BT Issues 21CN Ethernet RFP

LightReading reports that the BT Group has issued a major Ethernet equipment Invitation to Tender (ITT) for its £10 billion (US$18.7 billion) 21CN next-generation network project. The article mentions that BT says it is spending about £3.4 billion (US$6.3 billion) on the initial contracts with its eight preferred suppliers, but it is not giving any guidance about the planned capital expenditure to be used on Ethernet gear.

Read the full article at:
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=94256&WT.svl=news1_3

Broadcom Ships two billionth ethernet port

Broadcom has announced that it has shipped more than 2 billion Ethernet ports including 200 million Gigabit-over-copper PHY ports.

Broadcom shipped its first Ethernet port in 1995. In the Linley Group's "Networking Silicon Market Share 2005" report, Broadcom is ranked as the number one supplier of all Ethernet Integrated Circuits (ICs), including Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) and Fast Ethernet (FE) components and holds a 45.6% share of the market.

2 Billion. Amazing number. Demonstrates the ubiquity of Ethernet. What started as such a simple technology has surpassed all other technologies, and is now seen everywhere: notebooks, routers, switches, access points, ...

Press release at: http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=852110&source=home

Aktino Gets Metro Ethernet Forum Certification

Aktino has been awarded the Metro Ethernet Form (MEF) 9 certification from Iometrix, the MEF authorized lab, for its AK4000 product family.

The AK4000 product family enables 10 to 25 Mbps business-class Ethernet services. Introduced in mid-2005, the AK4000 family is a cost-effective, operationally feasible business broadband solution to bridge the service gap between high-bandwidth, high-margin Ethernet over fiber services and low-bandwidth DS1 or Ethernet over DS1 HDSL-based solutions.

Inifinera Joins Ethernet Alliance

Infinera is the first vendor completely focussing on optical systems and switches to join the Ethernet Alliance. Seems that this shall give the Ethernet Alliance added muscle as it pushes to 100 Gig Ethernet. Infinera has developed the first optical system offering capacity in 100 Gb/s increments, leveraging Infinera’s 100 Gb/s photonic integrated circuits (PICs). I

nfinera demonstrated 400 Gb/s PICs in 2005 and recently demonstrated the world's first 1.6 terabit per second (Tb/s) PIC. PIC technology promises to be a key enabler for scaling Ethernet into the Tb/s era. The steady advances of Infinera's PIC technology, combined with the rapid growth of bandwidth in the IP network, suggest that the move from 40 Gb/s to 100 Gb/s will take a fraction of the time of the move from 10 Gb/s to 40 Gb/s. Please read more details on teh company press release which dates back to April 27, 2006.

http://www.infinera.com/news/2006-04-27.html

Report Positions Neterion as Leader in 10 Gig Ethernet

An article that I missed reporting, dates back to April 18. Based on a report by The Linley Group, the leading provider of independent technology analysis for the networking-silicon industry, Neterion's market share is the 10 Gig Ethernet Adapter market was placed at 48.7% with an annual growth rate of 156.8%.

Market for GEPON Growing: Teknovus

Press Release from Teknovus today mentioning that demand for triple-play on GEPON is rapidly growing and over 20 carriers have deployed Teknovus GEPON OLTs and ONUs to support triple play. These carriers are mainly in Taiwan, China, Korea, and Japan. Read artcile for more details.

Force 10 breaks Into Security

Read this interesting article about Force 10 adding intrusion detection to its 10 Gbps switches.

Neterion Introduces Hyperframe

Neterion has developed Hyperframe™, an I/O Virtualization (IOV) architecture that expands hardware support to input/output (I/O) devices, providing end-to-end virtualization for the enterprise data center infrastructure. Platforms that will benefit from this new technology span all elements of the datacenter, from storage to servers, and will be of particular importance to blade server environments. See press release at teh above link.

Artcile on Nyquist Captal on Passave Acquisition

Very interesting read.

Neterion demoing at Storage Networking World

At the upcoming Storage Networking World conference in San Diego, Neterion will announce that they have teamed with Microsoft to offer, for the first time, iSCSI Remote Boot capabilities over a 10 Gigabit Ethernet SAN. This iSCSI SAN diskless boot demo will be featured in the Neterion and Microsoft booths.

Atrica Raises $28M More Funding

Atrica has raised $28 million additional funding. Please read link provided.

PMC-Sierra acquiring Passave

Major chip vendor PMC-Sierra will acquire GEPON (and recently GPON) startup chipmaker Passave. The acquisition cost is report is reported to be $300 Million in stock. Most of Passave’s business is currently with Mitsubishi/NTT in Japan with annual revenues reported to be ~$40 Million.