This year’s Cable Show kicked off with a … well, with a flash mob! First one ever for this event. All very exciting, if you ask me, or the hundreds of other cable onlookers on hand at the Boston Convention Center this morning.
Here’s how it went down: When the Show floor opened yesterday, at 11:00am, attendees mixed it up with 100 or so professional troupe dancers, some dressed in green stretchy suits, head to toe, with signage: “Don’t miss the event of the Show! Imagine Park, today at 11:30am! Be there!” Mysterious.
When Cisco Fellow John Chapman took the Imagine Park stage at about 11:40am, it wasn’t to talk about CCAP, or the future of DOCSIS, or anything else, for that matter – because the green people and flash mobbers took over, in a big way. See for yourself:
But flashmobbing isn’t all we’re doing in Boston to shine the spotlight on the many good things happening in cable technology. We’re also glad to announce our work with Bright House Networks, to help businesses and school districts manage the security risks that come with the “BYOD” (bring your own device) realities of today.
Specifically, we’re working with Bright House to help the nation’s 10th-largest school district, serving 179,000 students, with a cloud-based managed services mix (IP VPNs, security; unified communications to come) to more than 250 sites. More here.
On the floor, do please come by Booth #1453, to check out our brand spankin’ new DS384 line cards, for our RF Gateway 10 chassis. Why you care: 10 cards, each capable of 10 Gbps. Apply one for redundancy, still get 160 Gbps of potential downstream throughput. Hello, full spectrum!
All in, it’s a great cable week in Boston! We’re here ‘til Wednesday afternoon, come on by.
Over the last ten years, the utilization of mobile devices by consumers has undergone a radical transformation. From voice, to SMS messaging, to data, to interactive applications, mobile devices have become an integral part of consumer’s daily lifestyle. This year the number of mobile connected devices will exceed the world’s population. This is the beginning of a paradigm shift in the mobility sphere, this is the New Normal.
This new mobility movement can be defined by three technological trends:
In today’s world, users have more than one mobile device they want to use for work, life and play. End users expect Read More »
CTIA has certainly evolved a lot over the years. I’ve been attending for a long time, yet, whether in Orlando, Las Vegas, or New Orleans it seemingly takes on a new persona, a new vibe, and a new set of aspirations each year. This year was no different; through the chaos and change, however, I am beginning to see a major trend unfolding. Specifically, I see an industry in flux, one moving from device to application based innovation. What drew me initially to this conclusion was the lack of new designs and features on the floor this year from the device manufacturers. In fact, to some degree, there was even a lack of participation. No Nokia. No RIM. No Motorola. Instead, there were just a few of the Asian OEM manufacturers and a lot of accessory distributors.
On the other hand, I did see some really cool applications getting attention. Is this the new paradigm? Will unique and compelling apps upstage the efforts of the device guys for attention going forward? Will consumers Read More »
I have recently returned from sampling the finest of New Orleans hospitality and hanging out with my wireless friends at the CTIA Wireless 2012 conference. CTIA provides great insights into the wireless industry in one of the world’s biggest markets and technology superpower – the USA. It’s hard not to compare CTIA with the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While many of the things that I observed at MWC in February were equally visible at CTIA, I also observed a number of different items, or different slants on where the mobile industry was heading. I am always amazed and overwhelmed at just how big the mobile ecosystem and economy are. Unlike MWC, the CTIA show floor had a very healthy representation from all parts of the mobile ecosystem – everything from device accessories, to back-up power solutions, to applications, to CNBC broadcasting live, and many things that I couldn’t understand. It makes you realize just how big this industry is and how innovation across all parts of the value chain have fueled this phenomenon.
The U.S. wireless industry feels like it is back on top. Once the leader in innovation and customer demand, U.S. mobile lost much of that position over the last decade as it battled amongst itself on competing 3G technologies. The U.S. now has 105% mobile penetration and 64% of the world’s LTE subscribers. Not to mention that innovation in mobile has shifted back to the U.S., with the likes Read More »
Today, Cisco is kicking off its “Your Way” campaign which is focused on the universally desired but sophisticated requirements around the delivery of mobile experiences. Not just mobile access – that is simply changing an access type – but rather a mobile experience that maps to your needs depending on the device you’re holding, the service or application you’re using, the time and location you want it — in sum, it’s a mobile experience “your way.”
