Broadcom’s solution is a combination of a unified wireless switch called BCM56520, an access point (AP) SoC called codenamed BCM4748, and special software called FASTPATH Unified Wireless Switching (UWS) version 6.0.

The BCM56520 switch is part of the company’s StrataXGS Ethernet switch family, and is a true unified wireless / wireline switch that works with high-end wireless controllers. The switch incorporates up to 28 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports and six HiGig2 ports.

The BCM4748 AP SoC combines an 802.11n medium access controller (MAC), a baseband processor, a dual-band radio, a MIPS74K CPU, a GbE MAC, power amplifiers and other WLAN components on a single die.

The FASTPATH UWS software incorporates wireless virtualization software that enables centralized management for unified edge switching, which is preferred for wireless LAN solutions over controller-based switching. Version 6.0 of the software has the capability to drive wireless voice in the enterprise and supports additional features required for enterprise-grade voice over WLAN (VoWLAN).

According to market research sources, the access point market for 802.11n is expected to explode by more than 1,400% over the next five years.

Read about the latest development in 802.11n networks brought by Broadcom, here.

The latest server is especially attractive to small businesses with 15 workstations or less, and whose computing requirements do not require the powerful features that the more advanced versions of Windows Server OS offers. These user environments typically have simple needs such as file sharing, print sharing, networking, Terminal services, remote connections and other common server roles. The OS can be used as an Active Directory server or domain controller, and can also join a domain as a member server or domain controller.

The new OS will be available in 40 countries to begin with. The product will be sold pre-installed on servers from manufacturers such as Dell, HP and IBM. The OEM manufacturers have been allowed to set their own price. Each license of the product is limited to a maximum of 15 user accounts. There are no CALs required.

Read about the latest addition to the Windows Server family, here.

The StorCenter Pro ix4-100 comes in two capacities – 2TB and 4TB built using four drives that are hot-swap SATA II-based. The system can be operated by a web interface with a dashboard that gives a snapshot of its status. The interface frontends an EMC LifeLine software that runs and manages the system. LifeLine is a Linux-based software developed by EMC, the parent company of Iomega. Computers running OSs such as Windows, Linux or Macintosh can access and back-up their files on the ix4-100 NAS, and the product is equally at ease with formats such as FAT32, NTFS, or ext2/ext3.

The ix4-100 comes pre-configured for RAID 5 and can be configured for RAID 10 and JBOD. There are four USB 2.0 ports which can be used to connect printers (for print-sharing jobs) as well as additional storage. The ix4-100 fits in well within the Windows Active Directory structure, so users in the AD get to access it just like any other resource.

Besides computers, some other diverse-application devices can be connected directly to the ix4-100. For instance, video cameras (up to three) can be hooked to the device to capture and store video directly on to its hard disks. Media devices such as media players (UPnP and DLNA-certified), game consoles (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3), audio bridges, iTunes players, digital picture frames etc can connect directly to the ix4-100 and get streams of photos, audio content and videos. The ix4-100 also allows users to upload data from cell phones, pocket PC or Blackberry through Bluetooth. Digital cameras can be hooked to a USB port to transfer their photos to the machine’s disks.

The product is available for USD 799.95 (2TB version) and USD1,299.95 (4TB version).

Read more about the latest launch from Iomega, here.

TAT Logo

TAT-14 is a consortium of approximately 40 international telecommunications carriers, whose mandate is the laying of fiber optic cables using EDFA repeaters across the Atlantic Ocean. The total length of the cabling is 15,428 km, with a self-healing ring topology and design capacity of 640Gbps. The cable system has six landing points – four of which are in mainland Europe (Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Germany), one in UK and one in the US. The configuration has the capacity to transport approx. 9,700K circuits across the ocean.

Sprint succeeded in transmitting a single-wavelength OC768 40Gbps signal between New York and LuleA, Sweden, over the cable already laid down by TAT-14. The signal traveled a distance of 9,000km. Sprint used Cisco’s Carrier Routing System (CRS-1) and StrataLight’s IPoDWDM system and technology to feed the existing DWDM hardware with signals.

Read more about the technology trial by Sprint Nextel here.

Christened “ABEx 2020″, the product is part of their family of multiservice transport gateways, and is capable of extending InfiniBand fabrics over an IP network through the Pseudowire (PW) technology. The PW technology emulates the operation of a “transparent wire” carrying the native service over a Packet Switched Network (PSN), and while it is generally realized that the emulation will not be perfect, the company claims to have achieved a perfect emulation through traffic engineering breakthroughs over very long distances.

The ABEx 2020 is claimed to be the right solution for applications involving high performance computing, such as cloud, wide area virtualization, clustered databases and real-time financial services; and is said to enable administrators to go beyond the data center and offer their network and storage services to external users. ABEx 2020 has the capability, according to the company, to extend InfiniBand to any point on the globe, using either optical transport or packet switched networks reliably, and that too at full line rate performance.

The product is built around the company’s proprietary network processor and traffic management IC technology.

Read more about Bay Microsystems’ ABEx 2020 product here.

Cisco ASR

San Jose, California-based Cisco Systems Inc has launched a new router, called Aggregation Services Router 9000 (ASR 9000) that supports 100Mbps of throughput delivering hi-speed video service for homes.

