We’ve stamped out paid prioritization and settlement on the Internet, right? Well, the Internet is not our only consumeristic IP network. In fact, more and more traffic we think of as “Internet” traffic is carried on something else, something I’ll call the “Undernet”. Is this development good or bad, a threat to us or a…
Ciena beat earnings estimates and revenues for the quarter, which certainly earns the company some Street creds. It also says a lot about network infrastructure directions, network equipment vendors, and even Ciena’s own future. What’s impressive about Ciena’s quarter is that it actually did better than usual in earnings, and nearly matched past high quarters…
It may be time to take a new look at the impact of coronavirus and the lockdown, since it appears (we all hope and pray) that things are starting to open up. I’ve been gathering information and running my models, and there are some interesting results. My data is US-centric, so unless I comment otherwise,…
One key application of “carrier cloud” is 5G Core services, and that’s the most telco-ish of all the carrier cloud applications. Is it realistic for non-telco vendors to hope to grab that opportunity? There seem to be a lot of candidates to supply 5G Core these days, including many who don’t provide 5G network components….
We just can’t shake stories that relate to public cloud providers and their possible interest in hosting network operator applications that would otherwise justify “carrier cloud”. It would be easy to read Microsoft’s rumored interest in Jio Platforms as a further indication that it covets the carrier cloud space. Jio is a giant in digital…
Why did Dell and VMware beat Street estimates, while HPE and IBM fell short? The companies themselves are clearly interested in answering that question. Investors obviously have an interest in this question, but anyone in tech should be interested too, because the answer may a signal on future technology direction. It’s not difficult to see…
Cisco may have declared itself with regard to its growth and cloud strategy. Thursday late, they announced they’re going to acquire ThousandEyes, a company with a big name in “experience monitoring”, meaning quality of experience (QoE). Monitoring, particularly monitoring related to QoE, has good potential to serve as the centerpiece of an “ecosystem”, something that…
What is the value of hosted routing instances? This is a question that’s been asked for a full decade now, and the view of operators has shifted back and forth. It’s also true that when operator technology planners are asked, they often give a knee-jerk answer and take it back on consideration. Finally, many are…
I blogged yesterday about vendor differentiation in an open-model network, and closed with the point that a higher virtual layer might offer the only place where “connectivity networking” could find the features and opportunities vendors needed. SD-WAN, I pointed out, was an example of an exploitation of that higher virtual layer, but one that’s not…
How do you compete in an open-device future? It seems obvious that we’re not only headed in that direction, in some market areas we’re already on the doorstep. Vendors are not going to lie down with a rose on their chest, they’ll try to fight, but how will they do that? There are a number…