Networking

The New South Wales government has partnered with Telstra to deliver internet upgrades to more than 2,000 public schools across the state.
Expected to cost AU$328 million, the project is expected to see more than 5,200 km of fibre be rolled out, which the government boasted would increase internet speeds by more than 10-fold.
Minister for Education Sarah Mitchell said the upgrade would deliver faster, more reliable internet access to enable more reliable video conferencing and quicker downloads.
“This upgrade will bypass existing network constraints meaning all our schools will be on a high-speed connection in the next 18 months, three years ahead of schedule,” she said.
The project will also give students access to new immersive learning opportunities, Mitchell added.
This deal will extend the long-running partnership that has existed between the NSW government and Telstra.
“We know that digital inclusion, particularly for students, is a lead indicator for future employment opportunities,” Telstra enterprise group executive Michael Ebeid said.
“That’s why we’re thrilled to be working with the NSW Department of Education to ensure all students, regardless of where they live, will have access to the amazing learning opportunities that quality, high-speed connectivity brings.”
Back in April, Telstra also partnered with the Victorian government to provide an additional 21,000 internet dongles to students as part of efforts to provide internet access for remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It followed the Victorian government announcing it would provide 4,000 SIM cards and 1,000 SIM-enabled dongle devices to students who did not have access to digital technologies.
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Juniper Networks said it will acquire 128 Technology for $450 million in a move that will give it more artificial intelligence-based features through its networking portfolio.
The company said it will it will acquire 128 Technology with cash and assumption of equity awards. Juniper said 128 Technology issued retention focused restricted stock units that’ll be assumed by Juniper.
Juniper has been beefing up its AI expertise and portfolio via acquisitions. In 2019, Juniper bought Mist Systems for $405 million. Since the purchase of Mist, Juniper has been adding AI networking tools for its portfolio and analytics.
The 128 Technology deal is expected to close in Juniper’s fiscal fourth quarter and to add slightly to fiscal 2021 revenue, but dilutive to non-GAAP earnings. 128 Technology will reside in Juniper’s AI Driven Enterprise business unit. 128 Technology as 120 employees, more than 300 customers and about $120 million in annual revenue.
According to Juniper, the plan is to combine 128 Technology’s Session Smart networking with its campus and branch portfolio and its Mist AI platform. The two companies will aim to use AI to optimize the network and user experiences for voice, 5G and collaboration.

128 Technology’s platform bases networking decisions on real-time user sessions and business policies instead of static systems. Juniper will integrate 128 Technology with its WAN Assurance software with plans to offer AIOps, anomaly detection, security and self-driving networks.   More

Anyone can run their own Wi-Fi network. Cellular networks have been another matter entirely, until now. With Facebook’s Magma open-source distributed mobile packet software project, FreedomFi enables anyone to build low cost, private, long-range, reliable, and secure 4G LTE and 5G networks. This is done using its its beta FreedomFi Gateway hardware and software package. 

