Altiostar and Wind River collaborate

A technical breakthrough for the NFV C-RAN market, the Altiostar C-RAN solution can be deployed using readily available standard Ethernet transport and does not require expensive and hard-to-deploy dark fiber or wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) in the last mile. The solution allows operators to build high-density clusters, resulting in considerably improved network performance and reduced capital expenditure and operating expenses.

“Current C-RAN architecture requires expensive and hard-to-deploy dark fiber or WDM in the last mile to carry CPRI frames. Additionally, exploding data consumption is creating tremendous network capacity shortfall. Carriers are eager to find disruptive solutions to address these challenges,” said Ashraf M. Dahod, president and CEO of Altiostar. “The Altiostar solution uses standard Ethernet-based fronthaul to build the cloud RAN. By working with industry leaders like Wind River and using Intel technology, we were able to get to market faster with an NFV C-RAN solution that enables the rapid introduction of new services and capacity, while driving down the total cost of ownership.”

As networks move to NFV, to properly handle traffic growth while improving quality of experience, it will be important to deploy a C-RAN with intelligent software-intensive eNodeBs that are capable of supporting LTE-Advanced features and provide scalable, on-demand compute, memory, and I/O bandwidth. Altiostar’s C-RAN solution includes intelligent macro and micro cellular eNodeBs. The Altiostar solution utilizes the NFV-enabling Wind River Titanium Server software platform for its software-intensive intelligent eNodeB. It runs on the Intel® Xeon® processor, which gives it the high performance needed for hyperscale workloads while minimizing the footprint.

“In order for the telecom industry to successfully achieve NFV, the delivery of virtualized services at carrier grade levels of performance and reliability is absolutely critical,” said Paul Senyshyn, vice president and general manager of networking solutions at Wind River. "Wind River Titanium Server delivers an NFV infrastructure that gives Altiostar’s solution the carrier grade virtualization required to allow service providers to easily and quickly achieve goals such as reducing costs while introducing new high-value services through NFV."

“The unrelenting pace of mobile data traffic growth combined with the rise of the Internet of Things are driving the requirement for high-performance compute density deeper into the networks,” said Steve Price, general manager of the Communications Infrastructure Division at Intel. “Using the Intel® Xeon® processor and Wind River Titanium Server software platform provides Altiostar with the performance needed to deliver a robust NFV C-RAN solution.”

Wind River Titanium Server is a carrier grade NFV infrastructure software solution that is designed to meet the stringent "always on" requirements of the telecom industry. By using Titanium Server as an NFV infrastructure software foundation, the telecom industry may enjoy the best of both worlds: the rapid service deployment typically found in enterprise networks with the carrier grade uptime and reliability mandated by telecom networks. Based on technologies using open standards, including carrier grade Wind River Linux, real-time Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), carrier grade plugins for OpenStack®, Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), and accelerated vSwitch technologies, and optimized for Intel® architecture, Titanium Server brings together high performance and carrier grade reliability.