About the Blog
Ciena Insights is Ciena's official news blog, keeping you informed about Ciena news and happenings, and giving you a forum for engaging in conversations with Ciena. Bo Gowan is the blog moderator, and Ciena's social media manager.
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by John Hawkins
28 Jul 2011, 08:29 AM EDT
John Hawkins is Ciena’s resident Carrier Ethernet expert. In his many years in the industry, John has held board/chair positions for a variety of IEEE and MEF committees related to Carrier Ethernet.
 Earlier this week at the picturesque California setting of Napa Valley’s Artesa winery, the Metro Ethernet Forum celebrated its 10th anniversary and honored its most prominent members. Among the honorees was Ciena’s own Dr. Raghu Ranganathan.
Raghu, who was recently made co-chair of the MEF Technical Committee, has been a long-time technical contributor to the growing number of MEF specifications. Recognized among the MEF’s “Excellent Contributors,” Raghu remarked that it was a pleasure working with his industry colleagues in bringing forth new ideas and forging consensus towards important standards such as those created by the MEF over the past 10 years.
Raghu’s contributions to MEF efforts won’t end with the MEF Technical Committee. During the group’s quarterly and fiscal year end meeting, Raghu was also elected as one of eleven members of the MEF Board of Directors.
The night was highlighted by retrospectives of the group’s history as well as forward-looking predictions of what the next generations of Ethernet technology might bring. Already a US$40B market for services and equipment, Carrier Ethernet is expected to grow even more according to Nan Chen, MEF president. Chen shared a vision for an assured, interconnected and automated operating model.
Ciena has been involved with the MEF since its start 10 years ago (both via its former Nortel MEN group as a founding member as well as Ciena) when Carrier Ethernet was only an idea in a few forward-thinking minds. Numerous MEF standards and implementation agreements later, the industry has truly come a long way.
Below are a few pictures from the evening’s events. Click on any image to see the Facebook album.
Top left: the evening’s honorees pose for a group photo. Top right: Ciena’s Raghu Ranganathan at the podium. Bottom left: MEF president Nan Chen at the podium. Bottom right: Raghu’s recognition award.
 
 
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by Bo Gowan
27 Jul 2011, 09:33 AM EDT
 Ciena and Japanese service provider KVH today announced the successful trial of encrypted 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) traffic. The trial used the encryption capabilities of Ciena’s 5000 Advanced Services Platform to send fully encrypted 10GbE at wire-speed rates between KVH data centers in Tokyo and Chiba, Japan.
KVH provides integrated cloud and network solutions, and also operates the country’s lowest latency network with over 450 financial services customers. The successful trial is a first step in the two companies’ plans to commercialize the new service for KVH customers by the end of 2011, and combines two network features that are of increasing importance to KVH’s customer base: ultra-low latency and network encryption.
As we’ve highlighted in this blog before, the financial services industry is going through a low latency revolution as network delays of milliseconds can result in million in lost revenues. But financial firms are also increasingly in need of (and sometimes required to implement) additional network security services such as link encryption.
The problem is that low latency and network encryption aren’t always complementary.
Traditional network encryption solutions that work at Layer 2 or 3 generally introduce tens of milliseconds of latency in to the network as they inspect and encrypt individual Ethernet or IP frames. That is an eternity in the financial services industry. In contrast, Ciena’s solution integrates a protocol agnostic encryption process into the optical layer to deliver best-in-class latency of under 4 microseconds. This can result in a huge advantage in an industry where every millisecond counts.
“With the success of this Ethernet link encryption trial, KVH is now ready to offer a new data link encryption service based on our existing backbone. That will allow us to cost effectively deliver a high performance encryption solution that is still ultra low-latency,” said Joe Duhamel, Executive Vice President, Systems and Technology of KVH in today’s press release.
Ciena’s 5000 platform integrates encryption capabilities using Advanced Encryption Standards (AES 256) and has been tested and successfully completed FIPS 197 certification activities by an internationally recognized certification agency (Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program operating on behalf of the National Institute for Standards and Technology and the Canadian Security Establishment). Encryption is delivered on the 5000 series via a line card that supports wire-speed encryption and is equipped with multi-protocol, multi-rate tunable transponder ports capable of carrying 8/10G FC, PSIFB, 10GbE LAN/WAN, OC-192/STM-64 and OTU-2 services (see A simpler network encryption model).
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by Jim Morin
26 Jul 2011, 03:20 PM EDT
 Jim Morin is Ciena’s Product Line Director focused on Cloud solutions. Jim has been a member of a commission looking into recommendations for the use of Cloud technology in U.S. government and industry.
