Edgecore Networks Introduces Open Networking for Cell Sites and 5G

Announces Availability of First Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway

AMSTERDAM--()--OCP Regional Summit – Edgecore Networks, the leader in open networking, today announced the availability of its AS7316-26XB gateway, the industry’s first open disaggregated cell site gateway, that will enable service providers to deploy 4G and 5G wireless services with the economies of disaggregated open network technology. The cell site gateway is a completely open hardware design with Edgecore having contributed its design to the Open Compute Project (OCP) in conformance to the “Cell Site Gateway Router” specification which AT&T has contributed to the OCP Telco Project.

“Edgecore has been expanding our leadership work in OCP networking from the data center to service provider networks with previous design contributions of leaf/spine switches and disaggregated OLTs for broadband access infrastructures, in addition to our work in the TIP and ONF communities on reference designs for access and optical networking use cases,” said George Tchaparian, CEO, Edgecore Networks. “The introduction of the fully open Edgecore AS7316-26XB cell site gateway will extend open networking into cell site deployments, lowering cost and enabling increased software control from open platforms, to meet the increasing bandwidth and service demands that providers face in their mobile networks today and in their upcoming 5G rollouts.”

The AS7316-26XB gateway is designed for outside plant and cell site deployment, supporting 4G and 5G base stations with full IEEE 1588 timing and GPS functions, and providing backhaul uplinks at 25GbE or 100GbE. As with all Edgecore open network switches, the cell site gateway will provide network operators with open source software options including ONIE, Open Network Linux, the Open Optical Monitoring (OOM) API, the Redfish hardware management API, and SONiC. The Edgecore cell site gateway will be compatible with commercial NOS and SDN software options, including from IP Infusion and Metaswitch.

Features and Availability

Edgecore has contributed to OCP the detailed specification and design package for the AS7316-26XB gateway, which provides 2 x 100GbE QSFP28 ports, 8 x 25GbE SFP28 ports, and 16 x 10GbE/1GbE SFP+ ports in a 1U enclosure designed for deployment in outside plant cabinets and meeting NEBS 3 requirements. The AS7316-26XB gateway incorporates the Broadcom® StrataDNX™ Qumran-AX switch silicon, deep packet buffer memory, and an Intel® Xeon® Processor D control plane processor.

The AS7316-26XB cell site gateway router is available now. Edgecore will be exhibiting the AS7316-26XB gateway, in addition to other open network products for data center and service provider networks, at the OCP Regional Summit in Amsterdam on Oct 1-2, the SDN NFV World Congress in The Hague on Oct 9-11, the TIP Summit in London on Oct 16-17, and the Broadband World Forum in Berlin on Oct 23-25.

Supporting Quotes

“Edgecore has made important contributions to the OCP Networking Project, ranging from the first network design accepted by the project five years ago to its contribution of the first open 400G design earlier this year. We welcome Edgecore’s new design contribution of the cell site gateway router, which demonstrates the increasingly productive work and true collaboration in the Telco Project with AT&T and the entire OCP community.”
Bill Carter, CTO, OCP Foundation

“As the ONF leads the development of open source solutions for service providers, we include open hardware designs such as those introduced through OCP into our Reference Designs. The ONF welcomes Edgecore’s contribution of the open cell site gateway to OCP, as a potential platform for advancing our work in M-CORD and the wireless network challenges of our service provider partners.”
Guru Parulkar, Executive Director, Open Networking Foundation and Stanford Platform Lab

"Broadcom devices form the heart of OCP switch designs for data center and service provider applications, including many leading platforms from Edgecore. We are pleased to see Edgecore introduce open designs for cell site gateways featuring Broadcom Qumran-AX switch silicon from our StrataDNX series, the only merchant silicon optimized for service provider use cases."
Wei-Ai Tai, Director of Business Development, Broadcom

"IP Infusion is working with Edgecore to support the open cell site gateway router as we see growing demands for capacity expansion from Telcos at the edge of the network. IP Infusion’s OcNOS™ service provider release on Broadcom Qumran-AX will support the complete set of features required to meet the edge aggregation services. We believe this will accelerate the migration to 5G services to meet the scale and cost points required for enabling new applications such as IoT and edge data centers."
Atsushi Ogata, President and CEO, IP Infusion

"KGPCo is a System Integrator who has extensive experience in OSP and Cell Site deployments. KGPCo values close collaboration with leading technology ecosystem partners, Edgecore Networks being a key partner. It is critical for us to deliver deployable solutions to our mutual customers and Edgecore's solutions drive simplicity for disaggregated technology to be deployed at the network edge. With the advent of 5G on the horizon, Edgecore provides exceptional port density and capacity, combined with leading solutions from both Intel and Broadcom, delivered in a package that meets NEBS compliance standards. This will provide a technology advantage to cloud customers in support of the growing requirements at the edge."
Joe Baeumel, VP of Partner Strategy & Business Development, KPGCo

“Service Providers are eager to reap the benefits of disaggregated open networking, just as the data center players have done over the last several years. Given our long-standing deployment history in carrier networks, Metaswitch is excited to collaborate with Edgecore, a true pioneer in this space, to deliver these benefits in cell site gateway router applications.”
Jon Berger, VP Networking Software, Metaswitch Networks

“Edgecore’s delivery of the AS7316-26XB cell site gateway router offers service providers a cost-effective, open networking hardware platform on which they can install a variety of Network Operating Systems (NOSs) to deploy backhaul services. This gives service providers increased software control of their fixed wireless and mobile networks as they deploy new 5G services.”
Joe Wojtal, VP Open Systems and Solutions, World Wide Technology (WWT)

About Edgecore Networks

Edgecore Networks Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Accton Technology Corporation, the leading network ODM. Edgecore Networks delivers wired and wireless networking products and solutions through channel partners and system integrators worldwide for the Data Center, Service Provider, Enterprise and SMB customers. Edgecore Networks is the leader in open networking providing a full line of open WiFi access points, packet transponders, virtual PON OLTs, cell site gateways, and 1G, 10G, 25G, 40G, 100G and 400G OCP-Accepted™ switches that offer choice of commercial and open source NOS and SDN software. For more information, visit www.edge-core.com.

All trademarks, service marks, registered marks, or registered service marks are the property of their respective owners.

© 2018 Edgecore Networks. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. Edgecore Networks shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

Contacts

Media Contacts
Edgecore Networks
North America:
Bill Burger, 1-508-485-5193
bill_burger@edge-core.com
or
Europe:
Mark Basham, 44-(0)7595 849142
mark_basham@edge-core.com
or
Asia:
Lucille Lu, 886-3-505-3674
lucille_lu@edge-core.com

Release Summary

Edgecore Networks Introduces Open Networking for Cell Sites and 5G; Announces Availability of First Disaggregated Cell Site Gateway

Contacts

Media Contacts
Edgecore Networks
North America:
Bill Burger, 1-508-485-5193
bill_burger@edge-core.com
or
Europe:
Mark Basham, 44-(0)7595 849142
mark_basham@edge-core.com
or
Asia:
Lucille Lu, 886-3-505-3674
lucille_lu@edge-core.com