Historically, building a cellular network requires a lot of proprietary hardware from incumbent network equipment manufacturers. This has made it much too expensive for individuals or companies to set up even a small scale cellular network. With the rise of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), it’s become orders of magnitude cheaper to build your own cellular network.   FreedomFi Gateway is the next logical step in this networking journey. It’s a commodity, x86 network appliance that offers a straightforward, highly affordable path for anyone to build their own Private LTE or 5G network using open-source software and small cell radios. The beta edition of the FreedomFi Gateway is available on the company website to open-source project sponsors for as little as $300. 
The FreedomFi Gateway puts the core functions of a 4G/5G network at the network’s edge. Inside the FreedomFi Gateway are the core functions needed to provide network connectivity and policy enforcement for end devices. For example, the 4G FreedomFi gateway runs the Mobility Management Entity (MME), Serving Gateway (SGW), and Packet Data Network Gateway (PGW). The FreedomFi Gateway supports the standard LTE and 5G southbound interfaces to commercial radios allowing customers to mix and match radios and avoid getting locked into a single vendor proprietary solution. Other services like the Home Subscriber Server (HSS) data are housed in the cloud orchestrator.
Besides the Gateway, you’ll need the core, a radio, spectrum access, and SIM cards. Depending on the package selected, FreedomFi can provide some or all of the needed components.
For the cell core and radio, FreedomFi recommends the Baicells Nova-436q or the Accelleran E1000 for using the CBRS band 48 spectrum. In addition, Airspan and Blinq Networks also provide CBRS products.
To get the spectrum access you’ll need you can work with an FCC-approved Spectrum Access System (SAS) provider such as Amdocs, CommScope, Federated Wireless, or Google, or Sony. For FreedomFi customers and Magma project sponsors, FreedomFi includes access to the CBRS spectrum band as part of the package. Finally, for SIM cards, FreedomFi recommends SmartJac.
Put it all together, and for a complete, operational 4G LTE or 5G cellular network to call your own, FreedomFi estimates it will cost you about $5,000. This network will work with almost all smartphones made in the last two years. 
To be certain a given phone will work with your CBRS network, go to GSMArena.com to check if a device supports it. Simply go to the site, plug in the device model, and click on the “expand” button in the Network row to see the supported bands. CBRS is usually listed as Band 48. It’s sometimes listed under a “TDD LTE” subsection.  “The 5G small cell market will be growing at 40% per year for the next 5-7 years and we’ll see a lot of competition and innovation,” said Joey Padden, FreedomFi co-founder and CTO. “The last thing you want to do is tie the destiny of your entire cellular network to the roadmap of a single radio vendor. FreedomFi Gateway makes it possible to build your Private LTE or 5G network on your terms, remaining vendor-agnostic and staying in control of the roadmap for your network architecture.”    “The biggest benefit of 5G is not faster speed, but efficiencies unlocked through software-centric architecture. Coupled with open source and cloud-native design principles, software-driven 5G networks will have an order-of-magnitude lower OPEX [Operating expenses],” said Boris Renski, FreedomFi’s co-founder and CEO. He continued, “5G is also a completely new, software-centric architecture for the network core that is much more efficient and cheaper to maintain and that is the part of 5G that we believe will result in more profound, long term benefits to the users in the form of more cost-efficient connectivity.”
Renski concluded, “Ultimately, it is not about streaming videos faster and doing VR in select hotspots, but about connecting the next billion people in emerging geographies or matching private 5G economics to that of Wi-Fi for the enterprise use cases.”  FreedomFi offers a couple of options to get started with open-source private cellular through their website. All proceeds will be reinvested towards building up the Magma’s project open-source software code. Sponsors contributing $300 towards the project will receive a beta FreedomFi gateway and limited, free access to the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) shared spectrum in the 3.5 GHz “innovation band.” 
Despite the name “good-buddy,” CBRS  has nothing to do with the CB radio service used by amateurs and truckers for two-way voice communications. CB lives on in the United States in the 27MHz band.
Those contributing at $1,000 dollars will get support with a “network up” guarantee, offering FreedomFi guidance over a series of Zoom sessions. The company guarantees they won’t give up until you get a connection.
FreedomFi will be demonstrating an end-to-end private cellular network deployment during their upcoming keynote at the Open Infrastructure Summit and publishing step-by-step instructions on the company blog. 
This isn’t just a hopeful idea being launched on a wing and a prayer. WiConnect Wireless is already working with it. “We operate hundreds of towers, providing fixed wireless access in rural areas of Wisconsin,” said Dave Bagett, WiConnect’s president. “We were always keen on expanding our LTE internet service, but weary of lock-in issues associated with using a proprietary network core. We are now partnering with FreedomFi to expand our LTE network using open source and are excited to start rolling out the service to our customers.”  Related Stories: More

Comcast said Monday that it’s partnering with HPE’s Aruba for the launch of a new virtual private network (VPN) service that aims to provide remote workers with a secure connection to their corporate network. The companies said the Comcast Business Teleworker VPN is meant to help enterprises adapt to an expanding remote workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The service functions as a centrally managed remote access VPN that allows remote employees to connect to primary business systems, applications and files. The network runs on an independent internet connection that does not interfere or compete with at-home bandwidth, the companies said.
The VPN is powered by the Aruba edge services platform (ESP). When combined with Comcast’s Managed VPN Aggregator service at a business location, enterprises can connect home-based devices, such as laptops, desktops, VoIP phones, and printers, to the corporate network.
“Though the number of people working partially or fully remote has been on the rise for years now, the pandemic has truly sent this trend into hyperdrive,” said Christian Nascimento, VP of product management for Comcast Business. “Comcast Business Teleworker VPN enables enterprises to reimagine the work from home experience for both employer and employee alike, all while maintaining the security, performance and management they enjoy in-office.”
Business services are among the fastest growing segments within the Comcast cable unit. Comcast Business offers ethernet, Internet, Wi-Fi, voice, TV and managed enterprise services. The company has stepped up its focus on the work-from-home market since the start of the pandemic. In June, Comcast launched Comcast Business At Home, an in-home, enterprise-grade offering separate from the residential network for employees working remote. 
The service allows businesses to provide and manage a dedicated internet connection for their remote employees, with additional tools for mobility and security. Comcast said the At Home service is ideally suited for service-oriented industries such as legal, accounting, advertising, healthcare, and insurance.
As for Aruba, the HPE subsidiary posits that demand for connectivity services will continue to rise with the ongoing remote work trend and influx of IoT devices on enterprise networks.  More

SpaceX on Sunday launched another Falcon 9 rocket carrying 60 more Starlink satellites to be deployed in low Earth orbit. 
The latest Falcon 9 launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida comes just two weeks after the last batch of 60 Starlink satellites and now brings SpaceX’s Starlink constellation to 788 as the company gears up for a public beta of the satellite broadband service. It was the 13th Starlink launch.  

