synergy potential is high at Allstream, but what is Zayo’s ability to execute its largest and most complex acquisition to date?

While Zayo expects $60 million in annualized cost synergies, we see key challenges, including: (1) a horizontal-based, versus vertical-based, sales and profitability platform (Canadian enterprise customers may not transition well to a transactionalbased relationship); (2) an entrepreneurial, versus mature, business culture; (3) Zayo s limited experience in managing a cybersecurity service portfolio, which may increase churn and lower revenue growth; (4) similarly, management’s lack of experience in managing a mature voice service platform (still a key part of an enterprise customer solution), which may result in increased customer and revenue churn; (5) the transition of Allstream SMB business to a pure reseller, which may increase customer churn.

From the Motley Fool:

CEO and co-founder Dan Caruso was generally pleased with the company’s progress. During the conference call following the announcement, Caruso pointed to the high potential of the overall movement toward 5G network technology, saying, “I can’t think of one macro trend that doesn’t play in favor of having deep, dense fiber networks and a communication infrastructure strategy.” That should bode well for the company’s overall business.

The nice thing about Zayo’s situation right now is that it has time to move forward at a healthy but measured pace. Thanks to its debt restructuring, Zayo has bought considerable time to consider expansion plans, with its new offering of notes maturing in 2025 allowing for longer-term strategic thinking. It’s true that the quarter’s GAAP loss was largely due to the immediate impact on Zayo’s financial statements that the extinguishment of the restructured debt had. But the long-term impact to Zayo’s business prospects should be extremely positive going forward.

Giving some of Zayo’s moves a higher profile would be one good way to bolster future growth. The company entered into an agreement with the Denver Public Schools system, connecting 153 sites and two data centers using more than 600 miles of network assets. An even larger school-district network in Texas also helped Zayo identify what could become a growth niche as education requires greater connectivity.

http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/26/zayo-group-hopes-for-faster-growth.aspx

IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a global business information provider, today released excerpts from its 2016 Microwave Network Equipment Vendor Scorecard. The scorecard profiles and analyzes the top seven revenue producers for microwave equipment.

Listed in the scorecard, in alphabetical order, were Aviat Networks, Ceragon, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC, Nokia and SIAE. The scorecard evaluates the microwave equipment vendors on criteria such as direct feedback from buyers, vendor market share, market share momentum, financials, brand recognition, reputation for innovation and other benchmarks. Vendors are classified as leader, established or challenger based on their overall score.

For 2016, Ericsson, Huawei, NEC and Nokia received the leader designation for microwave network equipment, while Aviat Networks, Ceragon and SIAE were identified as challengers.

Among the leaders, Ericsson ranked first in market presence and fourth in market momentum; Huawei placed first in momentum and third in presence; NEC ranked second in both presence and momentum; and Nokia was fourth in presence and fifth in momentum.

“The microwave equipment market is strongly driven by demand for mobile backhaul connectivity from mobile operators. The rapid rise in mobile data traffic drives backhaul and thus microwave equipment market growth,” said Richard Webb, directing analyst for mobile backhaul and small cells at IHS Markit. “The leaders in our scorecard report have positioned microwave products to support their mobile radio access network (RAN) equipment business, but they’re very much microwave specialists too. They innovate technology-wise—often as part of an extensive mobile backhaul equipment portfolio—while maintaining large customer bases of tier-1 mobile operators.”

Strong competition for backhaul from fiber and developments such as 5G and network virtualization are changing the architecture of networks, affecting the long-term outlook for microwave equipment.

“As the mobile network continues to evolve, it’s more important than ever that microwave equipment vendors innovate, expand their product portfolios to a variety of backhaul scenarios including small cells, and maintain a healthy balance sheet to preserve market position,” Webb said.

by Scott Bicheno & edited by Alan J Weissberger

Six of the world’s biggest technology companies have joined forces in order to work out how best to exploit the 150 MHz of unlicensed spectrum that has been made available for commercial use.

The spectrum is in the 3.5 GHz band (specifically 3550-3700 MHz) and is being referred to as the Citizens Radio Broadband Service, so the joint effort is called the CBRS Alliance. The founding members consist of: Google, Intel, Nokia, Qualcomm,Ruckus Wireless and Federated Wireless. This partnership was first publicly discussed back at MWC this year but it seems to have taken them half a year to get their act together.