In March 2011, TechAmerica helped pull together a commission of experts from industry and academia to form recommendations on public policies for advancing the Obama Administration’s cloud-first strategy for government technology and for driving US cloud innovation. Called the Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in US Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2), the group included members from companies such as Amazon, AT&T, IBM and Verizon.
Ciena was selected as one of the 71 commissioners (Steve Alexander – Ciena CTO) and deputies (myself) who were split into public and commercial working groups on various key topics such as: security, transnational data flows, infrastructure transformation, organizational change, buyer’s guide, transparency/accountability, and acquisition/budget/execution.
 Over the course of several months of conference calls and meetings, teams developed a report on the recommendations and a Buyer’s Guide. The recommendations, which were unveiled today, include thoughts on how government should deploy cloud technologies and address policies that might hinder US leadership of the cloud in the commercial space. The buyers guide and reference web site is available here.
Part of the discussion centered on Cloud Myths, Hype and Reality as we attempted to sort out some of the confusing messages today around cloud computing. For example:
On Cloud in IT
- Myth – Cloud computing will not affect Government IT
- Hype – Cloud is the coming of an unrivaled new age
- Reality – The cloud concept is based on established technologies (that probably go back as far as time-sharing). It is a fast-paced and complicated concept, so IT needs guidance and education to find the right path for their situation.
On Jobs
- Myth – Government clouds will sacrifice IT jobs
- Hype – Cloud does not negatively affect anyone
- Reality – Certainly today, IT as well as every other organization and process, must be efficient to survive. But the biggest reality is that cloud = opportunity.
On Security
- Myth – Cloud is inherently less secure.
- Hype – No worries with cloud security – they are the pros.
- Reality – It depends – on the provider and the customer’s requirements and problems. Many providers do offer best-in-class capabilities which are more affordable and up-to-date than most IT deployments.
On Affordability
- Myth – Cloud is financially unmanageable.
- Hype – Cloud is always cheaper.
- Reality – It depends – like everything else, cloud deployments need to be financially justified, budgeted and managed. Additional returns need to be considered for cloud’s inherent benefits of agility, accountability and deployment speed.
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by Bo Gowan
21 Jul 2011, 12:17 PM EDT
Last month, Ciena made a big announcement dubbed “Intelligent Infrastructure” that detailed the strategic evolution of our packet-optical portfolio. The news included a slew of product and technology enhancements across multiple product lines. In this second of several blog posts that delve into the details of some of those individual enhancements, we focus on the new 2-slot version of the Ciena 6500 packet-optical platform.
The 6500 packet-optical platform forms one of the major pillars of Ciena’s packet-optical transport solutions. With more than 20,000 nodes deployed worldwide, the 6500 is one of the most recognized and successful optical transport products in the industry.
Since its original introduction, the platform has been in a constant form of evolution, adding features and functionality as well as several new chassis configurations. Last month, Ciena officially unveiled a new 2-slot version of the 6500, making it the little sibling to the platform’s existing 7-slot, 14-slot and 32-slot chassis options.
But the 2-slot version of the 6500 is more than just a different size box, it serves as an entirely new deployment scenario for this ultra-flexible optical platform – extending the reach of the 6500 right to the customer premise.
Big Features in a Small Package
The 2-slot 6500 packs a ton of functionality into a small package. Just 2 standard rack units (2RU) in size, the chassis is also wall mountable and comes in both DC and AC power versions to accommodate different site requirements.
The 2-slot 6500 gets its name from the 2 service slots that are compatible with a list of existing 6500 service cards than can handle traffic ranging from TDM to packet to wavelengths, at speeds from 125Mb/s to 10Gb/s.
Additionally, the box features a built-in shelf processor that integrates eight multi-rate optical SFP ports that support sub-2.5G client services such as GbE, OC-3/12/48, STM-1/4/16, and FC100/200.
OTN Extension
The most notable feature of the new 2-slot 6500 is its OTN capabilities. Ciena’s Intelligent Infrastructure launch last month included the news that OTN functionality would be integrated into the 6500 series (see Ciena extends OTN across product lines). This includes even the 2-slot 6500. By using the same software load, management user interfaces and service interfaces as the rest of the 6500 family, the 2-slot 6500 is a truly seamless extension of the 6500 portfolio and a true extension of OTN to the customer premise.
Several OTN service cards are already available for the 2-slot 6500, with OTN capabilities also part of the integrated multi-rate optical ports in the shelf processor.
This OTN extension further to the edge of the network allows service providers to leverage OTN’s ability to more efficiently package multiple service types from the enterprise premise into a single wavelength.
