MPLSWC19: Cisco signs CANAL+ and Iliad

At MPLS+SDN+NFV World Congress in Paris, Cisco announced two significant wins:

CANAL+ has strategically chosen to base its new Content Delivery Network (CDN) on the Cisco NCS 5516 Series platform, using Cisco IOS XR software. The upgrade provides enhanced capacity to handle projected traffic growth driven by increasing content consumption. As the highest traffic peak recorded by CANAL+ last year was 500Gbps, the new CDN has been designed to deliver 1Tbps + on day one. It will be supported by twin POPs to deliver both live and on-demand content. The upgrade also protects CANAL+ critical services against any faults within the core and at the network edge.

Iliad has selected Cisco for a national IP Network to support a new mobile offering in Italy. The network leverages Segment Routing IPv6 (SRv6). This new architecture is built upon multiple products spanning the Cisco networking portfolio, including the ASR 9000 and new NCS 5500 routers for core IP, NCS routers for DWDM infrastructure, and Nexus switches for Data Center. Cisco said the SRv6 deployment enables Iliad to build a network that is extremely scalable with improved reliability, flexibility and agility, all while helping to reduce CapEx and OpEx. To further expand the SRv6 benefits across the entire network, Iliad has developed, in close collaboration with Cisco, its own SRv6 software stack that will equip its homegrown “NodeBox” designed to aggregate the traffic from mobile base stations.

 “We needed a future-proof CDN network architecture to not only handle strong traffic growth but also to increase customer satisfaction by providing highly resilient services.” said Benoît Chemin, Network Architect at CANAL+. “By constantly evolving to integrate leading-edge technology advancements, Cisco helps us better address new requirements from changing market conditions.”

“With this new Cisco based IP Network, we are equipped to continuously deliver innovative services to our end-customers while benefiting from a simple and scalable infrastructure,” said Thomas Reynaud, CEO of Iliad. “It will help us strengthen the outstanding commercial success we’ve encountered with more than 2.8 million new subscribers in just 7 months and solidify our position as the new ‘go-to’ brand in Italy.”