text:
|Scientific classification
Gray, 1843
|C. caracal
|Binomial name
|Caracal caracal
(Schreber, 1776)
|Caracal distribution
The caracal (Caracal caracal) /ˈkærəkæl/ is a medium-sized wild cat that is around one metre (3.3 ft) long. The caracal is sometimes called the desert lynx, African lynx, or Persian lynx,[2] but it is not a member of the Lynx genus. The caracal is native to Africa, Central Asia, Southwest Asia and India. The cat's name comes from the Turkish word "karakulak", which means "black ear".[3]
The most distinctive feature of the caracal is the long black tufts on the back of the ears roughly 4.4 centimetres (1.75 in) long. The caracal is often referred to as the desert lynx, although these black tufts are the only characteristic shared with the lynx. Its fur can range from tawny-brown to brick red. Caracals have white fur on the abdomen, chin and throat. Black lines run from the eye to the nose. Its fur coat is short and very dense. The ears are lightly colored in the front and are black in the back.[4]
The caracal is the largest of Africa's "small cats."[4] Males can weigh up to 18 kilograms (40 lb), and females up to 16 kilograms (35 lb). Caracals are about 40 centimetres (16 in) to 50 centimetres (20 in) tall at the shoulder. Caracals have a short tail. The male and female look the same. Its eye pupils shrink to circles, while other cats' pupils shrink to slits.[4]
Evolution and taxonomy[edit]
The caracal is most closely related to the African golden cat (Caracal aurata),[5] and likely diverged from the serval lineage within the last 5 million years, around the split between the Pliocene and Pleistocene eras.[6] In the past, the caracal was classified with either the Lynx[2] or Felis genera. However, recent molecular evidence now supports a monophyletic genus.[1]
Caracals are nocturnal hunters. They are normally solitary animals, but some live in pairs. Social interactions usually occur only during mating. Caracals can purr, hiss, snarl, bark and growl. The caracal breeds throughout the year. Females have from one to six kittens per litter. The kittens become independent after about nine or ten months. The young then travel considerable distances to find and claim their own new territory. Females normally have one litter per year. In captivity, a caracal can live up to 16 years; in the wild, they live for 10 to 12 years. Females stay in one place to defend the territory, while males roam over larger areas. Both genders leave scent marks. The caracal's speed and agility makes them very good hunters; they are able to take down prey two to three times their size.[1] Their powerful hind legs allow them to leap more than three metres (9.8 ft) into the air to catch birds on the wing.[7] Caracals are primarily nocturnal, and occasionally arboreal although they usually stay on the ground.[6]
Distribution and habitat[edit]
The caracal inhabits woodlands, savannas, semi-deserts, and scrub forests, and prefers arid habitats with lower rainfall and some coverage.[1] Although it hunts on the ground, it can climb trees and swim swiftly to catch fish. They are not found in tropical rainforests.[1] However, they will inhabit evergreen and montane forests.[4]
The caracal is widely distributed across Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia into India. This small cat is distributed across all of Africa except for the equatorial forest belt and the central Sahara. The historical range of the caracal is similar to that of the cheetah; both overlap with the range of several small desert gazelles. However, the caracal remains today in a wider range. The caracal has remained in most of its historical range, although has lost a part of its range at the edges, especially in North and West Africa.[1]
Female home ranges are smaller than male home ranges. In general, caracal home ranges are larger in arid environments compared to areas with more water.[1]
The caracal's gestation period is approximately two and a half months, and litters are usually between one and four kittens.[8] The kittens are weaned by 10 weeks, but remain with the mother for up to a year. Caracals reach sexual maturity between 12 and 16 months.[4]
Like most carnivorous cats, the caracal has a very broad diet. It mainly consumes small mammals and birds. It also preys upon the young of larger mammals, such as the impala and antelope. Caracals sometimes eat lizards, snakes and insects.[1] The caracal preys on a variety of mammals, but most typically rodents, hares, hyraxes, and small antelope. Although caracals are considered a small cat, they do not hesitate to kill larger prey, such as an adult springbok or juvenile kudu, when the opportunity arises.[4] Hunting usually occurs at night and the caracal kills by biting the neck and suffocating its prey.[8] The caracal has also been known to scavenge when necessary.[1]
The caracal is often considered a nuisance to local crop and livestock owners because it does not shy away from livestock predation, and is frequently killed because of this. The caracal is also hunted for its skin and meat, which some bush tribes consider a delicacy.[4] Habitat destruction, from agriculture and desertification, is also a threat in central, west, north, and northeast Africa.[1] The caracal is most abundant in Namibia and South Africa, although research indicates they are declining through parts of Namibia.[9] Caracals are considered rare throughout most of their range .[8] In Africa, the caracal is listed under CITES Appendix II and Least Concern on the IUCN Red List.[1][4] Hunting caracals is forbidden in sub-Saharan Africa, but only in about half of the caracal's range, as it is not protected in Namibia and South Africa. Here, the caracal is considered a problem animal, and is so abundant that landowners are permitted to kill without restriction.[1] Like many cats, the caracal is not often seen. However, the caracal seems to be doing well even in nations where hunting it is permitted. Humans are the primary threat to caracals,[1] but leopards are known to kill them.[10] Overall, caracal conservation is not currently an issue, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, although its population as well as its habitat has decreased in specific areas.[1] In the future, the conservation status of the caracal may worsen as a result of continued habitat destruction, fragmentation and desertification.[4]
Captive breeding[edit]
Some zoos raise caracals in captive breeding programs. The ethics and safety of having a caracal as a pet are debated. Although they are easy to tame, caracals are very active and territorial.[11]
Caracals were historically trained to hunt birds in Iran and India. Sometimes, a caracal was put into a stadium along with a flock of pigeons. People would make bets on how many pigeons the caracal would kill during a set time span. A well-trained caracal could take down up to twelve pigeons in one leap with its large paws and strong legs.[12] This is where the expression "to put a cat amongst the pigeons" came from.[4]
Cultural depictions[edit]
Caracals appear to have been religiously significant to the ancient Egyptians. Caracals were found in wall paintings, and sculptures of caracals and other cats guarded tombs. Some caracal bodies were embalmed.[13]
Like cheetahs, caracals were used as a hunting tool. Caracals were trained to hunt small game and birds for Indian royalty.[1] Today, many people consider the caracal an "exotic" pet, although they do not behave domestically in captivity. Despite its wild attitude, attempts have been made to crossbreed caracals with domestic cats to produce a "domestic" caracal.[4]
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Breitenmoser-Wursten, C., Henschel, P. & Sogbohossou, E. (2008). Caracal caracal. In: IUCN 2008. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
- ^ a b Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Caracal (animal)". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- ^ "Caracal". Small cats of Africa.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k "Caracal Facts". Big Cat Rescue. Retrieved March 4, 2015.
- ^ Johnson, W.E. & O'Brien, S.J. (1997). "Phylogenetic reconstruction of the Felidae using 16S rRNA and NADH-5 mitochondrial genes". Journal of Molecular Evolution 44 (Suppl1): S98–S116. doi:10.1007/PL00000060. PMID 9071018.
- ^ a b Gittleman, John, ed. (1989). Carnivore Behavior, Ecology, and Evolutioin. New York: Cornell University Press.
- ^ Kohn, T. A.; Burroughs, R.; Hartman, M. J.; Noakes, T. D. (2011). "Fiber type and metabolic characteristics of lion (Panthera leo), caracal (Caracal caracal) and human skeletal muscle". Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology 159 (2): 125–33. doi:10.1016/j.cbpa.2011.02.006. PMID 21320626.