Current supported cards. Support for other broadband cards will be
added as verification testing for these circuit packs is completed.
Have questions on the new 2-slot version of the Ciena 6500? Post them here and we will do our best to answer them.
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by Raven Haller
20 Jul 2011, 09:37 AM EDT
 Ciena has brought home another industry award, this one in the submarine networking space.
“The winner of the Innovation Award, awarded to the company or organization that has produced the best market innovation of the previous year, is presented to Ciena,” recently announced SubTel Forum in their July issue (PDF). Ciena receive the award because of our success with 40G/100G capacity and undersea mesh protection. In the last year alone, Ciena has signed 10 submarine networking deployments as submarine network operators search for ways to squeeze out more bandwidth from their existing fiber infrastructure..
 Considered the “Voice of the industry,” SubTel Forum offers information from around the world on submarine markets and technology. They examine the challenges, successes, and potential future of the industry as well as evaluate which companies are on the right track.
As the undersea market continues to grow and evolve, even more innovation and hard work will be critical to success. Luckily Ciena has already demonstrated they have what it takes to be successful.
If you’re interested in learning more about what submarine cables are already out there check out this handy interactive map of the world's submarine cable infrastructure.
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by Bo Gowan
18 Jul 2011, 12:14 PM EDT
Eastern Europe has its first 100G network, with Ciena and Felix Telecom today announcing that they are deploying Ciena's coherent 100G technology carrying 100GbE traffic on the Romanian Educational Network (RoEduNet). Felix Telecom is a Ciena BizConnect partner, and one of the largest system integrators in Romania.
RoEduNet is Romania's research and education (R&E) network, consisting of more than 4,200 km of optical fiber that connects universities, schools, research centers and cultural institutions across the country. RoEduNet also forms part of GÉANT – the European education and research network linking academic and research institutions in more than 30 European countries.
RoEduNet already has Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform and Common Photonic Layer installed throughout its network. This makes an upgrade to 100G as simple as installing a new line card. And RoEduNet has done just that for their link from Bucharest, the capital of Romania, to Iaşi, the country’s second largest city located more than 450 kilometers to the north. The new 100G wavelength can even run alongside existing 10G connections already live on the same fiber link.
The new link is running 100GbE traffic across this high-demand route. And with the move from 10G to 100G such a simple process, RoEduNet is already looking towards deploying additional 100G wavelengths to satisfy growing bandwidth demands:
"Ciena’s scalable network architecture is making it possible – and easy – for us to perform a smooth and cost-effective transition from our 10G network to 100G. We can increase network bandwidth simply and economically, which allows us to accelerate our work tenfold on complex research projects that require resources from all over the world. The ease of scalability and increased networking speed offered by Ciena’s optical networking technology enhances Romania’s ability to collaborate on cutting-edge science and research projects and enables our scientists to work with their peers at high performance computing and research centers across the globe. For these reasons we plan to continue installing 100 Gbps links to connect the main nodes in our network,” said Germin Mihai Dinu, general director of ARNIEC, the agency managing RoEduNet in today's press release.
RoEduNet is the latest customer in Ciena's growing list of public 100G customers, and also adds to Ciena's recent momentum with R&E networks. Ciena now counts more than a dozen customers that have deployed Ciena's coherent 100G technology on their live networks, with more than 6.5 million kilometers of coherent 40G/100G deployed worldwide.
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by Raven Haller
15 Jul 2011, 09:05 AM EDT
Ready for school? Good. Now plug in your brain and download today’s lesson – er – maybe not quite yet. Instead, how about bringing your tablet to class?
Online classes are now a common offering at colleges around the world, and that’s just the beginning of digital education. South Korea has recently mandated that all elementary level textbooks be digitized by 2014, with middle and high school textbooks joining them by 2015. But a mere digitization of paper textbooks is only the first step. As part of the South Korean government’s $2.4 billion investment, broadband wireless access will be provided in all schools, allowing student to access their digital textbooks and store homework on a cloud network designed specifically for the country’s educational needs.
Digital textbooks would seem to be a huge improvement over their cumbersome paper counterparts. More cost-efficient, lighter, and easy to navigate – sign me up! However tablets lack essential functionality students need for them to be an effective all-in-one classroom tool. Students need to take notes, read their textbook, check their planners, access old notes, and take online tests. In other words, multi-task. With that in mind I don’t think tablets will replace all school supplies just yet, but I would still prefer to take my laptop and an e-reader to class rather than my laptop and three heavy textbooks.
