Sean Michael Kerner

The OFC 2016 conference is underway this week, bringing with it a number of vendor announcements on new hardware platforms to enable carrier optical networking. Among the vendors announcing new products is Ciena with its new 6500-T series chassis. The 6500 T-Series promises more port density, enabling up to 24 Tb/s in a single chassis, […]

Juniper’s MX routing platform is getting a boost this week with new capabilities that expand its performance and feature set without necessitating a full forklift upgrade. Instead of a new chassis, Juniper is announcing new MX series line cards that provide a plug-in upgrade for existing Juniper MX 2020, MX240, MX480 and MX960 router owners. […]

At the core of Cisco’s big routers has long been the IOS-XR network operating system. IOS-XR is now evolving, thanks to a rebasing on Linux and the inputs of Cisco’s hyperscale web partners. Kevin Wollenweber, director of product management for Cisco’s service provider segment, explained that the new IOS-XR 6.0 release provides improved visibility into […]

Cisco is at it again, acquiring yet another company to add to its roster. This time the target is privately-held Portcullis Computer Security. Financial terms of the deal are not being publicly disclosed at this time. Cisco expects the acquisition to close in the second quarter of fiscal year 2016, at which time Portcullis employees […]

25 years ago, back in 1997, the 802.11 WiFi specifications were first defined. Since then, WiFi has helped to reshape the world we live in, making pervasive wireless data connectivity the norm and giving birth to a new era of mobility and connectivity. Adrian Stephens, chair of the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN Working Group, explained […]

Cisco is selling its connected devices to Technicolor in a deal valued at $600 million. The deal is currently is expected to close by the end of the fourth quarter of 2015. Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, Technicolor will pay Cisco $450 million in cash and approximately $150 million in newly issued Technicolor […]

The day that Cisco CEO John Chambers announced his replacement, and that replacement wasn’t Rob Lloyd, I knew it was only a matter of time before Lloyd left Cisco. Now it’s confirmed. Lloyd is leaving Cisco on July 25. Chambers announced on May 4 that his successor was going to be Chuck Robbins, Senior Vice […]

In a surprise move, on April 21, Extreme Networks announced the abrupt resignation of its CEO, Chuck Berger. I found out about the resignation not through a press release, but rather though a meeting change request. I had been scheduled to meet with Berger at the Interop conference in Las Vegas next week. I had […]

Brocade today announced the new ICX 7250 switch as well as a new switch port extender. The new hardware releases are being updated with expanded support for the OpenFlow protocol, which Brocade still sees as being important for Software Defined Networking (SDN). The ICX 7250 will be available in both 24 and 48 port editions […]

Alcatel-Lucent today announced a new switch in its OmniSwitch product family. The OmniSwitch 6900-Q32 is a high density switching platform with support for up to 32-port 40GbE or up to 104 ports of 10GbE. Joe Raccuglia, Sr. Director of Solutions Marketing, Networking at Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, explained to Enterprise Networking Planet that the 6900-Q32 is a new […]

In the Open Compute Project’s (OCP) continuing quest to open up the world of networking, there is now a new specification known as Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI) that could make a big difference. The SAI specification was submitted to OCP this week, thanks to the efforts of Dell, Big Switch Networks, Mellanox and Microsoft. SAI […]

Brocade is updating its data center switching portfolio with new hardware and software that expands on the company’s vision to enable a more agile software defined network. Internally, Brocade has been referring to its new launch as “Scorpius,” and it includes the new VDX 6940 hardware chassis, which is available in two different models. The […]