- ^ a b c Shorrocks, Bryan (2007). Biology of Habitats: The Biology of African Savannahs. New York: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Neils 2015 wwww.ConservationCATalyst.com
- ^ Dybas, Cheryl Lyn. "Lair of the Leopard: To Cache Kills, Leopards Prefer Caves Over Trees". voices.nationalgeographic.com. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ^ "Caracal". rightpet.com. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ^ "Caracal Facts". bigcatrescue.org. Retrieved 24 February 2015.
- ^ Kingdon, J. (1977). East African Mammals: An Atlas of Evolution in Africa, Volume IIIA: Carnivores. Academic Press, London. ISBN 0226437213.
External links[edit]
|Look up caracal in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
|Wikispecies has information related to: Caracal caracal
|Wikimedia Commons has media related to:


text:
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The blood vessels that bring blood to your brain and face are called the carotid arteries. You have a carotid artery on each side of your neck.
The blood flow in this artery can become partly or totally blocked by fatty material called plaque. A partial blockage is called carotid artery stenosis (narrowing). A blockage in your carotid artery can reduce the blood supply to your brain. A stroke can occur if your brain does not get enough blood.
Two procedures can be used to treat a carotid artery that is narrowed or blocked. These are:
Carotid angioplasty and stenting; CAS; Angioplasty - carotid artery
Carotid angioplasty and stenting (CAS) is done using a small surgical cut.
Carotid surgery (endarterectomy) is the first choice for treating narrowed or blocked arteries. This procedure is very safe.
Carotid angioplasty and stenting carries a higher risk of leading to a stroke. However, it can be used as an alternative in situations where carotid surgery is not a good option. These may include:
Risks of carotid angioplasty and stent placement are:
Your doctor will do a physical exam and perform several medical tests.
Always tell your doctor or nurse what drugs you are taking, even drugs, supplements, or herbs you bought without a prescription.
During the 2 weeks before your surgery:
Do NOT drink anything after midnight the night before your surgery, including water.
On the day of your surgery:
After surgery, your doctor may want you to stay in the hospital overnight so that nurses can watch you for any signs of bleeding, stroke, or poor blood flow to your brain. You may be able to go home the same day if your procedure is done early in the day and you are doing well. Your nurse will talk to you about how to care for yourself at home.
Carotid artery angioplasty may help lower your chance of having a stroke. But you will need to make lifestyle changes to help prevent plaque buildup, blood clots, and other problems in your carotid arteries over time. You may need to change your diet and start an exercise program if your doctor tells you exercise is safe for you.
Brott TG, Halperin JL, et al. 2011 ASA/ACCF/AHA/AANN/AANS/ACR/ASNR/CNS/SAIP/SCAI/SIR/SNIS/SVM/SVS Guideline on the Management of Patients With Extracranial Carotid and Vertebral Artery Disease. J Am Coll Cardiol.2011;
International Carotid Stenting Study Investigators. Dobson EJ, Featherstone RL, Bonati LH, van der Worp HB, et al. Carotid artery stenting compared with endarterectomy in patients with symptomatic carotid stenosis (International Carotid Stenting Study): an interim analysis of a randomised controlled trial. Lancet. 2010;375:985-997.
Murad MH, Shahrour A, Shan ND, et al. A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials of carotid endarterectomy vs. stenting. J Vasc Surg. 2011 Mar;53(3):792-7.
Eisenhauer AC, White CJ, Bhatt DL. Endovascular treatment of noncoronary obstructive vascular disease. In: Bonow Ro, Mann DL, Zipes DP, Libby P, eds. Braunwald's Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine. 9th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Saunders Elsevier; 2011:chap 63.
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Walter's Falls by RebacanWatch
©2008-2016 Rebacan
We have a saying around here, "all roads lead to Walter's Falls" It doesn't seem to matter which route we take, in or out of our little part of Ontario, there is always a signpost to Walter's Falls somewhere along the way..
HDR image
HDR image
nice shot rebecca and great gallerry
Very nice
I love it!
I love it!
Whew beautiful I can almost hear the water
Great shot!!
Great shot!!
very beautiful shot. Also a very beautiful place
You're from the area aren't you? Yes it is lovely there and now with the new hotel also a nice place to have lunch.
Wow what a cool place to have so near to your home! I'd be going there year round and climb up and down all over the place haha....whoops. That was until I read your comment on how difficult it is to get to that spot! Nice job and well worth the effort the put in to it.
Its a pretty nice spot. A scene from a Jackie Chan film was actually filmed there a few years ago. Don't ask me which movie but it was some sort of fight at the foot of the falls although god knows how they got their cameras down there.
It should be easier to get to in the spring before all the undergrowth takes over and you can actually see the slippery rocks. It would also be nice to go when it isn't raining.
It should be easier to get to in the spring before all the undergrowth takes over and you can actually see the slippery rocks. It would also be nice to go when it isn't raining.
Your efforts were worth it... lovely picture...
Wonderful shot! The water is perfect!
Nice capture. You can expect water on the lense from a waterfall, it doesn't detract anything from the shot.
This was really a difficult picture to get because the conditions were terrible. It was pouring rain and I had to climb down slippery rock cliffs and wade rivers etc. I actually fell in the river once but kept my camera up. I was using my husbands old tripod that weighs a ton and I was carrying my large golf umbrella. So after all that its nice that I got one decent shot out of the trip. Thanks for your positive comments and thanks for adding it to your 'scapes' collection.
You've painted quite a comical picture with your tale of wet woe, lol. I think it was worth the effort, very nice picture.
Eh the waterdroplets don't hurt it much. If anything it kind of adds to it. Nice shot, good work.
Thanks. Like I often say its hard to judge your own work. I almost overlooked this one and it seems to be being very well received.
Thank you Anna, I almost didn't post it because of the water droplets from the lens on the upper left but my husband said I should.
Beautiful shot!


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How long did it rain during Noah"s flood?
In memory of my wife,Sister in Christ, Has Passed away! 2009/04/05 04:38:06
Top Opinion
Bob-chicka-wow-wow 2009/04/05 04:44:03 (edited)None of the above+10it drizzled for about 3 minutes and was then partly cloudy with winds out of the NW at 5 m.p.h.
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- rhee 2009/04/08 00:53:00Forty days and Forty nightsThey remained on the ark 150 days until vegitaion was enough to feed the timid birds .This proven by the DOVE returning twicewhen it returned the 2 time it had an olive branch ..showing things were growing again ..the third tiem she /it didnt return ..The raven never came back as he is a scavenger.there was plentyof food for it.GOD BLESS
- SpyderX 2009/04/07 04:45:13None of the aboveit wasn't rain... it was a divine golden shower... yup, God pissed on everybody!
- Körïnthïän 2009/04/07 00:16:32None of the aboveLet's count how many babies, cuddly animals and pretty plants god drowned too!
- rhee Körïnthïän 2009/04/08 00:56:40He sure did he destroyed all living creatures ..If you would read instead of make fun you would see that GOD was not happy about it . It greived him thats why he promised to never destroy the world with water again.. Next time he destors it or purifies it he will fry your happy hinny...(sorry couldnt help my self) GOD BLESs
- Körïnthïän rhee 2009/04/08 01:16:53Here, let me explain something to you:
If you can do anything, you can do things without killing innocents.
It is really that simple.
