(Accedian Networks') EtherNEWS Blog

Accedian Networks is pleased to introduce a Prep Course for MEF’s Carrier Ethernet Certified Professional (CECP) certification designed to provide students with a comprehensive overview of Carrier Ethernet from an application perspective. This rigorous course will go beyond providing a simple overview of MEF services definitions. Rather, it will teach students how to apply Carrier Ethernet concepts and related technologies for transport and access, how to define unique differentiated services, as well as how to specify products that can deliver those services.

The course is designed to prepare candidates to successfully complete the certification process by combining lecture, interactive analysis and practical exercises to provide thorough coverage of Carrier Ethernet technical material. At the end of the course, students will have a comprehensive understanding of Carrier Ethernet concepts, MEF-defined services and interfaces, and a basis for how these services are delivered using common Carrier Ethernet data networking technologies and protocols.

Course Syllabus

• Introduction – Carrier Ethernet Professional Certification Overview
• Module 1 – Carrier Ethernet Services
• Module 2 – Carrier Ethernet Interfaces
• Module 3 – Transporting Carrier Ethernet
• Module 4 – Carrier Ethernet Access
• Module 5 – Carrier Ethernet Applications

Independent Industry Education

Accedian Networks’ CECP Prep Course provides a technology-oriented perspective of the Carrier Ethernet industry and MEF concepts. The course is intended for professionals from any service provider or equipment vendor looking for the most comprehensive preparation in the field of Carrier Ethernet.

Click here for more details and registration.

Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe Ltd. will OEM Accedian’s full product line of MetroNID® and MetroNODE 10GE™ Ethernet demarcation devices as part of its FDX2400 family of products. This will enable Fujitsu to deliver an enhanced, end-to-end solution with the industry’s most accurate performance measurement. The agreement puts both companies in a strong position to continue leveraging the growing market for high performance Ethernet applications. “Our customers rely on us to help them build and operate the highest performing networks,” said Alan Davidson, Head of Products & Service Solutions, Fujitsu. “The Accedian demarcation equipment represents the state-of-the-art in Ethernet Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OAM) equipment. Combining this functionality with Fujitsu’s Ethernet access product and service portfolio will enable us to deliver tremendous value to our customers.” Read Press Release

Accedian’s Vice President Finance and CFO, Martin Lebeau, was named an ‘Ace of Finance’ by the Québec Chapter of Financial Executives International Canada (FEI Canada) in its first annual The Aces of Finance contest. Martin won in the ‘Emerging Financial Executive’ category based on his professional achievements, his exceptional contributions to Accedian Networks, and his involvement in community service. In a press release issued last week by the Quebec Chapter of FEI Canada, Bertrand Lauzon, President of the contest organizing committee stated: “Over the last few years, the role of the financial executive has become increasingly more complex, and now carries greater responsibility. In such a context, it’s crucial for financial executives to be treated as business partners that can add value. This contest thus serves to recognize those financial executives and to promote the values so deeply held by members of FEI Canada.” Read Press Release

With the caveat that 25 years is a business horizon too far in the future to be meaningful for any operating executive or organization, consider some of the ways futurists think the future of bandwidth and capacity will change in 25 years.

Mobile devices will have the power of a supercomputer, argues Donald Newell, AMD Server CTO. To be more precise, a then-current smart phone will have more processing power than today’s servers, Newell argues.

Phones will have more than a terabyte of local memory,” adds Mark Lewis, chief strategy officer at EMC. He predicts that all of our digital information will be backed up over the cloud. “If I lose my phone, I can pick up a new one, enter my code word, and it will re-identify me and push all of my information out to my new device.”

As you will immediately grasp, those developments will have immediate and direct implications for bandwidth demands. A mobile device with the processing power of a supercomputer, with a terabyte of local storage, and using cloud-based apps, will represent an end point with huge appetite for communications.

Cisco’s Dave Evans, Chief Futurist, thinks at-home consumers will have access to multi-terabit Internet connections. “I could have an 8-terabit per second connection to my home,” he says. “That’s more connectivity to my home than most countries have.”

As a result, the core networks will operate at petabit per second speeds, about 10 to the 15th power, about three orders of magnitude bigger than terabit networking according to Evans.

For wireless networks, typical speeds will be as high as 10 gigabits per second, as fast as the fastest optical core networks today. See http://www.networkworld.com/supp/2011/25thanniversary/050911-anniversary-future.html for a look at 25 ways information technology will be different in 25 years.

Bandwidth increases on that order of magnitude—at least in the wireless arena—will require more than spectrum allocation. It will require continued significant advances in signal coding and compression, with some likely changes in network architecture as well. Additional spectrum will help, but it’s hard to see typical mobile users getting 10 Gbps without robust new developments in coding.

If not, using today’s technology, cell sites would be so small they would be virtually indistinguishable from a fixed connection, in which case “mobility” wouldn’t be possible.

But 25-year horizons are not meaningful, and predictions for what the world will be like that far out are almost always incorrect. One might find more success betting against today’s 25-year predictions instead.

That’s not to say Moore’s Law is repealed, or that users will stop demanding more bandwidth. It’s just that linear projections are almost always wrong over the long term.

On a relatively immediate basis, though, some projections that can seem outlandish are directionally valid enough to support rational business planning. Netflix, for example, has supported its business by mailing DVDs to customers. It began doing so because at one point there was no way to support delivery over the Internet, even though its very name suggests that possibility.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings claims that back when even cable modems and digital subscriber line were not available, “we took out our spreadsheets and we figured we’d get 14 Mbps to the home by 2012, which turns out is about what we will get.”

“If you drag it out to 2021, we will all have a gigabit to the home,” Hastings argues.

Still, Netflix took the rational route and did not build its revenue model on bandwidth that wasn’t available; it built on what was feasible at the time. Lots of application service providers based their businesses on inadequate bandwidth and server infrastructure in the early 2000s, and most failed because of those assumptions.

Now, lots of providers are about to make a business out of cloud computing, which is the same concept, but in an infrastructure environment that has changed dramatically.

Timing might not be everything, but it’s close. For that reason, no rational executive can build a business today based on expectations of 10 Gbps consumer mobile connections. But the direction is clear enough.

Nokia Siemens Networks has integrated Accedian Networks’ MetroNID® demarcation device, and its MetroNODE 10GE™ Ethernet Operations Administration and Maintenance (OAM) aggregation platform with their solutions such as Mobile Backhaul, Carrier Ethernet Transport and Multiservice IP Backbone. “The data deluge in mobile networks is quite a challenge for mobile service providers,” said Martin Brundert, Head of Solutions Management for Network Systems at Nokia Siemens Networks. “Therefore, we made Accedian devices an integral part of our solutions with fully verified interoperability between our base stations and Accedian network elements covering the entire backhauling network. Our solutions help customers to verify and maintain the performance of packet networks. This significantly improves the Smartphone user experience.” By integrating their respective best-of-breed products for packet networks, the two companies will enable service providers to stay on top of their network performance and deliver improved end-user satisfaction. Read Press Release

New Backhaul Opportunities for Alternative Access Vendors (AAVs) June 21st, The Marriott Marquis, New York City The LECs have dominated the backhaul market in the 2G and early 3G era, but AAVs and MSOs are playing a much larger role in building out backhaul capacity for the mass market 3G and 4G era. Accedian Networks will take part in this session which will look at the business models and technology solutions that alternative wholesalers are pursing and how they are positioning their capabilities to meet the increasingly demanding SLAs of the wireless carriers.