 Of course, this move to a digital classroom isn’t without its pitfalls. As a school, network security becomes an issue with the potential for 2,000+ high school students to be hacking firewalls to play games, exchanging passwords, and trying to get answers to tests from their teacher’s virtual files. As for IT and network maintenance, a handful of school computer labs is a totally different world from each student having their own device that has to work within the school and contain all the correct software for their learning.
Speaking of 2,000 tablets all running at once, that’s an awful lot of mobile bandwidth. What happens when the entire student body goes online at once and takes down the wireless network? Is school out for the day?
Even with these potential issues, South Korea’s move to a digital classroom seems to be the future of education. If so, tablet PCs like the iPad could go from hot tech gadget to household essential. And that would have a profound impact on the future of mobile networks. Introduced only one year ago, over 25 million iPads have already been sold, along with millions of other tablets. With that relatively small base of devices, the iPad already generates 1.03% of Internet traffic worldwide and 25% of U.S. mobile traffic. Imagine the transformation in network traffic if every student in every home went to school with a tablet PC in their backpack.
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by Bo Gowan
13 Jul 2011, 12:21 PM EDT
Ciena’s momentum in the Research & Education (R&E) community took another big step forward today with the announcements of two new Ciena solution deployments to support advanced R&E network applications. Because they support the needs of scientists and researchers to connect super computers, remote research locations and enable huge data transfers, R&E networks are usually at the cutting edge of technology – as is the case with today’s two announcements.
The first is in the Netherlands, where SURFnet will use Ciena’s Carrier Ethernet products to create a dynamic Ethernet layer across their national infrastructure. The second is in the U.S., where Berkeley Lab and Internet2 are teaming on a project to build a new 100G network for the Department of Energy using Ciena’s 100G technology.
 In the Netherlands, SURFnet runs the country’s national R&E network that supports over one million education and research users. Just two months ago we announced that SURFnet was deploying Ciena 100G technology on international links connecting the Netherlands to research communities like CERN in Switzerland. Today, SURFnet is again using Ciena gear – this time as part of its GigaPort3 project aimed at creating a new dynamic Ethernet layer across the SURFnet network (see the press release here).
SURFnet will use Ciena’s 5410 Service Aggregation Switch, which will provide packet/Ethernet traffic aggregation that scales to 1Tbps switching capacity, as well as 3940 and 3960 Service Delivery Switches – with the planned upgrade of approximately 300 sites during 2012. In addition, SURFnet will use Ciena’s recently unveiled OneControl Unified Management System to enable visibility and management of both the Optical and Ethernet layers of the network on a single system.
Combined, the new Ethernet network and management system will allow SURFnet to easily create and deliver tailored Ethernet services for its network users, and provides the foundation for more widespread use of cloud networking within the R&E community.
In the U.S., Berkeley Lab and its Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) team are joining efforts with Internet2 on a project to build a prototype 100G network that connects supercomputing centers owned by the Department of Energy (DOE). Called the Advanced Networking Initiative (ANI), the project is made possible by a $62M government grant.
As the first phase of this project, Internet2 is providing 4.4Tbps of capacity from its 100G network to connect three DOE supercomputing centers in Berkeley CA, Tennessee, and Illinois. These mammoth connections are made possible using Ciena’s 6500 packet-optical platform, which forms the basis of the Internet2 100G network now being built.
Steve Cotter announces the ESnet ANI network award at the Internet2 Joint Techs meeting in Fairbanks Alaska
The three centers connected as part of this project are the prelude to a nationwide 100G production network that will connect DOE scientists, with a more far reaching goal of achieving a 1Tbps wavelength network.
“Research network traffic is growing at twice the rate of commercial Internet traffic, and the trend is expected to accelerate as the scope of scientific collaborations increases and scientists around the world draw data from geographically dispersed experimental facilities like the Large Hadron Collider,” said Dave Lambert, Internet2 president and CEO, in today’s press release.
These two new projects extend a long list of Ciena deployments in the R&E community. Just this year, Ciena has announced: a new 100G network with Internet2 (link), a 40G deployment with VERNet (link), SURFnet’s 100G network (link), and a 100G trial with Renater (link). But Ciena’s work with the R&E community extends beyond just selling products to another customer segment. Ciena is an active participant in the R&E research community, and uses high performance research networks as a test-bed in the development of next generation technologies and architectures.
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by Bo Gowan
12 Jul 2011, 11:31 AM EDT
Last month, Ciena made a big splash with the introduction of Intelligent Infrastructure, our view on the strategic evolution that packet-optical networks must make. Intelligent Infrastructure is about moving away from a static and rigid network model and towards a more dynamic and flexible network infrastructure that allows the service provider to provide value-add services for business and residential customers alike.