- rhee Körïnthïän 2009/04/08 01:25:24Let me explain something to you when your ignorant your just ignorant !.. You and yours wont like this but here we go ...If you punish just the idiots it not as effective as if you catch a few innocents ..Try weeding your garden bet after a while of weeds growing ,,when you do decide you'ev had all the weeds you can stand and start to weed it out ..I bet you get a few good tender plants .what cha bet ? GOD BLESS
- Körïnthïän rhee 2009/04/08 01:27:32You are comparing people who aren't omnipotent with a fictional being that's claimed to be. So your logic is flawed. Try again.
- rhee Körïnthïän 2009/04/08 01:31:38Thank you for noticing GOD is omnipotent!..Oh thats right you say he's fictitional So of course he must be.. HAHA HEE HOOO I laugh in your face GOD BLESS HaHAHA HE HE HE HO HO HOo
- Körïnthïän rhee 2009/04/08 01:36:48Oh no, I broke another.
- rhee Körïnthïän 2009/04/08 03:29:44YOu broke another what nail..... hahahhehehhohoh..You are to funny GOD BLESS
- Xavier 2009/04/06 06:24:03Forty days and Forty nightsIt rained for forty days and forty nights, but the water didnt leave the earth until 150 days.
- Howard Beale II 2009/04/06 06:11:05
- Kimberly 2009/04/05 15:31:03Forty days and Forty nights"Saved for a rainy day" things came into effect I bet...
- R0xY2576~ R.W.A.C~ 2009/04/05 12:52:40Undecided
- Pats Fan 2009/04/05 11:06:19
- PC 2009/04/05 09:51:06 (edited)
- Radlad 2009/04/05 08:06:02Forty days and Forty nightsand waited for the sewers to back up.................
- Kurbdog 2009/04/05 06:49:00Forty days and Forty nights
- NickName his Dudeness 2009/04/05 06:13:24
- Mollydolly 2009/04/05 05:38:57
- Feck Sodahed 2009/04/05 05:24:26
- Xavier Feck So... 2009/04/06 06:25:56How is it made up when there is more then sufficient proof to show that it actually happened. There are pieces of the Ark still on Mount Ararat.
- Feck So... Xavier 2009/04/06 13:28:47Okay...most of the story was fabricated. There was never a flood of the entire earth 5,000 years ago that wiped out everyone except for one family.
- Xavier Feck So... 2009/04/06 21:30:29Then apparently you need to read it again. Because it wiped out everyone, but 8 people. And God is goinjg to do it again because of the hardness of your hearts, except this time will be by fire.
- Lindy... 2009/04/05 05:03:37None of the above+1Did Noah really build an Ark..sheltering creatures deep inside?
It must have been ten miles long and fifty meters high!
They SAY it rained for 40 days and then for 40 nights...
That two by two the creatures marched without a single fight.
Floating then...until the Dove.... went out... with twig in beak..
To see if water ebbed enough to bare the mountains' peak.
- Smarter... Lindy... 2009/04/05 18:27:35 (edited)
- The animals were by sevens. The only thing that was by twos, were the unclean animals.
- I can see you like triva questions.. HOW many wisemen( kings) found the baby Jesus? GOD BLESS
- It is not recorded how many.
- Very Good !all that is recored is three gifts were brought..How old was the baby Jesus? Where did the wisemen(astrologers) find him? GOD BLESS
- "Be wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." Why all the questions? Are you seriously wanting to know, or are you trying seduce my people?
- The Ark was the size of 3 foot ball fields in length .and I think 3 stories high.GOD BLESS
- Roundabout ~ Pepe is my soc... 2009/04/05 04:57:44
- DemonKiTTiE ♥ In MUSE I Tru... 2009/04/05 04:49:08
- Nuke Dukem 2009/04/05 04:48:12
- Bob-chicka-wow-wow 2009/04/05 04:44:03 (edited)
- DemonKi... Bob-chi... 2009/04/05 04:48:34
- Joker~R... Bob-chi... 2009/04/05 04:48:59
- Eddie Bob-chi... 2009/04/05 04:49:20
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Original articles from our library related to the Webster Hayne Debate. See Table of Contents for further available material (downloadable resources) on Webster Hayne Debate.
- My Brother's Keeper?
- My older brother was Evil. Not garden-variety evil, but Evil in the sense of a palpable malevolence that is devoted to the destruction of all that lives and breathes. Ever been pinned to the floor by someone laughing maniacally with a genuine replica of a...
Paganism & Wicca >> Daily Life
- King James Bible: Romans, Chapter 1
- Chapter 1 1:1 Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, 1:2 (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) 1:3 Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of...
New Testament >> Epistle to the Romans
- Our Mother Who Art In Heaven
- (First some Excerpts from an article by Richard Owen in The Times, London September 10, 1999 ) THE Pope, who this year said that God was not "an old man with a white beard", went a step further yesterday and referred to "God the Mother"....
Religions >> Christianity & Paganism
- The Living Tradition of Thelema
- Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law. What Crowley began, others must continue and develop or Thelema will become but a memory in the history of the Western Mystery Tradition. Yes, he was a Prophet and the Ipsissimus that one could say invented...
Mystic Sciences >> Magick
- The Pagan Roots of Democracy
- I stepped into the voting booth with civic pride and religious inspiration. The pastors urged the congregation to renew America and vote for a good Christian man, Ronald Reagan. I voted a straight Republican ticket. Those godless Democrats were no better than...
Saga of Times Past >> History & Anthropology
- Questions and Answers about Power Animals
- Question : So, what does it mean to work with 'power' animals? Are we working with an individual animal, say the 'possum down the street or the wolf at the zoo? Answer : Well, sorry to say, no. When you work with a 'power' animal (I've got to find a better...
Symbology >> Animals
- Everything you always wanted to know about the beliefs of the Founding Fathers that your Congressman will never tell you!
- Through the Dark Ages, civilization and learning languished under the iron rule of the church. Finally, through the rediscovery of the Pagan Classics, Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Plotinus and many other philosophers, the west began to see a glimmer of the...
Saga of Times Past >> History & Anthropology
Webster Hayne Debate is described in multiple online sources, as addition to our editors' articles, see section below for printable documents, Webster Hayne Debate books and related discussion.
Suggested Pdf Resources
- C:\MyFiles\class\federalism\spring 03\SYLLABUS federalism s03.w
- dougherk.myweb.uga.edu
- Joseph Gales, Jr.
- famous Senate debate between Robert Young Hayne and Daniel Webster reporter, and Seaton reported on the in 1830.
- www.gpoaccess.gov
- Notes Chapter 12: The Age of Jackson Section 3: Conflict Over
- Webster-Hayne Debate: a great debate in 1830 over the Doctrine of. Nullification. Daniel Webster: from Mass.
- www.ucfsd.org
- Jon Meacham's American Lion delves into the life of the
- www.heroesinamerica.org
- For discussion of the Webster-Hayne Debate, see ROBERT V. RIMINI, DANIEL 1 and 2, 1830), in THE WEBSTER-HAYNE DEBATE, supra note 47, at. 235.
- a.nyls.edu
Suggested News Resources
- The Establishment Hates Nullification
- Now let's be sports and leave aside the uncomfortable truth that at the time, Webster was considered the clear loser in the Webster-Hayne debate, whether we consider the reaction of the rest of the Senate, the press, or the public at large.
Suggested Web Resources
- Webster–Hayne debate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The Webster–Hayne debate was a famous debate in the U.S. between Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Senator Robert Y.