You’ll see Cisco highlighting this in a variety of forums – from an opening webcast featuring Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior and BT to an array of on-going activities such as a dedicated website advertisements and even in future innovation announcements like the major one we’ll be having on June 5th (you can register here to be among the first to hear the news.And when we do, you’ll see that we promote that such personalized, superior mobile experiences “don’t have to compromise the way of business.”
While that phrasing may make sense for the Bring Your Own Device trend in the Enterprise where many CIOs are concerned about security and compliance, how does it apply to Service Providers?
The last time I blogged about CCAP, we were checking the online anagram universe for words one could make out of “CMAP” and “CESAR,” then two competing labels for the work of converging the QAM modulators used by digital voice, video and data services in cable.
Happily for me (because the anagram selections were abysmal), it settled out as what is now “CCAP” – the Cable Converged Access Platform. Watch for it to be a pretty hot topic at next week’s Cable Show — and not just because we announced a pretty incredible new downstream line card (the DS-384) related to it. Although…
CCAP matters at this year’s Cable Show for the same reason it mattered last year: Because consumer usage of broadband is off the hook, and cable operators need to stay ahead of that very tight curve, because narrowcast services are Read More »
One of the topics we covered this week at the Cisco Packet Optical Networking Conference was cloud computing. A benefit of cloud computing is that the physical infrastructure – the storage and compute resources – can be located almost anywhere as long as there is reliable network access. Several countries are leveraging their low cost green power to grow their economies with new data center facilities. A publicly announced example of this is Facebook which has built an enormous facility in northern Sweden. Iceland with its cooler temperatures and green geothermal power, plus ideal location between North America and Europe has seen a significant growth in its data center industry. However, being an island nation it faces a challenge to ensure that sufficient cost-effective network capacity is available to connect off-island users with its storage and compute resources.
Farice, the primary provider of networking services to and from Iceland and operator of two submarine cable links to Europe has sought to Read More »
The scale of today’s transport networks and content provider data centers are directly driven by the explosive nature of packet traffic growth. As a result, the demand for 100G and beyond is a key topic in the industry. Cisco’s recent 100G announcement and its industry leading performance for Ultra Long Haul continues to receive significant attention within the service provider community as they consider options for their next generation transport networks.
However, the solution is not only about faster transmission speeds. Service providers must also increase efficiency within their network. Until now, traditional network architectures have inefficiently maintained separate Read More »
Greetings from (very) sunny Las Vegas! I am here at the second annual Cloud Carrier Forum (CCF), and this year’s edition really upped the bar for the type of critical and actionable discussions taking place around cloud computing.
We just wrapped up a lively panel discussion on cloud services, and one of the topics that kept popping up was how service providers can best bring their cloud services to market. This actually fits very closely with the theme of my keynote session from this morning, which was titled “Delivering Services in a World of Many Clouds.” You can view the presentation slides below.
As CCF 2012 draws to a close, I want to pause for a moment and try to tie all of today’s information together. I’ll begin with the main concept of my keynote: A World of Many Clouds. Cisco believes Read More »
Customers from around the world are gathered today at Cisco’s campus in Richardson, Texas to kick off the Spring 2012 Packet Optical Networking Conference (PONC). This brings together network operators, large enterprise customers, optical industry leaders, and Cisco solution teams at a three-day event to collaborate on best practices and future requirements in IP and optical solutions. Some of the key themes that will be featured at this year’s event include:
40G/100G Coherent DWDM transport over 10G infrastructure: Much of the infrastructure today was designed to support only 10G wavelengths. It is undesirable to cap and start over with new infrastructure that is purpose built for 40/100G. Cisco’s unique Coherent optical transport technology is a game Read More »
Lately, our customers have been expressing interest in a number of cloud topics:
What are best practices in building a cloud business?