The availability of the 3.5 GHz band has been spoken about for a while, but the rules governing the coexistence of incumbent users with new entrants were only formalised earlier this year. The presence of a significant chunk of unlicensed spectrum so close to licensed bands has intrigued many companies, recently causing Google to reassess is fibre plans.

“There is ever-growing demand for LTE-based solutions in 3.5 GHz bands and expansion of the wireless footprint,” said Neville Meijers, VP of small cells for Qualcomm and chairman of the board for the CBRS Alliance. “Working together, the CBRS Alliance aims to enable the entire industry to address demand by expanding the capacity of new technologies.”

“Working together, the Alliance will ultimately build LTE-based solutions for the CBRS band – creating one of the many paths that will make it possible to help meet challenges associated with the coming data capacity crunch, which experts predict will reach over 30 exabytes per month by 2020,” blogged Intel’s Shawn Covell who moved there from Qualcomm.

“Federated Wireless has been instrumental in leading the creation of the shared spectrum ecosystem that will enable carriers and enterprises to seamlessly and cost effectively alleviate the challenges of sharing and managing spectrum while improving the performance and capacity of wireless networks for their customers,” said Iyad Tarazi, CEO of Federated Wireless. “The CBRS Alliance can be a critical driver to the success of the shared spectrum deployment in the CBRS band, which we believe has great potential to drive innovation, support new business models and spur economic growth.”

This move brings together two prevailing trends in the wireless industry right now: the exploitation of unlicensed spectrum and the formation of partnerships. It speaks volumes about the potential of this resource that so many industry heavyweights are staking a claim but you do have to wonder why the likes of AT&T and Verizon aren’t part of the gang.

http://telecoms.com/475034/google-intel-nokia-qualcomm-and-other-form-3-5-ghz-alliance/

In February, the companies announced their commitment to build an ecosystem of industry participants and make LTE-based solutions in the CBRS band widely available. This followed the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling for CBRS, which opened 150 MHz of spectrum (3550-3700 MHz) for commercial use. The Alliance also actively supports the Wireless Innovation Forum’s efforts to develop and drive the adoption of standards around the unique aspects of operation in the CBRS band, which include providing standardized radio interfaces to the spectrum access system (SAS), interfaces between SASs, protection of federal and incumbent use operations, and managing the coexistence among those sharing the band.

With the impending allocations of 3400-3600 MHz for IMT in several countries, there is increased demand for LTE solutions worldwide, creating economies of scale. The Alliance believes that LTE-based solutions in the CBRS band, utilizing shared spectrum, can enable both in-building and outdoor coverage and capacity expansion at massive scale. In order to maximize CBRS’s full potential, the CBRS Alliance aims to enable a robust ecosystem towards making LTE CBRS solutions available.

The Alliance will work towards LTE CBRS field trials in the second half of this year and is developing an official certification process towards successful deployments of CBRS infrastructure.

Google’s CRBS member is Alphabet’s Access, which is focused on increasing access to fast, abundant Internet through efforts such as Google Fiber and wireless initiatives.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160823005517/en/Industry-Leaders-Launch-Alliance-Drive-Deployment-LTE-based

Contact: CBRS Alliance

Elizabeth Conroy-Yockim
[email protected]

By Michael Howard, Senior Research Director Carrier Networks, IHS Markit

Key Points:

• 100 percent of service providers participating in the IHS Markit NFV strategies survey say they will deploy network functions virtualization (NFV) at some point, with 81 percent expecting to do so by 2017
• Moreover, 59 percent of operator respondents have deployed or will deploy NFV this year
• Integrating NFV into existing networks is an issue for a majority of survey respondents, as is the lack of carrier-grade products

IHS Analysis:

Service providers around the globe are moving toward NFV, which the latest NFV strategies study by IHS Markit bears out. These carriers believe that NFV and its software-defined networking (SDN) companion are a fundamental change in telecom network architecture that will deliver benefits in automation; new, more agile services and revenue; operational efficiency; and capex savings.

Many carriers in 2016 are moving from their NFV proof-of-concept (PoC) tests and lab investigations and evaluations to working with vendors that are developing and productizing the software, which is being deployed commercially.

The carrier mind-set toward NFV is changing quickly. In 2014, there was one standout barrier: operations and business support systems (OSS/BSS). In 2015 and 2016, the top barriers—integrating NFV into existing networks and non-carrier-grade products—show that carriers are very serious about deploying NFV.

