I'll see what I can find out.
In the meantime, here's the latest MainStreet News --- finally!!
newbridge.com
For teasers, here's the Chairman's Message:
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What's Hot in the Networking Industry
<Picture: Terry Matthews>
There is an absolute explosion taking place within our industry today! The development of some remarkable new technologies is coinciding with deregulation worldwide and the emergence of many new service providers. There is a tremendous ramp-up of end user demand for a broad range of applications which is driving the need for new services and in particular broadband IP (Internet protocol) with management and qualities of service built in. The demand for bandwidth is growing at unprecedented levels and service provider competition is making greater bandwidth available at costs which are lower than ever. Our industry has delivered exciting new technologies like WDM (wave division multiplexing), ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) and LMDS (local multimedia distribution system) for high bandwidth access, policy-based network management, and IP-VPNs (virtual private networks) to deliver extreme flexibility and qualities of service to network users. Newbridge is at the very forefront of the industry in bringing each of these hot technologies to market in a product line-up that is integrated and carrier-scale by design.
Newbridge, and the Newbridge group of Affiliate companies, share a common vision of the advanced network of tomorrow. It is a network that provides seamless end-to-end services across multiple forms of access, and provides the scalability and flexibility to allow the operator to economically deploy the full suite of services from telephony voice through to broadband multimedia and beyond. The heart of the network is ATM, which provides a common switching and transport mechanism for all service types, in a platform that is software driven, scalable, flexible and extremely reliable.
The Newbridge LMDS solution comes as a result of years of committed research and development in wireless technologies. In 1996 Newbridge formed a Wireless Networks Group to address the opportunities afforded by worldwide deregulation and advances in microwave and millimeterwave technology. The Newbridge solution for broadband wireless operators offers several key benefits: an integrated multiservices access platform; a large scale network and service management system; simultaneous last mile connectivity for data, Internet, voice and video traffic over the air; frequency-flexibility for LMDS and other spectrum opportunities; a highly scalable architecture for a cost-effective, demand-based buildout; and, ease and speed of deployment.
Newbridge launched a high performance ADSL solution earlier this year at the Interop show in Las Vegas. Newbridge DSL offers unparalleled scalability, manageability and support for value-added services, integrating high density DSL line cards into the proven MainStreetXpress 36170 Multiservices Switch. The MainStreetXpress 46020 Network Manager provides unified end-to-end management of DSL and other access technologies with ATM backbone networks. Supporting value-added services, the MainStreetXpress Service subscription manager (SSM) facilitates a flexible wholesale/retail business model. This solution provides customers with the ability to select content provider services on demand and allows carriers and content providers to work in a very flexible management model. Service subscription management dramatically reduces operations costs and provides greater visibility and control to carrier content and VPN provider partners. Service management can be extended to content-provider partners, enabling them to configure services for end users directly through access to the MainStreetXpress SSM software. With Newbridge ADSL, network service providers can offer not only business VPN services and basic Internet access, but value-added services such as premium quality IP telephony (Newbridge Affiliate, Vienna Systems) and digital video (Newbridge Affiliates PixStream and Starvision). This is a feature/function set which is unparalleled in offerings from any of the Newbridge competitors today.
WDM is a hot technology these days, and in particular in metropolitan areas. Newbridge Affiliate Cambrian is trialing the OPTera system which offers protocol and bit rate independence in a totally managed environment with 32 channels at up to 2.5 Gbit/s per channel. The product is best in its class and allows the Newbridge ATM multiservices platform to be extended in a distributed way throughout a city. The cost difference between a normal ATM network and a Newbridge distributed ATM network gives us a significant advantage. This is hot!
There is no doubt that IP is central to the future direction of our business and our industry as a whole. We are particularly interested in making it possible to use IP more effectively for business applications. Newbridge, together with partners including Siemens and 3Com, has developed an architecture called CSI (Carrier Scale Internetworking). The technology we have developed improves the flexibility, manageability and robustness of IP networks, and addresses the needs of businesses for high quality and secure networking with guaranteed performance. What is interesting is that all of this builds on the leadership and over 30 per cent marketshare that Newbridge has in ATM -- the undisputed networking fabric for commerce on the Internet. With CSI, service providers can leverage a single access device, single management platform, and single service contract, to offer extensive internetworking services to customers. With advanced quality of service (QoS) capabilities, IP-VPNs, flexible service level agreements (SLAs), and end-to-end network management, CSI provides significant benefits over existing solutions. CSI gives providers the ability to centrally manage a range of value added services -- from best effort IP to bandwidth guaranteed VPNs carrying voice, video or mission-critical data over IP -- that are as solid as the leased line services they replace. CSI is a unique internetworking solutions framework that allows service providers to become a strategic partner with their customers in the development and delivery of enterprise networking solutions.
The explosion taking place in our industry is not limited to carriers but also extends to the enterprise networking environment. Today's enterprise network manager is actually an internal service provider responsible for providing the applications and services that the users need. More and more chief information officers and network managers are viewing themselves this way within their enterprise; they deliver the critical networked business services needed to keep their organizations ahead of the competition. Newbridge provides a powerful and flexible networking platform for enterprise customers with a multiservice capability for delivering convergent voice, video, and data.
Today's business users want more than best effort networks -- they want tailored services, visibility and control of their services, flexible charging options, increased reliability, and flexible service mixes. The key functions required to deliver on these demands are user profiling, connection control, authentication, authorization, accounting, and enhanced service logic -- all are functions made most effective when linked tightly into the information resources of the network itself. Through the capabilities of Newbridge and two of the Newbridge Affiliates, Bridgewater and FastLane, we are able today to provide a robust extensible foundation for building directory-driven network-centric applications, enabling managed end-to-end network services and provisioning on a per user basis. This new approach ensures that providers can provision, control, and bill for customized Internet services on a large-scale basis.
Internet security (IPsec) is also a hot area for new technology. Newbridge Affiliate TimeStep has by far the best solution with the PERMIT Enterprise product. Permit Enterprise is being used in many corporate networks to provide flexible and secure VPN capabilities on the Internet.
I'm pleased to be able to tell you that our vision of networking is being endorsed by some very powerful industry players. For example, British Telecom, Cable & Wireless, SingaporeTel, and many others, have made substantial commitments to our ATM broadband multiservices platform. AT&T was especially attracted by our Global Services Management Platform (GSMP) which allows the company to manage partitioned services for enterprise customers worldwide. With a broad product line and a clear market lead in cutting edge technologies like LMDS, ADSL, IP-VPNs, and CSI, Newbridge is delivering today the network infrastructure, access technologies, and applications that our carrier and enterprise customers are demanding everywhere.
Terry Matthews
Chairman,
Newbridge Networks Corporation
P.S. Having just re-read my article on what's hot in our industry, I now know what else is hot ... Newbridge!
Pat |