Enterprise-grade solutions versus best-efforts applications
Standardization and security
Connectivity from end-to-end
Advanced technologies within and between clouds
I’m looking forward to continuing the conversations with cloud service providers next week down in Las Vegas. If you’re coming to Interop, we’re continuing Read More »
It was raining in London last week during the LightReading event Strategic Opportunities in Service Provider Wi-Fi. That might not sound unusual, but actually my cab driver said it had been a dry winter, and the rain was much needed for his garden. That’s how I felt about the event – it felt like a lovely spring rain.
Heavy Reading Senior Analyst Gabriel Brown first addressed the packed room by likening the early days of Wi-Fi to the Wild West. With the advent of carrier-grade Wi-Fi, the integration of Wi-Fi into Mobile networks, and initiatives such as the Wireless Broadband Alliance Next Generation Hotspot Program, the west is slowly Read More »
Everyone is talking about the transition to IPv6 in the run up to the June 6th launch of the IPv6 Internet. Most of the discussion has focused on the technical details of various approaches – 6rd vs. DS-Lite vs. CGNAT for example. However, what we haven’t seen is an effort made to look at the economic impact of the choice between IPv4 extension vs. IPv6 transition and back it up with some real world data. A few months back we asked telecommunications analyst Nav Chander of IDC (pictured right) to evaluate and publish the results of an economic analysis of the IPv6 options. This is a crucial and timely topic because operators are faced with important decisions about which transition technologies to use, when to implement them, and where in the network.
We’re pleased to report that Nav is finished and is ready to reveal the results of his findings. To keep the scope of his analysis within a reasonable boundary, he initially focused on just one scenario: that of a wireline carrier considering the deployment of a Carrier Grade NAT-only implementation (which basically just extends the life of IPv4 with no IPv6), or migrating to IPv6 with a combination of CGNAT (for short term IPv4 extension) and while new customers were deployed with 6rd.
The results of this study are detailed in a new Read More »
By Carlos Cordero, Director, Service Provider Internet Business Solutions Group
In my previous blog I explained the importance of collaborative testing between telecommunications service providers (SPs) and their network vendors in order to achieve higher service quality levels. I’d like to start where I left off and move on to exploring how this type of collaboration can extend into the planning process.
SPs with the highest service quality tend to have a strong planning capability within both their Network Engineering and Operations organizations, which is directly coordinated with their vendors. Leading SPs establish a joint Program Management Office (PMO) with their network equipment vendor, whose scope of responsibility includes early bug identification, bug remediation, and new feature deployment. This includes structured, joint planning meetings and performance reviews which are attended by VP-level engineering and operations executives, as well as senior members of the vendor’s account team, services organization, and the development organization.
The joint SP-vendor PMO performs several critical activities. First, it drives requirements gathering with senior network designers, and then works with them until actual code is released. The PMO also develops network architectures with the vendor and the SP’s engineers using “Plan-of-Record” (POR) documentation. Next, the PMO jointly prioritizes feature functionality with the vendor, keeping track of critical features needed by specified timeframes. It works closely with the vendor’s development organization to understand any design limitations, testing issues, and special conditions. In addition to performing classic management functions, the PMO makes use of “Bug Workbooks” to track all major, critical, and minor bugs and trends.
We’ve all now returned from the stardust of the annual National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas last week, which seems a useful time to reflect briefly on the major threads of the show. It was a great one for us, and I’m pleased and grateful to report the following, in no particular order:
1. Broadcasters and program networks are getting fired up about the IP transition, like the rest of us, and not a moment too soon. We fielded tons of questions about the cost savings associated with CDNs (Content Delivery Networks), IP distribution over terrestrial fiber networks--the proliferation of IP-based, video-capable screens, and cloud--how to get new services to market more quickly and how to streamline workflows. Transcoding engines, contribution networks, and all of the tacit and explicit benefits of the overall IP migration were all hot topics.
Of course, we, as Cisco people, can talk about IP all day long. And so we did: One of the Cisco booth demos highlighted Read More »
