Uri Unplugged

This past summer, I decided to add a new product to RADirect's portfolio – the PL-400 CWDM / DWDM mux from PacketLight Networks. We’d been selling PacketLight’s family of storage over SONET devices for awhile, and when they introduced the PL-400 to my team and I, we knew it would be a well-received addition to our fiber mux family.

In brief, the PL-400 transports up to 8 high-speed (125Mbps - 4.25Gbps) services - storage, data, voice or video - in any mix, over an existing fiber pair. But It's actually more than just a mux - it also performs the 3R's (retiming, reshaping and regenerating), delivers performance and optical power monitoring, etc. So not just another passive solution.

So far, here’s what I’m hearing from customers about the PL-400:

Why Do They Like It?

1. It transports anything - in any mix! 1G/2G/4G Fibre Channel & FICON, ESCON, Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, OC-3/STM-1, OC-12/STM-4, OC-48/STM-16, DVB-ASI video and GPON. And each can be configured independently.

2. It’s a money-saver. Eliminates the need to install additional, costly fiber pairs.

3. It’s small and green. Well, not physically green (more your standard blackish/grayish if color is important to you), but it’s only 1U high and delivers low power consumption.

4. It’s inexpensive. Especially given the fact that it supports so many different service types.

5. Feature-by-feature, it stacks up great against the competition.

How Do They Use It?

The biggest customer groups so far have been service providers, military/government, and campus environments (a lot of hospitals and universities) but the PL-400 CWDM / DWDM mux can be deployed in a variety of point-to-point, chain and ring topologies. Common applications include:

1. Fiber relief for high-capacity multi-tenant buildings and campuses

2. Interconnection of SAN and LAN islands in remote metro sites

3. Aggregation of DSLAM and Ethernet switch traffic on a single fiber - from access to core

4. WDM GPON extension between the central office and the local exchange for network simplification and cost reduction

5. DVB-ASI, SMPTE-SDI, SD-HDI, HD-HDI video transport

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(Note from Uri: Today's post is contributed by RADirect Senior Marketing Manager Orit Livnat-Levi)

At RADirect, we talk to many customers each month who are in need of a server load balancing solution. In a field crowded with strong players offering similar products at similar pricing, we’re often challenged to explain why we think Radware’s AppDirector server load balancer is superior:

1. Radware’s software is loaded onto a switch with 44Gbps non-blocking back plane, 2 network processors and a dedicated CPU. You’ll get faster and more consistent layer 4-7 switching performance.
2. It’s a switch. No failure-prone hard drive or OS means an MTBF of 150,000 hours.
3. No security vulnerabilities common to PC-based architecture.
4. Health monitoring, bandwidth management, application security and network management tasks are built-in and performed without degrading the guaranteed 3 Gbps throughput of layer 4-7 switching.

The AppDirector also has other features you’d expect from a high end server load balancing solution, including support for VLAN tagging, high-port density and browser-based management. Almost all the applications we sell are for a redundant config with active-active failover.

Posted by orit at 05:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When it comes to leadership, be it political, business, or otherwise, it’s not unusual for a conflict to exist between the previous generation and the more recent one: the ‘old’ versus the ‘new’. The older generation typically offers stability, reliable execution, and a common ground to keep things safe and balanced, while the newer generation brings to the table novelty, a new way of doing things, fresh ideas, progress and a promise to ‘change the world’. This is evolution vs. revolution.

Technology decision makers frequently face a similar 'old vs. new' dilemma when it comes to legacy migration. Do we stay with the 'old', keeping our legacy systems running for as long as possible and only gradually migrating to new networks/systems? Or do we go 'new' by replacing our legacy equipment, ripping it apart and forklifting our infrastructure in order to enjoy a more innovative and current technology?

This type of decision is best made only after you evaluate the risk against the expected rewards, quantifying your migration efforts (time, material, costs) as well as the benefits of a newer technology. Sometimes, it will make more sense to revolutionize. Other times, a gradual evolution will prove best.

The good news is that we at RAD still invest a great amount in developing products that offer an excellent evolution path for many applications. For example, TDMoIP as a path to migrate TDM voice to an IP network. Or, the ability to migrate older protocols and/or older data communications gear (RS-232, V.35, RS-422, HS-UDP to name a few) over current and next generation networks (IP, ATM etc.).

