Network News: Ciena, Juniper, F5

Ciena helps Shentel scale and expand its networks and helps Globalcom upgrade its submarine cable system with 100G, Juniper advances its Junos Pulse solutions, and F5 Networks helps power the Verizon Cloud.

Ciena selected by Shentel for 4G backhaul.  Ciena (CIEN) announced that Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel) has deployed Ciena’s packet networking, unified management and Service Level Agreements (SLA) portal solutions to support its expanding Fiber-to-the-Tower (FTTT) and mobile backhaul services. Shentel is using Ciena's 3930, 3931, and 3960 Service Delivery Switches – interconnected with G.8032 Ethernet rings to provide greater network scalability, resiliency and protection. Additionally, Shentel is deploying Ciena’s cloud-based SLA Portal that provides direct access to SLA reports and gives Shentel and its customers visibility of the health and status of the service delivery. “As more businesses and end-users continue to increase their usage of mobile data and the industry continues to advance to 4G technology, new opportunities are opening for service providers like Shentel to expand their FTTT and other related offerings," said Matt Salter, Vice President of U.S. Regional Service Providers at Ciena. "With the power of our packet networking portfolio to quickly turn up services, service providers can augment that with resilient and cost effective backhaul services as their end-user demand dictates.”

Along with Reliance Globalcom Ciena also announced the upgrade of Reliance Globalcom’s FA-1 North submarine cable system with 100G wavelengths.  With Ciena’s converged packet optical and GeoMesh solutions, Reliance Globalcom can now deliver high-speed, low latency OTN and 100GbE client services between London and New York with greater capacity to meet soaring bandwidth demand. With an initial total lit capacity of 400Gbs, this upgrade compliments Reliance Globalcom’s deployment of Ciena’s GeoMesh technology on its FA-1 South submarine network that links New York to Paris, allowing the provider to offer additional capacity on two diverse routes across the Atlantic.

Juniper advances Junos Pulse.  Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced enhancements to its Junos Pulse remote access (SSL VPN) and network access control (NAC) solutions and new technology partnerships with leading Mobile Device Management (MDM) companies. Anew open initiative to enable MDM providers such as AirWatch and MobileIron will provide a simple and open way to integrate Junos Pulse Secure Access Service (SSL VPN) and Junos Access Control Service (NAC) with MDM solutions that simplify and secure BYOD efforts for both IT and end-users. "More needs to be done to help IT embrace BYOD by both enabling users to work everywhere, anytime on any device, while keeping the network secure," said Tamir Hardof, senior director, security product marketing, Juniper Networks. "Integrating and linking VPN, NAC and MDM solutions reduces complexity, functional silos and provides a better BYOD experience for both IT and end-users. By working together with our partners, Juniper Networks can simplify the user experience and provide IT peace of mind that they are not compromising security, privacy or control."

Juniper also unveiled the Junos Pulse AppConnect software development kit (SDK) that enables per-application virtual private network (VPN) connectivity from both Apple iOS and Google Android devices to Juniper's Junos Pulse Secure Access Service. Junos Pulse AppConnect technology and SDK is the first solution to offer per-application SSL VPN connections on both Android and Apple iOS mobile devices. With AppConnect, enterprises will have more granular control over access to corporate networks and applications, preserving the security and integrity of their data, network and resources end-to-end.

F5 helps power Verizon Cloud.  F5 Networks (FFIV) and Verizon Enterprise Solutions announced that F5 technologies provide network traffic and security management services for the new Verizon Cloud.  Verizon embedded F5’s comprehensive suite of application services into its Cloud Compute, and F5's BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager connects isolated environments and intelligently directs users to the best-performing data center to maintain high application performance. In addition, Verizon Cloud utilizes the advanced capabilities of BIG-IP Access Policy Manager that allow for consistent deployment and enforcement of the policies governing security. “Helping customers effectively, securely, and efficiently combine application services and cloud environments—regardless of the specific makeup of their infrastructures—is a top priority for us,” said Karl Triebes, EVP of Product Development and CTO at F5. “Verizon Cloud demonstrates how organizations can use flexible, enterprise-class technologies to seamlessly and safely extend their applications to the cloud. With F5’s Software Defined Application Services, customers like Verizon can easily configure how optimization, security, and availability services are employed, tailoring environments to meet the needs of their business and cloud initiatives.”

At the Node Summit last week in San Francisco F5 also launched LineRate - an application proxy software, running on commodity hardware or virtual machines, which eliminates the need for DevOps to manually set up complex proxies or incorporate networking logic into applications. LineRate incorporates Node.js into its high-performance, highly scalable platform, enabling DevOps to support a variety of next-generation architectures that require highly programmable proxies, as well as to develop and deploy common services such as API metering and centralized authentication.