3Com to supply Agrobank network

3Com Corporation, a global enterprise networking provider, has won a contract with Agrobank, Malaysia's agricultural bank, for nationwide network deployment, states Bernama.

"The bank has chosen 3Com's core-to-edge, wireline and wireless switching, routing and voice over Internet Protocol technology to enhance backbone connectivity across 175 branches nationwide," said 3Com in a statement.

3Com said the infrastructure would also provide high connectivity between Agrobank's headquarters, all branch officers and its data centre.

Networking giant Alcatel-Lucent is opening up details of its optical management and control interfaces (OMCIs) in a bid to help create a true multi-vendor gigabit-passive optical networking (GPON) infrastructure, states Computing.co.uk.

Announced at this year's Broadband World Forum Europe in Paris, the first version of the OMCI Interoperability Implementer's Guide is aimed at helping other optical network terminal vendors integrate their hardware with Alcatel-Lucent's.

"Alcatel-Lucent is taking a bold step by being the first GPON player to share its OMCI specifications with other vendors. Our goal is to encourage the adoption of fibre-to-the-home by breaking down interoperability barriers," says Dave Geary, president of wireline network activities at Alcatel-Lucent.

Qwest plans to deliver speeds of up to 100Gbps to enterprise and government customers, says eWeek.

The next-generation network will allow business customers to handle broadband-intensive services such as unified communications, video, multimedia and virtualised applications. At 100Gbps, a two-hour high-definition movie or presentation can be transmitted in less than nine seconds.

As a result of the advanced technology, the network will need fewer regeneration sites and will rely on advances in silicon power handling. Qwest expects the improvements to produce gains in power efficiency on a per-gigabit basis.