 Key to this is an Optical Mesh Network, which uses an optical control plane to automate both the provisioning and restoration of complex optical networks.
During last month’s Ciena Analyst Day in NYC, Ihab Tarazi, Verizon’s VP of Global Network Planning, attended the event as a guest presenter (you can see a webcast archive here). Ihab spoke directly to the value of Mesh Networks, and detailed the exceptional performance of Verizon’s global IP network during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami disaster in March. Verizon’s is one of the largest and most connected global IP networks in the world, with 180,000 business customers using the network. And as Ihab explained during his session, it is far from being a static network:
“Talking a little bit about the smarts or the IQ of the network…this is an area where we’ve been collaborating with Ciena for a very long time.”
“The core of the network is a mesh control plane capable network, and we’ve had global deployment of mesh for many years. We have eight-way diversity across the Atlantic ocean, another eight-way diversity across the Pacific. And that is tremendous, when you built the network with the physical capabilities, with all the submarine cable investment we have and fibers across the global, as well as the control plane, you really can achieve six-nines availability on a sustainable basis.”
Ihab went on to give specifics on Verizon’s mesh network performance during the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:
“So during the last Japan disaster, many cable systems were cut. Even if it’s a seven or eight cable system, these cable systems had 15-20 cuts. And it wasn’t just one event, we had multiple aftershocks. If you remember, every two days or three days there was another aftershock. Well the [Verizon] network survived all of those within 50 milliseconds. We have not lost a single circuit for any customer, or dropped a packet during the whole situation.”
“That is owed half to the physical network diversity, but also the dynamic mesh network’s ability to see all these paths and restore dynamically within milliseconds.”
While this ability for the network to survive extreme events may sound exceptional, Ihab said that customers are increasingly expecting it as a requirement:
“In fact, the new fundamental customer expectation is that events like that are seen in a small latency fluctuation, not an outage. So that’s the new expectation in the marketplace. That’s what people need for their applications.”
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by Bo Gowan
06 Jul 2011, 09:40 AM EDT
For many, June signifies the beginning of summer (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere), a time when vacation season and a lack of big industry events combine to create a bit of a lull in the industry news cycle. That definitely wasn't the case for Ciena last month, as June produced a bevvy of news items for the company that ranged from new product introductions to Tier 1 customer news to the introduction of something called "coherent cycle slips."
So we start off the month of July by looking back at the five most important stories and topic lines from June. Of course, this is just my list. Did I miss any that you would have included? Let me know in the comments section.
1.) Ciena unveiled "Intelligent Infrastructure" including major updates to our 6500 and 5400 platforms.
Ciena detailed the strategic evolution of its packet-optical portfolio with our Intelligent Infrastructure launch in June. The news included a long list of product and software news, including the addition of OTN capabilities to the 6500 series and the addition of 100G coherent to the 5400 series. Ciena's new OneControl unified network management system was also introduced, as was a new 2-slot version of the 6500.
In fact, there are so many parts to this Intelligent Infrastructure announcement that we are still working through the details of the individual pieces on this blog (see Ciena extends OTN across product lines).
2.) Ciena hosted its Analyst Day in NYC
Just a few days after the Intelligent Infrastructure launch, Ciena hosted a group of financial analysts for the company's Analyst Day in NYC. The event was webcast to the public (you can see an archive here), and I blogged about each presentation in near-real time (something new for our blog). Presenters included Gary Smith, Rick Dodd, Philippe Morin, Jim Moylan and Verizon's Ihab Tarazi. You can see all our blog coverage of the presentations starting with Gary's presentation here).
Ciena execs talk to financial analysts during a Q&A session at Ciena's Analyst Day in June
3.) Ciena issued 2Q'11 financial results
On June 8th, Ciena issued its Q2'11 financial results, followed by a conference call hosted by CEO Gary Smith. As he does in many of Ciena's quarterly calls, Gary provided some insight on the progress of several of Ciena’s key technologies and product platforms in the market. I summarized those comments in this blog post, which includes an updated customer count for 100G ("more than a dozen"), 40G (75), and 5400 (six).
4.) Kim Roberts talked about the issue of Coherent Cycle Slips
 By far the most popular blog post from June was our discussion with Kim Roberts on the topic of Coherent Cycle Slips, an issue that can seriously hamper optical networks based on coherent technology if left unchecked. This was a new topic of many of our readers, and is still generating quite a bit of debate in the comments section of the post. No matter what side of the discussion you fall on, Cycle Slip is likely going to be part of the coherent technology discussion for the foreseeable future.
5.) ....
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