- en.wikipedia.org
- Webster-Hayne Debate, 1830
- The Old Senate Chamber. Webster-Hayne Debate, 1830. One of the most momentous debates in Senate history began over a plan to curtail western land sales.
- www.senate.gov
- Hayne-Webster Debate - Constitution Society
- Excerpts from the series of speeches in the state Senate on interpretations of the Constitution regarding state's rights.
- www.constitution.org
- Webster-Hayne Debate
- The Webster Hayne debate was one of the most famous exchanges in Senate history. Daniel Webster attacked nullification and Robert Hayne attacked tariffs.
- www.u-s-history.com
- Webster-hayne Debate: Information from Answers.com
- Webster-Hayne Debate In the first years of Andrew Jackson's presidency, Senators Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina and Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri.
- www.answers.com
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text:
Mehfooz A Aziz Group
She wants the financing to invest in the expansion of her husband's workshop, which is the only source of income for their family.
She believes in working together (with her husband) and honesty and is confident that the loan will bring positive changes to their business and will increase monthly profits.
Additional Information
More information about this loan
BRAC Pakistan focuses its work in some of the most underdeveloped parts of Pakistan, characterized by poor infrastructure and high levels of poverty. By supporting this loan, you are enabling access to finance for borrowers living in some of Pakistan's poorest areas.
About BRAC PakistanBRAC Pakistan is a subsidiary of BRAC, one of the world's largest development organizations with a focus on microfinance and economic empowerment. It offers micro-loans designed to help small businesses, very poor clients and others, in addition to health and education services. Kiva's flexible, zero-interest capital will enable BRAC to expand its outreach in underserved regions and to women who have had no access to microfinance services.
This is a Group Loan
In a group loan, each member of the group receives an individual loan but is part of a larger group of individuals. The group is there to provide support to the members and to provide a system of peer pressure, but groups may or may not be formally bound by a group guarantee. In cases where there is a group guarantee, members of the group are responsible for paying back the loans of their fellow group members in the case of delinquency or default.
Kiva's Field Partners typically feature one borrower from a group. The loan description, sector, and other attributes for a group loan profile are determined by the featured borrower's loan. The other members of the group are not required to use their loans for the same purpose.
About Pakistan
327View loans »
Success!! The loan was 100% repaid
- Repayment Term
- 12 months (Additional Information)
- Repayment Schedule
- Monthly
- Pre-Disbursed:
- Oct 9, 2013
- Listed
- Oct 23, 2013
- Currency Exchange Loss:
- Possible
- Ended:
- Sep 17, 2014


text:
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text:
Hey. I am 15yo, 5'10", 140lbs plus/minus a few pounds, I run winter and spring track, and bench 135lbs-150lbs. I have had several years of experience with on/off weight training but only recently have I started training "seriously," lifting 3 times a week (mon-wed-fri) and now adding a detour bar (30g protein) after each workout. I know that technically weight lifting shouldn't stunt growth, but I don't want to take any risks, (my wish is to become at least 6' tall) so I eliminated squatting and leg-straining exercises from my workout. Right now I am trying to put on some mass, but I was wondering if it is too early to do so? Also, assuming the answer is no, how should I approach this? (sorry for the mislead in the subject, i actually have two questions)
Note: I am not as professional as most of the people in this forum, because I read many of the posts and their diets overwhelmed me - I eat about anything thats given to me, small pastry+banana breakfast, typical sandwich for lunch, and dinner's where veggies and real meat is forced on me. With the detour bar, I am trying to increase the amount of protein i intake, but is there perhaps anything you can suggest in a local cvs/pharmacy that might be more effective in my situation?
what i mainly do in the gym, if it is of any help- as you can see i mainly work out my upper body:
bench, dumbbell flys among two other dumbbell chest exercises that i dont remember the name of, abs, curl, lats/rows, shoulder press, triceps, and occassionally leg curls/extensions


text:
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text: [Mentor's note: this is a continuation of a thread in the Quantum Physics forum: https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=144296 which turned into a discussion of the various kinds of mass in relativity.] Originally Posted by Los Bobos "It is actually more consistent to say, that from SR we know that mass does not increase with velocity. Here you would have to think what is momentum in SR. And of course the biggest problem of elementary QM, the difference in the handling of spatial and temporal coordinates." Well, no. I haven't studied either of QM or SR in real depth.I'm still in high school.:( How mass does not incrase with velocity? I will be very thankful if you clearly explain it in bit detail. Thanks


text:
Hreter Commish by furry-bobWatch
©2010-2016 furry-bob
Chopper hat?
Chapeu fodsssssss *u*
^3^ muuito fofo
Gostei Ele árece confiante e alegre ao mesmo tempo! ^^
I just noticed something... why does it say "STOP - you are not authorized to use this artwork" if you went and licensed it under Creative Commons? You can't have it both ways.
really? I always thought the the two were the same thing O_o thanks by the alert! ^^
hehe ficou muito fofo, já sei que ele vai adorar, pq aqui ta todo mundo adorando ja =3
awww you made him look even MORE cute! idk if that's possibly, but oyu did it ^^
omg choppper x3 linduuuuuuuuuuuuu
No idea who the character is or what's with the hat, but reminds me of something out of a Tom Petty video, if Tom Petty were furry.
choppy!!!!!!!!! too puchi!!!!!!!! yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!! FAV!


text:
Number One
- Artists Richard Grey
- Release Date 2014-03-24
- Labels G*High (17:44)
- Catalog GHI008
G*High Records takes a trip down memory lane with Richard Grey's latest release "Number One"! A funky House jam with a funky swing to it's step, this new track is sure to be a hit for all of your late night escapades. Permeating with percussive sounds that have a Latin flair, "Number One" takes you back to the roots of many House classics. From that cheeky cowbell and sexy saxophone melody to the swinging groove of the deep drumming beat in this tune, this is sure to be an essentail addition to any set!
Distributed by Label Engine - www.label-engine.com


text:
Hi Ladies!
I'm daydreaming about Baby #3 (We are still TTC), and find myself thinking about names for a potential little girl. My trouble is, I LOVE TOO MANY! Hoping for some insight and thoughts about the following options. I know I will overwhelm DH if I come to him with my list, as it is. Thanks in advance for your help!
- Amelie Kate
- Amelie Nora
- Amelie Juliet
- Amelie Quinn
- Amelie Rue
- Amelie Fleur
- Amelie Faith
- Amelie Vivienne
- Amelie Lucille
- Amelie Camille
Now... to complicate that... I also LOVE the name Rosalie, as well as Natalie (Popular, I know... but it's always been a favorite). So those two FN options could probably be paired with any of the above-mentioned MN's.
Other FN possibilities that I have a crush on:
- Fiona
- Clara
- Luella/Ella/Elodie (All options for Ella, ultimately)
- Lydia
- Felcity
- Gwen
- Lena
- Miriam (Mimi or Mira)
- Daphne
- Lucille
- Vivienne
- Juliet
Anyone up for the task of favorite combinations? Thoughts on any of the names themselves? Oh my goodness, how do I narrow it down...


text:
This is sooooooooooooooo cuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuteeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
So adorable!
Best description ever
*eye twichs, Is Really mad*
Aww It's beautiful! Love it and nice work
Kissing against law? Why?
Kissing against law? Why?
Aw.... Forbidden love....
Love it
because in the other dimension (where Zonic lives) is kissing illegal!
but it's just a little story that I made up
but it's just a little story that I made up
the law? how?
