A visibility architecture is essential for security, network and integrated, service-oriented operations teams to establish and maintain a continuous awareness of activity, health, and performance of applications and infrastructure. Such awareness is only possible with continuous, reliable network visibility. But this is not an easy task when network and security professionals must ensure security and proactively meet performance expectations in dynamic, virtualized environments with increasingl...

Canada’s government yesterday (22 July 2014) invited rural and remote communities that lack high speed internet access to submit claims for a portion of the CAD305 million (USD284 million) broadband access rollout funding it has set aside over the next three years under the ‘Connecting Canadians’ programme. The government is aiming to extend internet access at connection speeds of at least 5Mbps – via fixed or wireless networks – to 280,000 households that it calculates currently lack access to ...

Bell Aliant has reported that it is investing around CAD70 million (USD65 million) to expand its ‘FibreOP’ fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network to 125,000 additional premises in seven Quebec communities, offering very high speed internet and high definition IPTV alongside home phone service initially in Alma, Saguenay (including Chicoutimi, Jonquiere and La Baie), Saint-Felicien, Thetford Mines and Victoriaville, with additional communities including Riviere-du-Loup and Roberval to be added by year-...

With the end user dependence on complex network applications and architecture makes it more important then ever that network managers understand what, how, and when traffic is traversing the network. Network monitoring is the increasingly powerful connected set of tools used in controlling, maintaining, and optimizing networks.  A network management system #NMS is a set of tools that allow a network operator to supervise the individual components of a network. Network management system...

Now capable of storing 96 TB of network and application traffic for analysis in a single 5U chassis, the GigaStor Expandable scales to over a petabyte and beyond with additional units. It is the highest-capacity retrospective network analysis solution on the market today. Other popular GigaStor models offering enhanced storage capacity include the GigaStor Portable and GigaStor 10 Gb Wire Speed. The self-contained mobile troubleshooting system GigaStor Portable now stores 4 TB and 8 TB of date. ...

Canadian and US cable group Cogeco’s fiscal third-quarter consolidated revenue increased by 6.9% year-on-year to CAD496.4 million (USD465.2 million), driven by growth of 3.5% in the Canadian cable segment (Cogeco Cable), improvement of 12.2% in the American cable market (Atlantic Broadband) and a 15.3% increase in the enterprise services segment (Cogeco Data Services). For the nine-month period ended 31 May 2014, revenue reached close to CAD1.5 billion, an increase of CAD235.4 million, or 19.3% ...

Following on from its nationwide 700MHz 4G licence auction completed in February, Industry Canada yesterday (7 July 2014) announced that it will launch an auction of ‘AWS-3’ mobile spectrum (1700MHz/2100MHz paired frequencies in bands adjacent to the existing AWS licensed 3G/4G spectrum) early next year – before the 2500MHz licence auction scheduled for April 2015. An announcement from the ministry said that AWS-3 spectrum is ‘ideal for delivering fast, reliable service [including 4G LTE] to Can...

The Network Visibility Operating System (NVOS) v4.2 release is now available for download to current Net Tool Optimizer® (NTO) customers at the Ixia Customer Portal. Partners can find the MIBS files and user guide on Ixia Partner Portal product section. This new software update supports the following NTO models: NTO 5288, NTO 5293, and ControlTower (NTO 5260, 5263 and 5268.) What is New Advanced Feature Module (AFM16) enhancements New FabricPath stripping feature Expanded de-duplication con...

Every year, I survey a couple hundred IT professionals on a variety of topics, including what their organization wants to improve on over the next year. It is not at all surprising that the task that is typically at the top of the list is rapidly identifying the root cause of degraded application performance. What is somewhat surprising however is that for the last several years, managing VoIP has been very close to the top of the list. Although VoIP has been deployed heavily over the last few y...

Now capable of storing 96 TB of network and application traffic for analysis in a single chassis, the GigaStor Expandable scales to over a petabyte and beyond with additional units. It is the highest-capacity retrospective network analysis solution on the market today.* To further put the size of a petabyte into perspective - if the average smartphone camera photo is 3MB in size and the average printed photo is 8.5 inches wide, then the assembled petabyte of photos placed side by side would be o...