Networking

“As our Starlink network is still in its early stages, the Starlink team continues to test the system, collecting latency data and performing speed tests of the service,” SpaceX said in a statement.  
SpaceX notes that the team also recently installed Starlink terminals on the Administrative Center building and at 20 private homes on the Hoh Tribe Reservation, located in a remote area of western Washington State.

Falcon 9 launches 60 Starlink satellites – one step closer to providing high-speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable pic.twitter.com/3J06rSFBqm
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 18, 2020

Washington state military’s emergency-management unit began using seven Starlink end-user terminals in early August as part of its response to rebuild fire-ravaged parts of the state. Washington’s first responders deployed the terminals to residents in Malden, Washington. 
Last week SpaceX was confirmed to have qualified to bid for the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which is making up to $16bn available to ISPs to deliver broadband to underserved and unserved parts of America. 
Depending on the outcome, the funding could help SpaceX reduce the cost of its end-user terminals, which, according to Musk, remain its biggest challenge .   
Besides homes in remote villages, Musk has suggested the dishes could be deployed on trains and this week confirmed they could be used on trucks.  
The company’s public beta of the satellite broadband service will be first made available in northern parts of the US and possibly southern Canada.  
Musk has previously said SpaceX would need about 800 satellites to provide moderate coverage of North America. 
SpaceX recently revealed internet performance tests demonstrating download speeds of between 102Mbps to 103Mbps, upload speeds of about 40.5Mbps, and a latency of 18 milliseconds to 19 milliseconds. 
Starlink user speed tests posted to TestMy.Net show an average download speed of 37.04Mbps, with a top speed of 91.04Mbps. 
More on Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Starlink and internet-beaming satellites More

Toshiba has announced the upcoming deployment of commercial quantum key distribution (QKD) platforms with an eye on securing a cut of a market expected to be worth $20 billion by 2035. 