Yeeeee! You've gotten so good~
wow thats so beautiful i love it epic


text:
Experimental hybridization among five species of lampreys from the Great Lakes
- By:
- George W. Piavis, John H. Howell, and Allen J. Smith
- The Publications Warehouse does not have links to digital versions of this publication at this time
- Download citation as: RIS
AbstractExperimental hybridization among five species of lampreys of the Upper Great Lakes routinely produced embryos through stage 8, and four crosses produced embryos to the larval stage. Three critical periods in the embryogenesis of hybrid lampreys were between stages 8 and 9, among stages 10, 11, and 12, and at stage 15. Embryonic development in hybrid lamprey embryos is basically identical to that of controls and is identical to that of the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus). Synchrony of development was observed among stages of viable hybrids and their controls but lethal hybrids generally did not maintain such synchrony. The derivative species concept has been confirmed experimentally. Questions have been raised concerning some evidence cited in behalf of the appropriateness of the concept that nonparasitic lampreys are the derived species.
Additional publication details
- Publication type:
- Article
- Publication Subtype:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Experimental hybridization among five species of lampreys from the Great Lakes
- Series title:
- Copeia
- Volume:
- 1970
- Issue:
- 1
- Year Published:
- 1970
- Language:
- English
- Contributing office(s):
- Great Lakes Science Center
- Description:
- p. 29-37
- Larger Work Type:
- Article
- Larger Work Subtype:
- Journal Article
- Larger Work Title:
- Copeia
- First page:
- 29
- Last page:
- 37


text: I'm working in a community center in Seattle that has a difficult connection speed. It's bettter than dial-up, but it takes around 5 mins. from the time I teleport until the time a "world" is actually rezzed. *My question is this: Are there ways to use SL on a limited basis, such as not having huge inventories or making the avatars simple in order to make it run faster?


text:
A previous interview with Norman regarding his company's solutions
I've known the company for some time as a provider of NFV solutions (video) based on software. What I didn't expect was how fast Moore's Law has worked to decrease the size of the hardware. The idea to do what he has done here has been shared by Norman before but he has come a long way in a year.
The central premise is you use this equipment on the managed 3.65 GHz spectrum and voila, you have your own carrier-in-a-box solution. This EZ LTE as the company calls it, is a fully functional eNodeB and integrated Evolved Packet Core deployed in a similar manner to a WiFi AP.
Who could benefit from such a solution? Anyone interested in enhanced security could use these devices to keep the wireless carriers from accessing their data. Speaking of security, the device sits behind your firewall which adds additional protection. In addition, it could be used to offload users from expensive carrier plans, or where cell signals are poor.
Norman mentioned specific markets which could benefit such as agriculture, mining, industrial internet or enterprises of various sizes. The solution could easily compete with small cells or DAS and an enterprise could deploy this just like they might deploy a PBX – except it would be all wireless. Carriers could even provide the boxes to supplement their own networks.
Currently the limitation is whether or not devices support this frequency – if so, you could theoretically roam from a traditional carrier network to the EZ LTE and back. Dongles are one way getting around this problem.
The number of subscribers scales to a few thousand and the signal range is 2 kilometers at 2W of power. Maximum throughput is an impressive 150MBs on a 20 MHz channel. In addition, beamforming allows capacity to be increased.
It goes without saying, this is very disruptive technology. As Norman points out, "If the core is everywhere, you're just using the Internet's infrastructure." Moreover, he believes carriers will have to compete with this sort of cost structure to be become the network for IoT.
Even more interesting, the solution is available as software-on-a-chip which can be used to turn individual devices into minute central offices. This could for example allow new business models where these gadgets just use carrier spectrum but otherwise manage themselves.
Continuing with the disruptive theme, you just click a button on the company's site to add one of these devices to your cart and then purchase it electronically for just $6,650.
Even after I've finished writing and proofing the above, the disruptive nature of such a solution isn't fading. What's been done here is the telecom equivalent of fitting an elephant into a shoe box - in size and price.
Impiger Mobile
Lone Star
Magic Logix
Site Selection Group
Team Support
Working Solutions]]>
The news of the day, though, is the company has a new CEO, Bill Crank, a man with tremendous telecom experience – in M&A and business development. He is at the helm of this organization that was once a division of Intel – then spun out to later become a public company through an acquisition to later become a private company owned by Novacap.
I spoke with Bill for a while to learn where the company is headed. Here is a recap:
Much of the proprietary hardware they once made, has moved to software and the cloud which means for the most part, they make the software powering next-gen networks.
The specific product likes consist of:
Basically – they are moving to software and still supporting the legacy products which make sense as their partners still sell these boards and other solutions.
You know, I've been one of the biggest proponents of NFV – the move to software by carrier equipment providers. I've pushed hard on the concept of software telco – the idea that carriers will over time rely on "off the shelf" computers and software rather than proprietary hardware to run their networks. Bill shares this vision and explains this is a big part of the reason he came to the company.
He expects to continue investing in R&D and even upping the spend. The company's next-gen solutions are now in 50 labs – many are in testing and will soon announce deployment. Moreover, Dialogic has partnered with Mavenir, Ericsson and others who in some cases are competitors on other product lines. This coopetition is best described as working with partners to fill holes in your product portfolio in order to keep customers happy.
The biggest challenge, according to him, is the confusion in the market as the pace of change keeps speeding up. Consider that carriers can choose from hardware, software and cloud, and as the transition has taken place, a host of new vendors and options have presented themselves, making it more challenging to determine what to buy. Throw in competition from OTT, social, WebRTC, mobile and other newer technologies and you can see it is a tough time to make a decision which could cost millions of dollars and lock in your direction for years to come.
From the outside, looking in, its not just Bill who gives me confidence that the company has a story worth believing in. The ever-talented Jim Machi has been onboard for well over a decade and has done an amazing job navigating through turbulent waters and business transformation during that time. Tim Moynihan rejoined some time back, and is another major telecom talent. Finally, there is Alan Percy who joined from AudioCodes – someone who is well-respected and has one of the best set of relationships in the market.
In short, there is something special going on at this company, and if you think of Dialogic as the old board company from the eighties and not the new software company powering next-gen networks around the globe, you are missing out on one of the best kept secrets in the communications space.]]>
To learn more, I sat down with Schneider Electric's Srdan Mutabdzija (above), Global Solution Offer Manager, and Jason Covitz (below), Director of Strategy for IT Business where we talked about IT infrastructure and how it will look in the future.
Jason emphasized the move to commoditized and standardized infrastructure – not just in the spaces mentioned above but oil and gas, mining and manufacturing. Srdan explained the evolution of their products and the market in general is to a more prefabricated, plug-and-play, efficient cooling solutions which lower time to market, reduce risk and allow a more seamless move to public/private clouds.
An example of their product offering is the FlexPod Express for the office environment – allowing the company's data center product to be deployed in an SMB or branch office. The solution supports products from Microsoft, NetApp and Cisco among others.
I also had a chance to read a white paper on the costs associated with a TCO analysis of a traditional data center vs. a scalable, prefabricated data center. The premise is standardized, scalable, pre-assembled, and integrated data center facility power and cooling modules provide a TCO savings of 30% compared to traditional, built-out data center power and cooling infrastructure. Avoiding overbuilt capacity and scaling the design over time contributes to a significant percentage of the overall savings. The results are based on a hypothetical data center in St. Louis, MO in the USA with density of 7kW/rack
You can see below the OPEX and CAPEX costs decrease considerably since the data center can be built out over time. Moreover, Significant CAPEX and OPEX savings accrue when the data center is built out to 4 MW instead of 5 MW. Moreover, running the system at a higher percent load each year results in energy savings and the capital costs savings is approximately 2% due to the cost of capital. One assumes this becomes a greater savings in a higher interest rate environment.