Consolidated revenue at Canadian pay-TV, broadband and telephony operator Shaw Communications climbed 1% year-on-year to CAD1.34 billion (USD1.25 billion) in the three months ended 31 May 2014 – the company’s fiscal third quarter. Total operating income before restructuring costs and amortisation of CAD601 million improved 3% over the year-ago quarter, while Shaw posted consolidated quarterly net profit of CAD228 million for the three-month period, compared to CAD250 million a year earlier. Shaw...

JDSU’s Network Instruments business released its seventh annual “State of the Network Global Study.” Of the findings – after polling 241 network professionals – a provoking theme emerged: 80 percent of respondents viewed software defined networks (SDN) as unimportant or were just going to “ride out the hype” – saying it is “Like a Road Trip Without a Map.” A leading authority in the enterprise network management space with a lot of experience covering this sector is Jim Frey, vice president at E...

Pierre Dion, CEO of Quebecor, the parent group of Quebec-based cable and cellular network operator Videotron, this week gave a clear message that his company intends to utilise its recently-won 700MHz spectrum to roll out a 4G network in provinces across Canada whilst aiming for consolidation with rival operators to create the fourth national rival to Rogers, Bell and Telus. CBC News quotes Dion’s speech at the Canadian Telecom Summit, in which he declared: ‘Our vision is to provide Canadians wi...

Wind Mobile’s CEO Anthony Lacavera gave a speech yesterday at the Canadian Telecom Summit in Toronto laying out his company’s current position, in which he stressed that the crucial factor in enabling the mid-sized Canadian cellco to grow will be access to more mobile spectrum for rolling out 4G LTE services – potentially by acquiring frequencies owned by rivals. As reported by Bloomberg, Lacavera said that a merger with financially stricken Mobilicity or another spectrum holder remains desirabl...

Security is a top concern for anyone running a network today. The recent Heartbleed bug and other high-profile hacks have shined a new light on the fact that security strategies in the enterprise must constantly evolve to meet the challenges of new and ever-changing attacks. In the spring of 2014 news of the Heartbleed bug hit the wire sending the tech world scrambling to patch the now notorious OpenSSL vulnerability that allowed individuals to steal private information like certificate keys, pa...

Rogers Communications has announced a planned investment of over CAD450 million (USD414 million) in the province of British Columbia (BC) over the next three years to expand its wireless network in over 70 communities in the northeast, Interior, Lower Mainland, and Vancouver Island regions. As part of this investment, Rogers will also enhance existing LTE coverage with 700MHz spectrum, reaching more rural and urban customers and strengthening the LTE signal including deep coverage in buildings, ...

UK-based Vodafone Group and Canada’s Rogers Communications have jointly announced a new ‘Partner Market’ agreement, under which Rogers becomes Vodafone’s exclusive partner in Canada and the two companies will explore new business opportunities as well as offer customers a range of products and services, including 4G roaming services. A press release says that multinational customers of Vodafone Global Enterprise will benefit from the addition of Canada to their existing contracts for internation...

Canadian provincial operator SaskTel has announced it will switch off its 3G CDMA2000 1xEV-DO mobile data network at the end of September this year, although it will continue to offer 2.5G 1x-based CDMA voice and data services for remaining compatible device users. SaskTel explained in a statement that it is repurposing 850MHz band spectrum from the EV-DO data network to add capacity to its 4G LTE network across its home province of Saskatchewan. Thanks to TeleGeography for the article.  &n...

Hosted Unified Communications is a mission critical application for most businesses. Few can continue to operate effectively if all communications are down. Therefore, it is extremely important that the selected service provider follow certain best practices that ensure the availability of the service. There are many best practices that a hosted service provider should follow, but these are my Top 5: 1. Reliable Network and Software Infrastructure A good way to deliver the availability character...

Canada’s Telus has dropped its latest bid to acquire financially-stricken smaller cellular rival Mobilicity, the Globe & Mail reports. The newspaper writes that Telus informed Mobilicity this week that it was withdrawing its latest takeover offer because ‘conditions of the deal had not been met’. One condition was that the federal government approve the transfer of spectrum between Mobilicity and Telus – a move which Ottawa opposed in two previous attempts by Telus to buy the smaller company...