The network edge provides a dramatic opportunity for NFV deployment, as communications service providers rapidly convert their existing edge infrastructure to mini virtualized data centers, and as cloud providers extend their reach closer to end users. This presentation will describe this burgeoning market, explain the fundamental challenges, and review the various open source and standardization projects in this area. We will then introduce Smart NICs and show how Smart NICs using FPGAs that offer affordable, programmable, hardware-based acceleration, provide an ideal solution for this growing market segment. On this Light Reading webinar, we will address the following:

• What is the virtualized edge, and what are telcos and cloud providers doing in this space?
• The unique requirements of the virtualized edge
• Lessons learned from Microsoft Azure’s experience with Smart NICs
• How Smart NICs accelerate both NFVi and various VNFs at the edge using SR-IOV
• Why FPGA-based Smart NICs are best suited to address the challenges of the virtualized edge

There has been much discussion about the turn-up process for the actual distributed access nodes and what can go wrong at this step. But what has been conspicuously absent is dialogue about the preparation required in the headend and transport network. Much of the complexity (and challenges) in DAA deployments come from re-architecting the headend/hub and transport network before the first field DAA unit is ever turned up. The challenges in these areas are both technical and organizational – it is not always well thought out who owns the issues with the new interfaces that Distributed Access Architecture brings. In this session, we will go over a few architecture options in play today and focus on the crucial fiber and transport areas, including fiber characterization and testing, Ethernet testing (including PTP timing) and recommended service testing.

Subsea transmission capacity is growing at a dramatic rate – with analyst firm Telegeography forecasting a compound growth rate of 46% between 2017 and 2024. Much of this demand is driven by Internet content providers (ICPs). On Transatlantic routes, for example, ICP demand exceeded Internet bandwidth for the first time in 2014, and in 2017, ICP bandwidth accounted for the majority of overall international bandwidth usage.

Extracting the maximum capacity from trans-oceanic cables is, therefore, paramount in importance. This webinar tells the story of the world's first transatlantic transmission using 16QAM modulation across the entire C-Band spectrum, with production equipment and commercial transmission margins.

We look at the following issues:

• Why is ICP subsea demand growing so quickly?
• What are the technologies used to achieve successful 16QAM transmission over this distance?
• How much capacity can we extract from subsea cables, and what is the next miracle technology?