Network News: Cariden, Ciena, Infineta

Here’s our review of some of today’s noteworthy links for the networking sector of the data center industry:

Cariden software used by LINX for Olympic preparation.  Cariden Technologies announced that the London Internet Exchange (LINX) employed Cariden’s MATE platform as a path computational element (PCE) for an architectural redesign. The upgraded network prepares LINX for increased traffic during the Olympics in London this summer. LINX used the MATE platform in line with a new Layer 3 transport architecture - to simulate network behavior, optimizing path priorities, and calculating traffic flows. “We configured over 9000 label switched paths in our network, amounting to a separate RSVP tunnel, as well as a diverse secondary, for each parallel path between each pair of edge routers,” said Mike Hellers, Network Engineering Manager at LINX. “At this scale, individual network elements cannot visualize the entire network well enough to guarantee an even traffic distribution, so MATE provided us with PCE functionality and allowed us to fully model and simulate the network during the design phase, ensuring that traffic flows as intended.”

Ciena selected by Samsung SDS.  Ciena Corporation (CIEN) announced that Samsung SDS has deployed Ciena’s full portfolio of intelligent Packet-Optical Switching, Packet-Optical Transport, Carrier Ethernet (CES) and ON-Center Management Suite solutions to create its own private network, which will connect offices and employees across multiple locations globally.  The Ciena 6130 Multiservice Optical Platform was also deployed by Samsung to provide transport services to small and medium sites, and Ciena’s 3920 Service Delivery Switch—part of its Carrier Ethernet Solutions portfolio—for DCN optimization across the whole network. “Unplanned network downtime can not only disrupt customer-facing services, but it can also impact revenue and cause long-term damage to our brand," said Ryu HaeKwang, Vice President, Infrastructure Technology Team at Samsung SDS. "With Ciena’s proven solutions and mesh technology, we are able to take control of our network to ensure that our applications are constantly available and that employees can work normally, even if there is an issue in one part of the network.”

Infineta announces FlowTune.  Infineta announced the immediate availability of FlowTune, an industry-first, Quality of Service (QoS) feature-set that delivers the fine-tuned performance guarantees needed for critical application functions such as high-speed replication and backup. With the Data Mobility Switch (DMS) feature FlowTune prevents network congestion caused by competing application flows by transparently and dynamically managing application transmission rates.  This approach to application performance assurance contrasts sharply with those of traditional solutions that rely on packet drops to recover from congestion events, and therefore drastically impact performance for critical applications such as high-speed replication and backup. "For far too long, enterprises have been forced to either cut corners on business goals such as RPOs/RTOs, or divert a large portion of the IT budget to expensive WAN bandwidth in the form of point-to-point circuits," said Haseeb Budhani, Chief Product Officer for Infineta Systems. "With data growth driving massive replication and backup needs for all enterprises, there needs to be a way to mitigate the WAN bottleneck," said Budhani. "FlowTune makes it possible for enterprises to prevent network congestion instead of forcing them to react to it, resulting in dramatically improved application performance."