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."

Comments

I find it perculiar...

[rindeee]

...that you perticularly like that quote.

just to test that +1 bonus situation

[RealAlaskan]

Here are some links on carrier grade linux. Usually I'd post this anonymously, but I want to test ...

one, two (looks interesting), three (looks interesting and authoritative).

Re:just to test that +1 bonus situation

[nels_tomlinson]

There is a +1 bonus if your karma is high enough, so your posts start out with a score of two instead of one. From reading some threads recently, I gather that that's changed, and now you can set how you will see that bonus in your preferences.

If you want it to be the way it was before, go to the user comments page, and set

Karma Bonus (modifier assigned to posts where the user has good karma)

to be +1. Or set it to -6 if you never want to see posts from people with lots of karma.

Wha?

[MoThugz]

I know that Linux has better stability, eager support community, consistent development, excellent growth potential among others.

I fail to see what the hell has Linux got to do with tolerance of interference, electrostatic discharge, corrosion, grounding and seismic durability... Last I check those features weren't built into the kernel.

That has more to do with how and where you put the servers than what OS those servers where running.

Re:Wha?

[baryon351]

You have to compile with --noesd and --killrust. at the moment there's problems with
--filthybigmetalrodintheground, which only runs acceptably if there's an AMD hammer present.

NEBS Certification

[Tony]

NEBS certification (to which your favorite quote refers) is a hardware standard pretty much required for most telecom installations. I have no clue why a Linux distribution representative is talking about hardware, unless they plan on selling compact-PCI or VME-bus hardware with UnitedLinux pre-installed.

Anyway, the NEBS certification requires testing for the amount of time the hardware smokes after being set on fire, how well it withstands water damage, and such. This is the kind of hardware you buy when five nines just aren't enough.

Re:NEBS Certification

[lowlands]

> This is the kind of hardware you buy when five nines just aren't enough.

In over 10 years in telco datacenters I have come across lot's of equipment that was NEBS certified and did *not* have 5 nines requirement. Actually there are many elements in a telco's network that don't meat that criterium by design. Too darn expensive. To give you an example: 1 linecard for a Lucent 5ESS switch (stone age pile of junk that indeed runs close to forever) is over $1,000. That's a lot of money to recoup from the one or max two subscribers that are hooked up to that card. Although NEBS is partially a requirement for 5 or 6 nines, there are many other things to consider like software.

Needless to say I have never seen a Microsoft 5 nines solution. Would be surprised if it actually excisted. I did have a field day once on a Internet Call Diversion trial at WorldCom's datacenter in central London where those silly people from Alcatel actually brought in a couple of Windows boxes. The Alcatel people were even surprised that WCOM did not accept a solution that had to be rebooted at least every twelve hours. And that was on a slow day in the trial environment :) We won the order off course.

Cheers, Patrick

Re:NEBS Certification

[michael_cain]

NEBS compliance is so much fun! Two of my favorite requirements:

• There are very tough requirements about things a circuit board must not outgas when heated (eg, by a fire). Many of the outgas products from heating a board made with standard fiberglass and epoxy are highly toxic. This is dangerous for central office craftpeople who are expected to be trying to extinguish the fire without the benefit of the kind of breathing equipment a fireman would normally be using.
• For every N frames more than six feet tall (I think that's the height limit, it's been a while since I really looked), the vendor must provide a stepladder made of oak. Basically it's because oak has been tested to be nonconductive, meet strength requirements, etc. No one has been willing to pay to certify some other material. Sort of like the obsolete processors in the space shuttle -- no one has been willing to pay the cost for certifying another processor to NASA specs.

The only thing I can think of off hand that might be affected by Linux (versus some other OS) would be alarms. Central office equipment is often required to provide alarm signals using relative large voltages or currents, which would require device drivers for relay boards or other ways of handling that much power.

Re:NEBS Certification

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Needless to say I have never seen a Microsoft 5 nines solution.
But I've seen some 9 fives solutions...

(OK, old joke, but I had to say it).

An oxymoron:

[Anonymous Coward]

CGW (Carrier Grade Windows)

It's not so much UL pushing

[ObviousGuy]

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.

Odd choice of market

[kruetz]

For UnitedLinux to choose such a market is definitely unusual, but is it really related to UnitedLinux being what it is, or is it a group seeing a potentially large market for their product?

I mean, I think that UnitedLinux may have chosen this route not because it's the sort of thing they're aiming for in particular, but that they believe it's a market where Linux may be one of the best available solutions. If this is the case, however, shouldn't they perhaps be aiming to establish themselves in a "core" market first, before aiming at something like this?

Then again, perhaps they have a bit of time and effort to burn, and if they do succeed then things may work out very well for UnitedLinux in other areas.

OR, OTOH perhaps this is one of the markets they've had in mind for a while and just haven't made that information public before. If they'd let everyone know ages ago that this was what they were looking at, then some other vendor may have beat them to it. (Just a suggestion - I don't think this is actually the case)

great, just what we need..

[Anonymous Coward]

GNU/AT&T

Re:great, just what we need..

[Phroggy]

GNU/AT&T

Geez. That's so wrong, in so many ways.

NEBS compliant hardware required

[ToasterTester]

I've used Sun carrier grade hardware, don't know of any Intel based. Does any exist?

Re:NEBS compliant hardware required

[whitemouse]

Yes, Motorola's CPX and MXP, Force Centellis, Radisys CP80, all are Intel-based platforms that are NEBS compliant.

Linux....

[Lodragandraoidh]

I can't see why anyone would be upset about this (like some of the previous posers^H^H^H^H^Hposters), unless, of course, they are part of the Microsloth FUD patrol...

I would rather have a Linux cluster running my VOIP network than the alternatives. At least I would be able to fix the damn thing in under 4 hours.

On a related United Linux Note

[orpheus2000]

IBM, AMD Become Part of UnitedLinux

This should have been somewhere on Slashdot...

Smart market to move into

[cylcyl]

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

Re:Earthquake protection lies elsewhere

[kruetz]

What!?! You obviously aren't a case-modder, are you?

My case is made of titanium alloys and packaging foam. I can drop it from a plane (while it's running) and the only thing that happens is that the CD-Audio skips (hang on a second, I listen to .oggs).

In fact, my computer works best when it's being dropped out of planes or having buildings land on it.

Besides, it's probably cheaper to case-mod each PC than to maintain the structural safety of the building. Now if those damned employees would only get titanium bones and exo-skeletons...

There is a reason for those requirements.

[joejgarcia]

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!

Interesting Choice

[occamboy]

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.

Re:But what's the point of switching...

[djrogers]

Well, let's see... When Avaya released a Linux based telephony server they did 3 things.

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...

Not the only "carrier-grade" linux

[Chirs]

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.

Suns lunch

[Smid]

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...