With this product, Cisco hopes to encash the massive surge in video traffic that is already said to be 70 times more than the entire US traffic just eight years ago, in 2000. By the year 2012, the video traffic in the entire world is estimated to be 390 times the volume of 2000.

The ASR 9000 series of routers has up to 400 gigabits per slot capacity, leading to up to 6.4 tera bits of total capacity, and the router itself comes in a 10-slot configuration. A 6-slot configuration is available where physical space is a premium.

The device runs on Cisco-designed IOS XR Operating System which leverages the power of the underlying carrier Ethernet to provide uninterrupted visual networking service delivery to IP-enabled TVs, laptops, PCs and video-aware mobile devices (such as the iPhone, Blackberry, etc). The OS and the ASR 9000 circuitry combine enable video-on-demand (VoD) system where the user “pulls” video off the internet, from anywhere, and whenever. A new technology known as Advanced Video Services Module (AVSM) provides content caching, ad insertion, fast channel change and error correction at the router level. 

Read more about the ASR 9000 here.

Hughes Communication Systems

Germantown, Maryland-based Hughes Network Systems LLC announced a collaborative research agreement with a US Defense wing on the domain of overall IP convergence between Defense’s networking and the global information grid.

The agreement, termed Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA), has been signed between Hughes and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and will focus on Network Centric Enterprise Architecture validation of IP networking, with the Regenerative Satellite Mesh (RSM-A) standard and Hughes’ SPACEWAY 3 system.

The pressing need behind the research is to seamlessly integrate Department of Defense (DoD)’s SATCOM networking with the rest of the world.

SPACEWAY 3 is a Ka-band broadband satellite system designed and developed by Hughes. Launched in August 2007, the commercial services, including high-speed data networking of speeds from 512Kbps to 16Mbps (with overall capacity of 10Gbps), became available to US consumers from April, 2008. The satellite system is touted as the world’s first commercial satellite to deploy onboard traffic switching and routing capability. The network of ground terminals hooked up with the SPACEWAY 3 satellites ensure site-to-site, single-hop connectivity. It is this capability that the DISA seeks to tap into, through the CRADA.
Read more about the agreement between Hughes and DISA here.

Central Axis Network Storage Server from Seagate & Maxtor

Scotts Valley, California-based Seagate Technology LLC on Wednesday (November 12) introduced a network storage server aimed at the small business market.

The “Central Axis” Business Edition is a dual-drive network storage server that can handle data storage and protection for up to 20 computers in a network. Up to 2 terabyte (SATA II – 7,200rpm) of data can be safely guarded on the central server; users have to simply pick and choose the folders and files on their individual PCs, using standard OS, to be backed up, along with the desired frequency of backup, and the software does the rest.

The accompanying software takes care of scheduled backup in the background. Two drives perform data mirroring through RAID 1 (the total hard disk capacity gets halved when mirroring is enabled). The network server itself can be backed up to additional external HDD through two USB ports. In addition, business owners and users can remotely access their data while on the road through standard browsers.

Weighing about 3kg, the product requires wired / wireless router with 10/100/1,000 RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet port.

Another feature worth-mentioning is that up to 10 historical versions of data can be simultaneously archived at any point of time (subject to capacity limitations).

Read more about Seagate’s latest network storage server offering here.

HP Logo

A new storage virtualization platform that can simplify the management of heterogeneous midrange storage arrays has been announced by Palo Alto, California-based Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

Named HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP), the product pools capacity across storage hardwares and brings a centralized command to the fingertips of the administrator. The SVSP makes it possible to distribute application data as per the demands of users; say for example data being consigned to archives can be shifted to lower-cost storage in real-time, without disrupting operations. Thanks to SVSP, customers can plan to purchase less-capacity storage hardware on a staggered, need-to-use basis and keep on adding capacity as business grows.

Further, SVSP allows seamless data replication techniques to be deployed, which means that cloning, snapshots, synchronous local mirroring and asynchronous remote mirroring make it possible to back up data remotely and assist in recovery in situations of disaster.

Virtualization as an efficient and cost-effective concept has grown across all technologies in the domain by 26% over the period from 2006 to 2008; and within the domain, storage virtualization technology has grown by 36%. SVSP seeks to capitalize on this interest in the technology, as network based virtualization reduces TCO considerably.

Read more about SVSP here.

The technology of WiMAX – short for “Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access” – provides high-speed wireless internet access. The 4G version of WiMAX is a fully IP-based integrated system, which means that any computing device with an IP address can get connected to the internet, including not only desktop and notebook PCs, handsets, smartphones, but also consumer electronic devices such as cameras, camcorders, music players, gaming devices, etc. Speeds from 100 Mbps upwards have become possible with WiMAX 4G technology, so a full-length movie stored in a 4.7 Gb DVD-5 can be downloaded in a matter of minutes. Xohm has promised 2 – 4 Mbps download speed and 0.5 – 1.5 Mbps upload speed to its customers for now, which compares favorably to the maximum 786 Kbps afforded by DSL and 1.5 Mbps made possible by cable as of September 2008.

Baltimore is the first city in the US to come under the magic spell of 4G WiMAX. Soon to follow are the cities of Chicago, Washington, Dallas, Fort Worth, Boston and Philadelphia. The momentum gathered at that point of time is expected to fuel a nationwide rollout.

Kirkland, Washington-based Clearwire Corporation and Sprint Nextel Corporation have announced their plan to merge their wireless broadband businesses to create a new company to be called Clearwire.