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UnitedLinux Pushes Into Telecom Market
An anonymous reader writes "It would seem that UnitedLinux is pushing into the telecomms market according to this article at ITWorld. Is this the first market they are trying to meander into? I perticularly like this quote: 'Telecommunications grade servers must meet specific standards regarding electromagnetic interference, electrostatic discharge, corrosion, grounding and seismic durability.' Hmmmm."
As it is UL being pulled into the markets. And though the article has a couple instances where UL is being brought in as test servers, there is no evidence of a wide-scale demand for Linux to replace existing telecom servers.
Linux has always been a small-scale server OS, best used for printer sharing, file sharing, and web serving. It can be loaded onto big iron without much trouble, but it still suffers performance (in the general sense of the word, not just speedwise) issues compared to commercial big iron Unix.
I have been pwned because my
I've used Sun carrier grade hardware, don't know of any Intel based. Does any exist?
Frankly Telco Central offices are some of the most *NIX friendly environment because reliability is more important than beauty. Many telcos staved off the insurgence of Window's dominance in the corporate world and continued with using *NIX.
So this is one territory which Linux can move into more easily because it can show clear functional improvement paths and will be less resistance because they were already using *NIX
I used to install TOLD systems in Bell South's COs and all electicity coming into those places gets converted to DC, run through a boatload of WWII style Sub batteries and converted back to AC where need for some of the more modern equipment, but not much. (I tried to steer clear of the rapidly bubbling batteries). Anyway this is a server enviroment that is built on the military and technology requirements of the WWII era, and hasn't changed since then. Heck 4 years ago they were just upgrading from AT&T/Lucent 3B24s to 3B25s (yes AT&T/Lucent still make a unix box they just call it a 5ESS switch, it's real time too).. What was the big difference, they were moving from reel to reel to 5mm DATs. Heck one place I was at they were just finishing the replacement of a 1A1 switch which used punchcards and rotary switches.
It's not so much that the OS needs to be approved of those requiremnts as it is the hardware. Problem is Bell South's thinking when it comes to this stuff is so stuck in a time warp they can't separate the two. Pretty good move actually because once they approve of something it usually takes them between 25 - 50 years to end of life stuff. Can you say support contract boys and girls? There you go good!
On the one hand, a telecom server is an excellent place to put Linux -- Linux is stable, fast, powerful, remotely accessable, and flexible, just what is needed in a piece of equipment that ought to sit and do its thing for months on end without human supervision*.
On the other hand, there really is not much of a telecom market these days. Why go after a business that is rapidly shrinking?
*And, in a telecom server, few users will be irritated by the hideous screen fonts that plague most distros.
Shed their proprietary hardware and OS
Maintained 5 9's reliability
Tripled their call handling capability and dramatically increased the number of endpoints they could handle
In fact, with a single pair of low cost (compared to their old proprietary processors) S8700 Linux based servers, an Avaya IP PBX can handle more endpoints and calls per hour than eight (8!!!) of their competitors' NT based telephony servers, all while providing higher reliability on an OPEN infrastructure...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
I work for a fairly well-known telecommunications equipment company, and I can say that we have more than one product that is based on Linux.
Rather than use any of the off-the-shelf solutions however, we basically rolled our own distribution, including userspace and kernel mods (yes, we ship the source for the mods to GPL'd code) as well as totally custom software to provide the real "carrier-grade" touches.
The "seismic durability" thing just means that all equipment used must be able to withstand certain specified vibration levels for certain amounts of time. This is most likely part of the whole NEBS compliance issue, which most telcos require (and is legislated in many places).
Our setup uses compactPCI blades with a gig or more of RAM and GHz+ processors. Not what most people think of when they think "embedded linux", but its fun to play with.
So you think that's funny. Then you should try working in the defence industry. I used to think that MIL standards where funny ( particularly the one about fungus ) until I saw what was required to simply make a box to put something in
* MIL-STD-2073 DOD Standard Practice for Military Packaging
* MIL-STD-794 Parts and Equipment, Procedures for Packaging and Packing
* MIL-P-116 Preservation Methods
* MIL-STD-648 Design Criteria for Specialized Shipping Containers
* MIL-HDBK-304 Military Standardization Handbook, Package Cushioning Design
* MIL-C-4150J Transit and Storage, Waterproof and Water-Vaporproof
* MIL-T-21200 Test Equipment for use with Electronic and Electrical Equipment
* MIL-T-28800 Test Equipment for use with Electrical and Electronic Equipment
* MIL-T-4734 Transit Cases for Ground Electronics Equipment (USAF)
* MIL-STD-454 Standard General Requirements for Electronic Equipment
* MIL-STD-810 Environmental Test Methods and Engineering Guidelines
* FTMS-101 Federal Test Method Standard, Test Procedures for Packaging Materials
* MIL-STD-130 Identification Marking of US Military Property
* MIL-STD-1472 Human Engineering Design Criteria for Military Systems, Equipment and Facilities
* MIL-I-45208 Inspection System Requirements
Sounds to me as if they've identified one of Suns niches which is quite lucrative, and want it...
Why's Sun so successful there?
1) Hardware stability. Those things are built like german tanks. Good quality disks and memory, none of the cost cutting the mass market demands on their servers.
2) Realtime kernel/scheduling. Hardware timers at nanosecond accuracy.
Ok, the 1st is one of those things which do exist nowadays, but the big PCs makers haven't really identified that niche yet. So you'll probably end up with too much hardware for the stablitity it provides (a web server box for a small telecomms app).
The second is one of those things which bites at the name UnitedLinux. People love the linux kernel, because it is fair scheduling. They don't like the idea that one process can get _all_ the cpu, and its up to the code writer to make sure it doesn't. There are patches to the linux kernel such as rtlinux and rtai which provide this, but across the board?
Strikes me as if united linux would have to be less united than it should be...