And yes, assessing your scenario and qualifying and quantifying your options is complicated. If this type of challenge is familiar to you, I’d love to hear about your decision process.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At RADirect, when we speak to customers who are considering deployment of a pseudo-wire/TDMoIP/VoIP solution, we typically identify three major change drivers:

1. Integration
2. Technology adoption
3. Transport and other costs

Integration
Integration of voice with the user desktop, back-end/CRM, and unified messaging applications are all benefits unique to a VoIP implementation. So is ease of phone system management. If integration drives your current project, clearly VoIP is the way to go.

Technology Adoption
Does anyone still have any doubts that VoIP is the prevailing technology? Without question, VoIP is the way of the future, and manufacturers spend most of their R&D, marketing, and sales efforts promoting it.

If you are at the end-of-life cycle with your existing voice system, by all means, choose VoIP. But if you haven’t reached that point yet, I would argue that you might be better off holding on to your existing system, at least until it needs a boost or integration becomes an important factor for your business. Otherwise, you may find yourself investing much more time, effort and money than you had planned just to get to the same service level you have been at for the past ten years.

Transport and Other Costs
Customers motivated by a need to reduce their transport costs are typically the ones that pay a premium on transport (i.e. satellite links or international trunking). In cases where the business model is significantly impacted by operating costs (such as service providers, call centers, cruise lines, etc), reduction of transport costs is even more important. Such customers can get a better return on investment when they deploy a pseudo-wire solution with voice compression, designed specifically to optimize voice transport. RADirect’s vmux product line is perfect for this.

Other customers want to take a different approach to the reduction of operating costs, aiming to manage a single type of network or use excess IP network bandwidth for voice. These customers would also realize a better ROI by employing a pseudo-wire solution like TDMoIP. With no forklift upgrade to your voice system, implementation is easy, service levels are guaranteed to remain high, and the cost of pseudo-wire solutions is comparatively low.

Of course, there are always cases that involve a mixture or some variation of these drivers. The most important thing is, before you launch your pseudo-wire/TDMoIP/VoIP project, ask (and answer) yourself: ‘What are the primary business drivers for this project?’ Only when these are defined should you start the process of identifying a solution that satisfies your requirements.

Have you recently upgraded your phone system? Are you currently considering an upgrade? Share your pseudo-wire/TDMoIP/VoIP success or distress stories.

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just returned from RAD Data Communications’ annual partner meeting in Eilat, Israel and came across an interesting article while I was there. Zohar Zisapel, (founder of RAD and 26 other networking companies in the RAD Group with aggregated 2005 revenue of $640 million) shared his thoughts on the most important upcoming telecom trends. I usually pay attention to what Zohar has to say because:
a) he’s my boss ;-)
b) with as many successful start-ups as he’s founded and his exposure to a wide array of technologies he generally has his finger on the pulse

Here are the biggest take-aways from Zohar’s article:

1. Wireless devices are getting smarter and more flexible, and are getting better at preventing transmission interference. These improvements can effectively increase capacities tenfold in the very near future.
With WiFi advances, for example: “…who of us wouldn’t want to get rid of the telephone and television cables in our homes? Why do we have to renovate our house every time we want to move the plasma screen? Why does every office need its own Internet and telephone infrastructure?”

2. Zohar sees particularly interesting developments in those areas that combine technologies; for instance video and communications as in the case of video conferencing and IPTV. Video and mobility is another interesting proposition, as in the case of video in cell phones and cars (both for communication and entertainment).

3. Yes, it’s the era of the social Internet, web 2.0, whatever you want to call it. But as to starting a web 2.0 company? You should act quickly, very soon it will be too late to catch this boat…

4. The world is not flat; it slopes towards Asia. There are more cell phones in Asia, more Internet users, higher growth of Skype users and even more blogs! The growth rate of all of these is faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world.

5. Higher bandwidth applications lead to demand for well, more bandwidth. This in turn creates demand for more security for that bandwidth, and more storage for all that content.
I think so myself, which is why I am expanding RADirect’s load-balancing, security and storage practices to accommodate this trend.

6. We’re entering an era of major technological battles; WIMAX vs. 4G, cable vs. ‘traditional’ service providers, Skype and VoIP vs. classic telephony, wire vs wireless. This is a tremendous opportunity for all of us, providing that we manage to identify the right trends and choose the winning technologies…

Posted by Uri Zilberman at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)