QKD systems utilize encryption keys formed as ‘encoded’ particles of light to improve the encryption and authentication of traffic streams. 
As previously reported by ZDNet, this form of data transmission results in quantum keys and information transmitted down the same fiber cable via multiplexing, with the overall aim being to improve data protection and reduce the cost of secure transfers.
On Monday, the tech giant said commercial QKD network deployment is on the horizon, now Toshiba has secured a contract with the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan’s prime research center, to install QKD at multiple locations on their network.  
See also: This ‘unhackable’ network uses the weird power of quantum physics
The system will be delivered during the last quarter of this year, with deploying expected to roll out by April 2021. 
According to Toshiba, the QKD market is a potentially lucrative source of future revenue. The company expects the market to grow to roughly $20 billion worldwide by 2035, and Toshiba hopes that early exploration of quantum data processing will place the firm in a strong enough position to snag at least 25% of this emerging market — or $3 billion — by 2030. 
Toshiba currently offers two forms of quantum key distribution platform; one that relies on fiber multiplexing, and another for long-distance applications. 
CNET: Best password manager to use for 2020: 1Password, LastPass and more compared
Outside of tests in Japan, Toshiba has also teamed up with BT in the United Kingdom to launch the first trial of its kind in the country. A cable linking the National Composites Centre (NCC) and the Centre for Modelling and Simulation (CFMS) is using Toshiba’s technology to exchange data through BT’s Openreach fiber network. 
In September, Verizon and Toshiba — in partnership with the Quantum Xchange — also trialed QKD.
Toshiba says that more partners are coming on board in 2021 to install and deploy QKD networks, not only in the UK and US, but also across Europe and Asia. A manufacturing center has been established in Cambridge, UK, and the firm intends to create a QKD service for financial enterprises in the future. 
TechRepublic: Professor creates cybersecurity camp to inspire girls to choose STEM careers
“Sectors such as finance, health and government are now realizing the need to invest in technology that will prepare and protect them for the quantum economy of the future,” said Taro Shimada, Chief Digital Officer at Toshiba. “Our business plan goes far deeper and wider than selling quantum cryptographic hardware. We are developing a quantum platform and services that will not only deliver quantum keys and a quantum network, but ultimately enable the birth of a quantum internet.”
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Australian Domain Name Administrator (AuDA) chair Alan Cameron said the agency has now completed all recommendations arising from the 2018 government review of auDA, noting as well that it now possesses new governance and accountability frameworks and a “revitalised commitment” to transparency, broad engagement, and ensuring ongoing capability.
“We now have a revitalised and robust governance regime, a comprehensive policy framework focusing on transparency and accountability, and a renewed emphasis on consultation and stakeholder engagement,” auDA wrote in its annual report [PDF], released on Monday.
The not-for-profit policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space said it would implement the new auDA licensing framework, which is designed to modernise and simplify the rules around the licensing of .au domain names.
This includes the proposed introduction of direct registration at the second level of the .au namespace. Direct registration allows a registrant to register a domain name that is immediately before the .au.
“Direct registration provides consumers, organisations, and businesses with more choice of namespaces, which is particularly important as the online economy continues to develop and more of the community want to have an online presence,” the report said.
“Australia is currently the only OECD country that does not offer direct registrations in its country code domain. We have consulted widely on this initiative and will continue to communicate with our stakeholders on the timing and process for implementation, which we expect to progress considerably in 2020/2021.”
As of 30 June 2020, the total number of domains under management by auDA was 3,180,395, encompassing the namespaces in the .au country code top-level domain (ccTLD), which includes com.au, net.au, org.au, asn.au, id.au, gov.au, edu.au, vic.au, nsw.au, act.au, qld.au, nt.au, wa.au, sa.au, and tas.au.
The total figure represents a decrease of less than 1% from June 30 in the previous year.
“Creation of new domains in the last three months of the financial year increased significantly over the same period last year, coinciding with COVID-19 measures that saw an increase in businesses and organisations moving online following restrictions placed on the community’s access to bricks and mortar premises,” the report said.
Around 2.8 million have the com.au namespace; just over 223,00 are net.au; more than 73,000 are org.au; and just shy of 1,200 are gov.au.
New South Wales boasts just shy of 1.1 million .au domains under management by auDA.
The registry operations in the .au namespace are performed by Afilias Australia, a subsidiary of registry operator Afilias Inc.
auDA said it works closely with Afilias to ensure that the registry performance “meets the user requirements of being fast, reliable, and secure”.
auDA said traffic on the Afilias servers in 2019-2020 slightly increased compared to 2018-2019. 19,400 was the average number of queries per second (qps) across the Afilias name server infrastructure with a maximum qps of 75,000.
The average qps for Australian origin domains was 5,500 and at peak, traffic from within Australia hit 15,900 qps. Average qps for international traffic was 13,900 and a maximum of 69,400 qps.
Also under auDA’s current remit is complaints handling. When the new licensing rules are implemented in 2021, enquiries and complaints will be handled by registrars in the first instance.
“auDA will continue to be an avenue of review and deal with escalated complaints,” it added.
In 2019-2020, auDA received a total of 4,458 complaints and 3,426 enquiries.
The average time to close a complaint was 14 days.
Of the complaints that were upheld, 2,221 were related to eligibility queries and the next highest category was suspected criminal activity, with 368 enquiries.
auDA said it regularly receives law enforcement requests from state and Commonwealth law enforcement bodies where there has been an alleged breach of the law
“In 2019/2020 we received 52 law enforcement requests. Of those, four were upheld, four were denied, and 44 were closed with the outcome ‘advised’ — where we responded to a request for information,” it wrote on the matter.
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Image: Aussie Broadband
Customers of Aussie Broadband that took up the opportunity to plough up to AU$10,000 into the company could have doubled their money at one stage on Friday.
After selling 40 million shares at AU$1 each during its initial public offering (IPO), of which 10 million were available to customers, the company traded at between AU$1.74 and AU$2.22 during the day. Over 7.8 million shares changed hands during the day.
The oversubscribed IPO process gave the company an enterprise value of AU$190 million, with the current shareholders having their percentage stake reduced to around 80% of the company.
In its prospectus, the company said it did not intend to pay dividends to shareholders, and would instead be investing the money back into the business. Of the money raised, between AU$20 million to AU$26.5 million would be used to build out Aussie Broadband’s own fibre optic backhaul network, AU$7 million to AU$10 million would be set aside for working capital, and around AU$3 million to AU$3.5 million would be used on costs associated with the IPO.
“Our own fibre in the ground goes to the heart of our approach to the business. It means that we can control quality and improve our customer experience even more, and it means we can start to drive down ourbackhaul costs,” Aussie Broadband managing director Phil Britt said.
“We’ve come a long way from 27,000 customers in June 2017. Last month we connected our 300,000th customer — a 100,000 net gain in just over 5 months.”
In fiscal terms, Aussie Broadband has been able to grow its revenue from AU$49.3 million in FY18 to AU$190.5 million in FY20, and it has forecast a record AU$338 million in the coming year.
Statutory earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) was reported as AU$3 million for the 2020 fiscal year, and forecast to be AU$10.8 million for 2021.
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