The chart below shows the savings all together over time.
Another important takeaway from my conversation is the edge isn't going away – especially in light of the fact IoT devices will continue to generate a tremendous amount of data. Srdan said, "We are moving to a hybrid cloud with emphasis on a big data center in the middle and smaller ones on the sides."
One final comment was enterprises not wanting to handcuff themselves to the public cloud. There are many reasons to keep data local in fact, security, the ability to know if government data requests have been made and privacy.
In short, Schneider Electric sees the data center of the future morphing to a more prepackaged offering with modules being added as needed. Moreover they see the need to ensure enough compute power is near the devices which will generate the bulk of the data. In other words the IoT will be responsible for a rethink of how corporations design and build out their macro and micro data centers.]]>
VoIP continued this trend with even greater arbitrage and carriers spent billions on equipment to save money carrying phone calls on networks. Sonus, Acme Packet (now Oracle) and many other companies saw billions of dollars of aggregate sales as a result of this new arbitrage opportunity. Then there were the traditional TEMs like Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia (now the same company), Cisco and Ericsson who participated in this shift.
The next opportunity in the market is the move to NFV or a software telco – carriers don't want to have to deal with the proprietary boxes in their networks. Open, virtualized systems allow cost savings on management and electricity as well as on real estate.
The move to NFV is tailor made for a company like HP as they are a major telecom supplier to data centers already and they are not strangers to the carrier market. The company is looking to become a solid anchor in the move to COTS servers. In fact, they hope to simplify the transition.
Sarwar Raza, Vice President, Product Management recently briefed me on their HP NFV system designed to accelerate the move to network functions virtualization by ensuring carrier grade reliability, scalability and performance. Speaking of which – this week I was at GENBAND Perspectives 15 where there was an NFV panel consisting of Sharon Rosov of ConteXtream, Werner Schaefer of HP, Renu Navale of Intel and Charlie Ashton of Wind River. One comment Charlie made was they now deliver six nines reliability – an amazing number to say the least – under a minute per year.
The HP NFV System is pre-integrated with HP Helion OpenStack Carrier Grade and is designed to ensure end-to-end systems design, validation and support to ensure continuous availability of critical network functions.
The company has a complete set of components to get you started consisting of:
"Many telcos and suppliers have done NFV proof-of-concepts and are now ready to move to production. To do that, they need solutions that are open, carrier grade, and easy to deploy," said Saar Gillai, senior vice president and general manager, Network Functions Virtualization and Global Lead Telecommunications, HP. "HP NFV System provides an integrated, pre-tested, deployment-ready NFV hardware and software platform to get customers up-and-running quickly and confidently."
HP NFV Director 3.0 provides enhanced management and orchestration (MANO) capabilities that streamline bridging of NFV and telecommunications resources, as well as enable faster VNF on-boarding. It combines operations support systems (OSS) and IT management capabilities in a multi-vendor NFV orchestration solution that automate service and infrastructure management to enhance the flexibility and scalability of CSP's current OSS systems.
New HP NFV analytics capabilities in HP NFV Director 3.0 are powered by HP Vertica, providing CSPs the ability to make decisions in real time using NFV data to improve uptime, traffic steering, resource, application and network usage. Predictive analytics gives CSPs critical insights on trending as well as historical capacity usage and threshold crossing warnings or alarms.
HP NFV Director 3.0 with optional HP NFV Analytics is available fully integrated with NFV System and HP OpenStack Carrier Grade or separately.
According to Sarwar "The service provider has access to all the data which was once unstructured allowing them to take actionable intelligence from intelligent traffic steering to hitting capacity."
The final piece of the puzzle is consulting services which the company hopes you will consider. HP is also leveraging Accenture to help in this area. Jeff Kibodeaux explained this to me at the Perspectives event. He is the Manager of the HP OpenNFV Program and also explained his new company – a split of HP, includes cloud and as a part of this spin-out they will be investing a billion dollars in these areas.
Jeff said this about what carriers are telling him, "We have head from them, they love to have choices." He concluded, "It is exciting for them and scary at the same time." He went on to say they are excited to be more agile and to be able to compete in a more cost-effective way.
He also discussed how GEBAND will be able to leverage HP hardware acceleration cards instead of using their current ARM DSP line-cards allowing them to move to COTS and a software-driven model.
From there, he described the demo they did at the show of spinning up SBCs and load balancing as calls start to increase in a network. As calls decrease, there is also a corresponding destruction of VMs as the capacity is not needed.
He continued, "With software, it's more flexible and less expensive." He adding, "Genband is betting on the software side of things. They are more innovative than some of our other partners with that approach."
He then said, "David Walsh (GENBAND CEO) as well as anyone else grasps this future so I think they're going to be on the forefront of leading these transformations with the carriers. We approach customers together and prove the apps will run and save a lot of time testing with the customer." He concluded, "We test in five labs worldwide for partner integration testing.
He also mentioned an interesting conundrum for our industry. Many of the people working in telcos are experts in their silo of proprietary hardware, we are now asking them to have an entire skillset in software. "We need to take a network engineer and make them an IT engineer." He said.
This of course gets us back to professional services – yet another major arbitrage opportunity for those supplying the telecom industry as we go from fixed-function hardware to open and flexible, virtualized software and clouds.]]>
There will be lots of discussion regarding network modernization. For example the company will discuss its new Q50 distributed SBC/Media Platform which will allow a graceful migration to a virtualized, NFV-based system from current fixed-function hardware.
In addition, Verizon will also emphasize its network transformation roadmap as well as modernization from a PSTN transformation perspective. We can further expect a talk from the EPA on energy consumption and power – a big deal for data centers and telcos of course. They'll also touch on regulatory issues. We can further expect SAP to speak on what they are doing with Kandy – specifically with their CRM cloud for customer platform.
There is more – be sure to check back at 9:00 am tomorrow morning for the details of what's happening at the show.
In case you were wondering - according to the company, the simplest definition of a SD‐WAN is a WAN that utilizes software and virtualization technologies instead of traditional hardware such as routers to connect remote locations.
The company would love for you to learn more by downloading their Dummies book on SD-WANs
He went on to explain the company's solution provides centralized control and is easily programmable. In fact, by decoupling the data plane, the SD-WAN can effectively use multiple data paths and load-balance applications across them. Obviously there are benefits to having redundancy built into your network solution but another benefit is greater speed as a corporation can leverage all data paths at once.
Another benefit is enhanced security which becomes a consideration when you realize traditional static WANs are becoming a larger target for attack. By controlling the entire WAN edge, security services such as encryption and application firewalling can be rapidly and reliably deployed to the entire WAN – with more visibility and better peace of mind.
The bottom line according to Kumar is with SD-WAN you can securely segment and encrypt the network, manage PCI, HIPAA and SOX compliance, have a secure perimeter, all while sharing a pool of resources in an automated fashion. He concluded that customers are able to utilize the technology with their current network infrastructure today and if they like, migrate to off-the-shelf hardware in the future.
