Bell Labs rethinks network energy use

The past year has seen a significant increase in the development and deployment of green technologies as enterprises, equipment vendors, and network operators alike look to reduce their energy-related expenses, says TMCnet.

Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs embarked on a research mission that led to the discovery of a shocking figure: Current networks use 10 000 times more energy than the absolute minimum required to transport data bits across them.

Having made this revelation, Bell Labs set off on a mission to bring a new mindset to the telecom industry, which looks at network optimisation from an energy perspective, as opposed to the data optimisation approach that has become the basis principle behind network technology today.

When it comes to managing an enterprise network, should it matter whether a user is wired or wireless? For Aruba Networks, the answer is no, writes InternetNews.

The wireless networking vendor is now integrating the management of both wired and wireless networking as part of its Airwave 7 product release - the latest iteration in a networking management suite that previously had been tasked primarily with managing wireless networks alone.

"The networking management systems that we have were great when the office computer was hooked up to the wall, but now we have users that are roaming our halls and are coming through remote networks," says Bryan Wargo, GM of Aruba's Airwave division. "We really need a management system where the core DNA is mobility."

MRV Communications has unveiled the Fiber Driver EM316-10G-XY, a 10Gbps media converter for enterprise and carrier applications, states Earth Times.

The EM316-10G-XY is the latest addition in the company's XY family of next-generation optical media converters. The Fiber Driver XY media converters offer multiple functions combined with a flexible multi-rate small form-factor pluggable (SFP) design.

The devices feature built-in media conversion, signal repeating and lambda conversion with optional wave division multiplexing technology available via SFP interfaces. The compact, hot-swappable, one-slot EM316-10G-XY combines two XFP ports and one SFP+ port. It can be set to act as a redundant converter, a WDM transponder or as a 10Gbps optical link repeater.