The vast majority of early NFV deployments in the next year, and overall, will be for business virtualized enterprise customer premises equipment (vE-CPE), also known as vBranch or enterprise vCPE. Growing in importance over the last several years, business vE-CPE can assist with revenue generation because it allows operators to replace physical CPEs with software so they can quickly innovate and launch new services.

The industry is still in the early stages of a long-term transition to SDN and NFV architected networks. Carriers will learn that some avenues are not as fruitful as expected, and telecom equipment manufacturers and software suppliers may well invent new approaches that open up newfound applications.

NFV Survey Synopsis:

The 26-page IHS Markit NFV strategies survey is based on interviews with purchase-decision makers at 27 service providers around the world that have deployed NFV in their networks or plan to do so in the future. Operators were asked about their strategies and timing for NFV, including deployment drivers and barriers, target use cases, applications and more.

For information about purchasing this report, contact the sales department at IHS Markit in the Americas at (844) 301-7334 or [email protected]; in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at +44 1344 328 300 or [email protected]; or Asia-Pacific (APAC) at +604 291 3600 or [email protected].

From Light Reading website by Ray Le Maistre, Editor-in-Chief, Light Reading

Network/Data Center Operator category.

AT&T — AT&T Managed Internet Service on Demand 
AT&T is one of the NFV standard-bearers that is being tracked by the rest of the industry as it forges ahead with the launch of commercial services based on NFV and SDN capabilities.

As the operator itself puts it, it is “putting software rather than hardware at the center of our network, which translates to lowered costs, accelerated rollout of new services and greater control to our customers. The Network on Demand platform is the first commercial offering in the US letting business customers order, change, and provision network services on their own and in near real time.” The operator also believes it is a global first deployment at the kind of scale AT&T has deployed.

Key to AT&T’s proposition is making life easier for its enterprise customers by enabling them to manage their services via an online self-service portal: “On Demand capabilities dramatically change how AT&T customers do business and manage systems, platforms and software. They speed up and simplify the process, and give users more flexibility in managing their own network,” notes the operator.

It’s fair to say that AT&T is putting into practice what many operators have been hoping to achieve from their SDN and NFV strategies.

Boingo Wireless — Offices and Networks Go Virtual 

WiFi networking specialist Boingo hasn’t made a lot of noise about its NFV deployment strategy but it’s a smart approach that has helped the company build new business and operational opportunities.

Its NFV capabilities, developed in-house, are at the heart of its S.M.A.R.T. network strategy, which provides faster speeds and a differentiated, tiered connected experience to respective groups of consumers. Boingo’s NFV technology allows it to “dynamically scale to meet capacity demand created by consumers looking to download video, upload large files and stream media,” the company says.

That capability has played a critical role in Boingo’s relationship with Sprint, for which it offloads data traffic as part of a roaming agreement. When the Sprint relationship kicked in, the mobile carrier began “automatically offloading tens of millions of devices to Boingo networks in real time… Boingo was able to auto-scale from six servers to more than 50 immediately, without time-consuming configuration and launch processes.” 

By Stéphane Téral, senior research director, mobile infrastructure and carrier economics, IHS Markit

Key Points:

• The migration from basic Long Term Evolution (LTE) to true 4G is well underway:
  84 percent of IHS Markit’s service provider respondents are already running LTE‑Advanced (LTE-A) networks
• Barriers to deploying 4G are nonexistent at this point, and the main driver for 4G is the lower cost per megabyte of data
• Easy upgradability and standards compliance are the top two LTE features among those surveyed
• Respondent carriers view Ericsson as the top LTE vendor, followed by Nokia and Huawei

IHS Markit Analysis:

IHS Markit asked service providers participating in its 4G survey whether they had deployed LTE-Advanced and found that a vast majority (84 percent) are already running a 4G network. This is significantly higher than a year ago, when around half of survey respondents were running LTE-Advanced—a clear indication of a quick migration from initial LTE rollouts to 4G through the implementation of carrier aggregation.

Case in point: according to recent Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) data, 521 operators have now commercially launched LTE, LTE-Advanced or LTE-Advanced Pro networks in 170 countries. 147 of these operators have deployed LTE-Advanced, and 9 have commercially launched LTE-Advanced Pro. LTE-Advanced has now moved into mainstream deployments, and the GSA has raised its forecast to 560 LTE network deployments by the end of 2016.

The most deployed LTE-Advanced feature among operator respondents is inter-band carrier aggregation, followed by enhanced inter-cell interference coordination and LTE‑Advanced coordinated multipoint. Three- and four-component carrier aggregation is rising fast, and five component is coming soon.

Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is exploding: three-quarters of those surveyed are offering VoLTE, up from just a quarter last year. This will not necessarily lead to imminent 2G or 3G shutdown, but 2G is rising on the agenda.

And when it comes to LTE in unlicensed spectrum (LTE-U), over 50 percent of respondents plan to deploy LTE-U by 2018. These respondents are operating in very competitive markets that push them to use as many spectrum ammunitions as possible to stay ahead of the capacity crunch curve to keep their subscribers happy and, of course, on their networks.

4G Survey Synopsis

For the 24-page 4G survey, IHS Markit interviewed purchase-decision makers at 24 global service providers that have deployed or trialed LTE or will do so by the end of 2017. The study covers LTE features and upgrade drivers and barriers; LTE-Advanced timing and features; LTE-U; VoLTE service timing and data/voice roaming; and operator ratings of LTE manufacturers (Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Samsung and ZTE). The operators participating in the study represent about half of the world’s telecom capex and revenue.

For information about purchasing this report, contact the sales department at IHS Markit in the Americas at (844) 301-7334 or [email protected]; in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at +44 1344 328 300 or [email protected]; or Asia-Pacific (APAC) at +604 291 3600 or[email protected].

Verizon LTE Advanced covers more than 450 cities from coast to coast.

https://www.verizonwireless.com/featured/lte-advanced/?cmp=SOC-C-HQ-NON-S-AW-NONE-lTEATWFirstView-2S0OO0-CO-P-TWT-RE-PP-083016LTE

Complete Deep Research Report on 4G LTE Wireless Broadbandmarket spread across 103 pages, profiling 09 companies and supported with 101 tables and figures is at

 http://www.deepresearchreports.com/contacts/inquiry.php?name=225815

The report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The 4G LTE Wireless Broadband industry analysis is provided for the international markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status.

Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, cost, price, revenue and gross margins.

Key Manufacturers Analysis of 4G LTE Wireless Broadband Industry: Gemalto NV, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Sierra Wireless Inc., Telit Communications SpA, Novatel Wireless, Option, Quectel Wireless Solutions, u-blox and ZTE.

Executive Summary

AT&T has become the newest member of Intel’s Super 7 initiative, a coalition of technology companies — including Facebook, Google and Microsoft — that are seeking to revolutionize the data center. Under a new partnership, AT&T will use Intel’s semiconductor technology to advance its network virtualization strategy and integrated cloud platform.

AT&T SDN/NFV Initiatives
Several years ago AT&T initiated an ambitious plan that entailed making use of SDN and NFV as the means to transform and upgrade its network infrastructure, SVP Andre Fuetsch, Senior Vice President of Domain 2.0 Architecture & Design, recounts in an Aug. 17 blog post.

Andre Fuetsch is responsible for delivering the architecture and design of AT&T’s future networking evolution. This transformation will utilize software-defined networking and network function virtualization to deliver products and services to the customer with greatly reduced time to market and significant operational efficiencies. He leads a team of over 2,000 engineers and computer scientists working on programs encompassing both the business and mass market customer segments.

Recognizing the benefits collaboration could bring with the dominating leader of the server microprocessor market, AT&T management struck up a cloud network innovation partnership with Intel to realize its strategic aims.  AT&T and Intel have been collaborating on projects aimed at incorporating next-generation 5G broadband wireless and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone technology into its evolving new ¨software-centric¨ network architecture,

Mr. Fuetsch wrote:

“Intel and AT&T have worked together for a long time. Most recently, we’ve been collaborating on technologies including 5G and drones. Bringing them into our software-centric network program was a natural fit. We’ll also be joining Intel’s “Super 7”. These are influential web and cloud companies on the cutting edge of network and data center design. We’re the first connectivity company to join this group. Call it the “Super 7+1”.

We’ll be optimizing NFV packet processing efficiency for our AT&T Integrated Cloud, or AIC. We’ll also define reference architectures and align NFV roadmaps to speed up our network transformation.

This means we’ll continue to get new software-based network services and capabilities to our customers faster than ever, just as we did with Network on Demand and Network Functions on Demand.  Open source software running on hardware powered by Intel chips will enable many of these virtualized network functions. So we’re asking the developer community to stay engaged, too. Open source groups like OpenStack, OPNFV, OpenDaylight, ON.lab, OpenContrail, the Open Compute Project and others are vital to us.”