The news seems to be tickling the fancy of investors as well – the company recently closed $25 million in funding led by Bain Capital Ventures on top of the $9 million they closed about a year ago.]]>
One of the more interesting vendors at Interop 2015 was Qualisystems as the company allows companies to automate many manual tasks in order to more efficiently develop, manage and deploy jobs in the cloud and on legacy computing environments. Alex Henthorn-Iwane, VP, Marketing explained his company designs solutions for non-programmer teams. Moreover, they help create an environment as a service – a set of cloud offerings for a private cloud. They take very complex infrastructure and make it more agile and continuous, like what they would run on Amazon AWS.
He went on to explain, quite often engineering has one cloud, testing has another and deployment could be in yet another cloud. At the end of the day the company's CloudShell bridges legacy and cloud enabling DevOps.
It should be noted CloudShell is also an important facilitator of SDN and NFV-based networks which can scale to be huge and sprawl across various clouds. The good news for carriers is they will be able to use the tool to more effectively manage deployments of various networks functions such as firewalls or HSS.
Even though QualiSystems has a more esoteric product line – it isn't tangible, it was one of my favorite things to see at Interop because this is the exact technology needed to scale cloud-based systems more efficiently through drag-and-drop meaning companies can spend less time on CLI and more on ROI.]]>
It's all about abstraction really. Software running on smartphones for example can replace fixed-function remote controls. A great example is home stereo equipment provider Sonos and their app versus a hardware remote. Users gain familiarity with the software interface and can operate it on various types of hardware running iOS, Android or any other OS. To some degree this brings with it hardware commoditization – then again, I tread lightly with the idea as it seems to hold little meaning in Cupertino.
In other example, the cloud or something like PaaS can be thought of as mainframe abstraction… You no longer have to deal with the underlying hardware – you can access it through abstraction provided through various software interfaces. Yes, a compiler is another example.
A common concern as a network operator moves to software is – how to ensure the hardware solution has the necessary fault tolerance (FT) or at least high availability (HA). One option in the world of stateful HA is to have 1+1 redundancy which means utilization rates of 45-50% or less. The challenge of course is software telcos are supposed to become much nimbler and lower their costs in order to compete with OTT. OTS hardware is relatively cheap but if you don't need to double the cost, your telco is in a better financial situation.
Enter Stratus Technologies – the company that was one of the pioneers in the fault tolerant server business back in the eighties along with Tandem Computers. In fact Stratus was launched in Mass along with many of big computer companies of the day like DEC, Wang and Prime.
Over the years, the company went through a bewildering array of acquisitions and spinoffs – suffice it to say, Stratus Technologies is still focused on providing HA solutions. Notice I wrote "solutions." The point here is the company has taken the best of its fault tolerant, HA technology everRun and placed it in software.
There are a number of benefits to what Stratus has done. Because they have rewritten their technology to take advantage of OTS servers, companies can leverage HA at far lower price points. Moreover, there is tremendous flexibility afforded by the software-only approach. Just as you can assign a priority to an application running on an OS, you can easily – in an automated fashion determine how to distribute network functions - whether they need to be fault tolerant or just HA.
The result is Stratus now considers themselves to be a software defined availability company – an apt name for what they are doing. Moreover, their solution doesn't require a rewrite of code. The service continuity has fully stateful resiliency and availability – all compatible with currently running applications.
I mentioned at the start that typical stateful fault tolerant systems have 45% utilization or so. Stratus says they have been able to get this number up considerably – as high as 80% in fact.
In fact, Ali Kafel, Sr. Director & Head of Telecom Business Development at the company had this to say about their technology in a recent phone conversation and email exchange:
The Stratus Cloud Technology provides fully stateful FT at much higher utilization because we don't do 1+1 (like we did in HW) but instead N+k De-Clustered Redundancy where K is much smaller than N (in some small cases just 1). In this scenario, each primary VM has a shadow secondary VM (on a different server) that uses significantly less resources (about 6-10% of the primary).
This means there is no need to dedicate the same number of servers for just the backups. In fact, all the servers (including the K servers) will have secondary VMs and well as primary VMs with stand-up reserve capacity to standup the secondary to become primary if needed. This sophisticated level of resiliency automation is what enables our solution to dramatically increase utilization, and raise the efficiency of redundancy from traditional telecom levels of 45% to levels of 80%+, while providing uncompromised reliability, at a fraction of the cost.
The concept here is formally called the Stratus Automated Virtualized Resilience Layer and it currently works with KVM in OpenStack environments and Ali explained, it may eventually support VMWare. It can coexist with VMWare today. Moreover, there can be a common orchestrator and different levels of resiliency based upon function as I alluded to above. For example DDOS protection functions can be designated FT and voice just HA (isn't it amazing that voice can be a lower priority than something else these days?).
The idea here is telcos have very complicated environments – the more automation you can apply to deploying VNFs, the better.
One other point Ali made is when the secondary host takes over, it automatically spins up a third host. With many traditional FT solutions, when a redundant system fails, it could take time… Minutes, hours, days to get another system up and running and a subsequent secondary failure could be disastrous.
Finally, he said, "One of the other key benefits that Telcos like about this solution is that they can take any application, like a traditional enterprise-grade firewall that may not be redundant and deploy it on the Stratus software NFVI with immediate and simplified FT, with no complex code development, testing and support." He further exclaimed, "This gives them tremendous agility in their partner/vendor system because it immediately opens up VNFs that they otherwise would not have considered!"
I started this piece by talking a lot about abstraction. Supercomputers have become abstracted thanks to Linux… Android devices also have become generally abstracted and commoditized. In another example, RAID systems abstract the hard drives but add value through the software which makes a series of generally unreliable spinning disks a more reliable solution.
In fact, in some ways, RAID or a Clustered File System is very similar to what Stratus showed me. I'd propose in fact we could describe their HA technology when applied to NFV as Redundant Efficient Managed Virtual Network Functions or REMVNF. After all, who doesnt like more acronyms? Especially when they are six-letters long?
John Donovan, Senior Executive VP of AT&T said roughly that as AT&T becomes a software company, they need to boost their utilization from 45% to 80-90%. Technology like what we've seen from Stratus will certainly help them and other carriers meet these goals in order to more effectively compete with OTT and other emerging threats.
To learn more - there is a sponsored webinar on the matter May 26, 2015 (archive available as well if you miss it.)
Yet, as much as we hear about cloud innovation impact on business, we don't often hear about the advancements in the guts of the cloud. The interconnections between physical and virtual machines which allow compute tasks to scale across physical locations and beyond.
Imagine if we could redefine how data centers are built. Think about a more flexible way of delivering data between machines or between machines and storage. A world where the ever-growing number of cores didn't directly cause an increase in potentially debilitating switch traffic.
This is the area where Fiber Mountain plays.
We are fortunate enough to have the company founder M.H. Raza with us at ITEXPO 9:30 am Wed Jan 28th where we will talk about the future of data centers and the cloud.
There are profound implications here – because when server interconnection is rethought, the need for physical switches suddenly comes into question. Are endless and ever-larger switches the best way of interconnecting cores and storage? Think about the potential for disruption in the technology markets if the role of the switch were to even partially change. In other words, will the server eat the switch or at least top of rack switches?
Come to ITEXPO to find out more and watch this interview between me and Raza if I've piqued your interest.]]>
Security has always been a major focus for operators. Indeed, when their networks were proprietary and thought to be bulletproof, it was determined a simple whistle distributed in a box of Captain Crunch cereal could give access to hackers.
NFV allows software to run on standard virtualized servers and moreover this software will likely come from smaller players. While this is not inherently a less secure way of building networks, it goes without saying that loosely connecting systems from various vendors on PC servers will open up new areas of attack for hackers and fraudsters.
