Alcatel-Lucent announced collaboration agreements with Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND. The partnerships are aimed at accelerating the delivery of commercial virtualized radio access network (vRAN) products.
Alcatel-Lucent is trialling its near-commercial vRAN with leading service providers in North America, Asia and Europe using a platform that consists of 6WIND, Advantech and Red Hat hardware and software. In 2016 Alcatel-Lucent will expand these trials using the CloudBand NFV™ platform to onboard and manage applications.
Some key points:
- Alcatel-Lucent and Red Hat are expanding their existing collaboration on CloudBand and Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform to jointly enhance NFV-based features and better address the needs of the telecommunications market with open source. This includes the integration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, and Red Hat Ceph Storage within Alcatel-Lucent’s vRAN offering.
- Advantech is supplying its Packetarium XLc PAC-6009, a high-density carrier-grade blade server with switching infrastructure that supports all processing, storage and switching elements in a compact size. Advantech’s PAC-6009 server is ‘NEBS compliant’ for the North American market and fits in a standard rack to simplify network introduction.
- 6WIND will supply its 6WINDGate product offering a variety of networking and security protocols and features to allow Alcatel-Lucent to optimize the performance of its vRAN technology.
- Alcatel-Lucent is also working with a number of service providers to develop innovative NFV-based radio access network technologies. Additionally the company demonstrated its progress with China Mobile, Telefónica and Intel at Mobile World Congress in 2015 and announced the industry’s first live field trial of vRAN technology with China Mobile in July.
“We are leaders in vRAN technology and use a strategy of collaboration to integrate leading third-party technologies and deliver world-class products that meet the unique needs of our service provider customers. Working with Red Hat, Advantech and 6WIND we are accelerating the availability of our vRAN, giving operators the flexibility and efficiency they require on a large-scale to meet subscriber data demand into the future,” said Glenn Booth, vice-president of Wireless Portfolio Management and Strategy at Alcatel-Lucent.
https://www.alcatel-lucent.com
Advantech Launches Packetarium XLc Carrier Grade Blade Server
Advantech launched its Packetarium XLc carrier-grade blade server designed for mobile edge computing, where greater scalability and elasticity are needed to respond to fluctuations in subscriber demand and the introduction of additional new services.
Advantech said its Packetarium XLc is the first commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) telco-grade server of its class to extend Network Function Virtualization (NFV) beyond the core network to both edge and access equipment. The system scales compute performance over nine Intel Xeon processor blades. Higher processing densities and lower power footprints are achieved through dual Intel Xeon processor blades that provide up to 144 powerful Intel Xeon processor cores in a compact 6U platform with a reduced depth of 400mm. The system routes traffic through two redundant switches that connect to the dual-star backplane creating an internal network with no single point of failure. It integrates Advantech’s Advanced Platform Management and is designed to meet demanding industry standards requiring five 9’s availability and NEBS Level 3 compliance.
Dan Rodriguez, General Manager, Intel Communications Infrastructure Division, said “Advantech’s Packetarium XLc is a good example of how members of the Intel Network Builders ecosystem play a key role in providing operators with the tools they need to actually go out and deploy a scalable and flexible NFV infrastructure built on Intel Xeon processors”.
“The Packetarium XLc enabled by a rich middleware partner ecosystem provides a solid NFV Infrastructure (NFVI) to application developers and content providers enabling them with the cloud-computing capabilities and IT-style service environment they need at the edge of the mobile network so they can drive new revenue streams for operators.” said Peter Marek, Senior Director x86 Solutions, Advantech Networks and Communications Group. “In addition, the system addresses real network deployment needs in locations with high mobile subscriber density and where greenfield installations are not possible.”
http://www2.advantech.com/networks-telecom/News.aspx?doc_id=32F7F005-9765-459F-B8B9-ECAF13A5B1C5