AT&T  is joining Intel’s ¨Super 7,¨ a group of leading Web and cloud companies aiming to push the envelope and improve network and data center design. AT&T would be the first broadband carrier to join the group, making it ¨Super 7+1,¨ Fuetsch wrote.

Intel says its future depends on the new applications enabled by networks like AT&T’s, elevating the carrier into the same elite group of public and large private cloud computing companies it calls the “Super 7”: Amazon.com, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Like those companies, AT&T will get early access to Intel silicon and other technologies. Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights & Strategy, said it was odd to include AT&T in the group of the largest cloud companies, but it could help Intel ensure that its chips and devices will run well on 5G networks.

As a ¨Super 7¨ member, AT&T is looking to optimize NFV packet processing efficiency for the AT&T Integrated Cloud (AIC). Company researchers will also define reference NFV architectures and align them with its network transformation plans in a bid to bring them to fruition sooner.

Faster, lower cost introduction of new cloud software and services are among the key prospective benefits AT&T, Intel and others are looking to gain from SDN and NFV. Making use of open source software and Intel processors are core facets of their collaborative efforts. That includes staying actively engaged with open source groups such as OpenStack, OPNFV, OpenDaylight, ON.lab, OpenContrail, the Open Compute Project and others, Fuetsch noted.

Opinion:  It remains to be seen if this and other SDN/NFV partnerships can be commercially successful in the absence of any definitive interoperability standards and their implementation by carriers and cloud service providers. We are HUGE SKEPTICS at this time!

References:

http://fortune.com/2016/08/17/intel-and-att-partnership-data/

http://www.telecompetitor.com/att-joining-intels-%C2%A8super-71%C2%A8-sdnnfv-initiative/

http://www.rcrwireless.com/20160818/telecom-software/att-deepens-intel-p…

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/08/17/intel-bets-on-5g-wireless-networks-and-ai-to-power-its-future/

by Heidi Adams, senior research director, transport networks, IHS Technology:

• The long-haul wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) segment of the optical network hardware market outperformed the metro WDM sector in Q2 2016, with spending increasing 23 percent sequentially and 18 percent from a year ago
• Optical spending in China got a huge uplift in Q2 2016, growing 41 percent quarter-over-quarter and 22 percent year-over-year; China comprised over a quarter of global optical gear spending in the quarter
• Riding the wave of the strong spending cycle in China—coupled with solid gains in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) and CALA (Caribbean and Latin America—Huawei notched a 41 percent year-over-year revenue uptick in Q2 2016 and grabbed a 32 percent share of the optical hardware market

IHS Analysis

Driven by 100G+ long-haul WDM and a spending spree in China, the global optical network equipment market grew 15 percent sequentially in Q2 2016 and 7 percent from the year-ago quarter, to $3.5 billion.

In Q2 2016, the WDM equipment segment notched gains of 13 percent quarter-over-quarter and 10 percent year-over-year as 100G long-haul deployments accelerated and 200G+ deployments started to ramp. WDM long haul comprised just over half of WDM spending in the quarter.

Metro WDM growth was more muted in Q2 2016, increasing just 2 percent from Q2 2015. However, IHS Markit expects metro WDM growth to pick up toward the end of 2016 as new metro data center interconnect (DCI)–oriented products start shipping in volume and as major metro deployments in North America—principally by Verizon—begin to ramp.

The Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH) segment increased sequentially in Q2 2016 driven by project-specific spending, but it maintained its longer-term overall decline with spending down 8 percent year-over-year.

Optical Report Synopsis

The IHS Markit optical network hardware report tracks the global market for metro and long-haul WDM and SONET/SDH equipment, Ethernet optical ports, SONET/SDH ports and WDM ports. The report provides market size, market share, forecasts through 2020, analysis and trends. Vendors tracked include ADVA, Ciena, Cisco, Coriant, ECI, Fujitsu, Huawei, Infinera, NEC, Nokia, ZTE and others.

For information about purchasing this report, contact the sales department at IHS Markit in the Americas at (844) 301-7334 or [email protected]; in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at +44 1344 328 300 or[email protected]; or Asia-Pacific (APAC) at +604 291 3600 or [email protected].

IHS References:

Optical Network Hardware Market Tracker – Regional, China, Japan, India

https://technology.ihs.com/573179?utm_campaign=PR_-122&utm_medium=press_release&utm_source=BusinessWire

https://technology.ihs.com/Services/550805/optical-networks-intelligence-service