To that end, Alcatel-Lucent has been focusing on shoring up NFV security – so networks of the future powering software telcos are as secure as possible. David Amzallag Vice President, Virtual Telecommunications and CloudBand CTO has an in-depth post on what his company has been doing in the space.
Interesting points from the piece include the ETSI SFV security group started with just six members and has well over a hundred now – when you factor in passive members as well. This tells me the interest in security is great as vendors and carriers realize they have to get it right up front to eliminate headaches later.
Here is more:
Our vision emphasizes the necessity of building the trust chain for NFV components in three major steps. The first step is securing the platform— reinforcing deliberately disconnected islands of compute, storage, and networking infrastructure as well as the management system. The second step is the deployment of virtual security appliances, such as firewalls that transform the islands into controlled network zones, and virtual DNS servers that help to mitigate denial-of-service attacks. In the third step, virtualized functions in support of applications are placed in the zones established previously. The security of that deployment is assured by a combination of native application security controls and virtual security appliances, and then it is further enhanced by NFV platform capabilities. Once deployed, the security services provided by the applications can, in turn, be used to improve platform security further. For instance, the IMS virtualized Home Subscriber Server (HSS) can be used to provide an extra authentication factor for access to platform software. With these three steps in place, a centralized management and orchestration system can ensure a consistent, horizontal implementation of security through systematic application of security policies that will be enforced through the policy management mechanism of an NFV orchestrator, as in the CloudBand Management System.
Another important point is a well-orchestrated network of virtualized routers can actually be more resilient in the face of DDoS attack than legacy systems. The idea is highly intuitive – in-fact, DDoS mitigation seems to be an NFV killer app as the added flexibility and instant scaleability make software telco networks much harder to take down.
Another point Amzallag makes is OpenStack needs to have its security beefed up… Something the company is working on. For more details, I refer you to the article which also references a corresponding white paper (registration may be required) with more information - specifically addressing these security issues which accompany virtualization:
To learn even more - be at Software Telco Congress August 12-14 in Las Vegas.]]>
David Walsh, CEO takes the stage, talks about the importance of being a financially stable company, winning, being competitive and investing in new technology such as OTT VoIP and WebRTC ahead of time to be ready when the time comes to deploy. Moreover, he talked about how the growth in mobile devices may help pay off the US national debt.
See the full article here.
Mark Pugerude with GENBAND talks past and future in his presentation - he began by talking about the predictions from past years and followed up with what is happening today. Trends like SDN, NFV, cloud and others are now being embodied by the product releases the company is putting out.
See the full article here.
BG Kumar, chief product officer at GENBAND, took the stage at Perspectives14 today to talk about the importance of NFV and SDN to GENBAND and the fact that there is tremendous growth in these spaces. Moreover, the importance of the user experience was discussed by the company's Chief Product Officer BG Kumar.
See full article here.
BT's Innovative MVNO Strategy with SON & Wi-Fi Support detailed onstage by Clive Selley CEO of BT who went on to discuss how his company has built a next-gen network which noirmalizes traffic allowing other carriers and enterprises to more easily communicate. Moreover, he went on to explain the innovative MVNO, hybrid femtocell, WiFi strategy the company is rolling out to compete effectively ina cost-effective manner with other wireless players in the UK.
See full article here.
Kyle Malady with Verizon says NFV and fiber are the future for the carrier - making an early joke that after taking control of the company by paying of Vodafone, he wouldn't mind if people in the audience would make a call on their Verizon phones and just leave the phone on during the presentation to help pay off the debt. The audience found it funny, and this joke was followed by an honest perspective on the company's future from his perspective.
In short, the market has spoken and they don't want wireline service over copper (I am probably overstating this a bit) - they are happy with wireless and fiber. Moreover, the company is looking for ways to migrate customers to the latest services. Finally, they have new products to help customers who are concerned about operating fiber equipment when the power goes out since copper is powered and lit glass is not. The company's solution is a box powered by D batteries which can power equipment for a period of time.
Finally there was talk of the importance of NFV as well as the implementation challenges which need to be dealt with such as determining who to call when something is broken.
See the full article here.
Day 2, June 11th
Big day today - I speak on a WebRTC panel in about an hour so I am backstage getting a microphone and the typical prep talk you get at events. GENBAND decided to have smoke machines this year adding an interesting effect to the event. I feel like I am at a blended Michael Jackson Thriller/Tech event. Funny, just as I wrote that a couple of dancers went onstage to get the audience amped up. Conferences after all are now as much entertainment as education. BTW, I am backstage where everything is basically backwards - which explains the video.
I'll be linking to more articles throughout the day to keep you posted on anything you may have missed.
9:37 am
TMC's Paula Bernier covers David Walsh, CEO of GENBAND's focus on the fish problem which he explains the the challenge companies have to deal with in today's rapidly evolving tech market. It's a good read as it has implications for investors as well as carriers looking to invest in rapidly evolving telecom equipment.
Next up was the topic of GENBAND fring Enabling OTT for Carriers as Roy Timor-Rousso, GENBAND fring CEO, took to the stage to talk about all the ways a carrier could utilize VoIP and specifically OTT to target specific groups with special plans. For example a call-home plan for immigrants allowing special rates to their home country using their regular telephone line or device. Fring was one of the first VoIP solutions for the iPhone and I remember testing it when it first came out. More recently they focused on helping service providers and even more recently the company was purchased by GENBAND and is now integrated with the rest of the company's portfolio. Here is the full artticle I wrote about this topic.
One of the more exciing pirces of news at the event this week was Kandy and the evolution of the platform as a service which allows service providers like telcos to expose their network resources using APIs, SDKs, and Quick Starts so developers can more easily leverage them to bring real-time communications to their applications.
In a way this new offering is similar to hosted service providers which provide open APIs but in this case it is an ecosystem play - for now anyway. The idea here is allowing developers access to the GENBAND platform so they can provide services to carrier customers. Carriers for their part are looking for help to develop new apps and developers are looking for new markets ready for their apps and services. Paula Bernier has more in a comprehensive article on Kandy.
Ericsson Tells Its NFV, SDN story which includes the Ericsson Cloud Manager, a product that became generally available in the second half of 2013 and is now at version 2.0. Ericsson Cloud Manager is used to orchestrate the NFV environment. It does orchestration across virtual machines, leverages OpenStack APIs, has a built-in services catalog that can be used to build VM workloads, and it can control certain aspects of scale in scale out, among other capabilities.
Ericsson developed much of this solution organically, building it specifically to address carrier NFV and SDN deployments, explained White. That's different from some orchestration solutions that are now targeting NFV and SDN, but were actually designed initially for IT environments, he said, adding that most IT applications are stateless, but Ericsson's solution is stateful and also leverages the company's assets in the OSS expertise. See the full details.
Bringing to bear the IT and other solutions initially developed by Samsung SDS for the company's internal use, as well as assets from the other divisions at Samsung, the company is just in the formative stages of its effort to create connected health solutions, Rhew explained to RealTimeCommunications. At this point, said Rhew, who joined Samsung a year ago, the company is working with hospitals and partners to understand what needs to be developed in terms of devices, applications, interfaces, analytics, tools to integrate into electronic health records, and feedback loops. Catch all the exciting details here.
They say the level of disruption is tremendous.
If you've read my comments about the birth, potential and future of the software telco business (more), you can see I agree in general with what the company is espousing.
As the company says, without NFV and SDN you launched new services with proprietary hardware in years, instead of months. Moreover the cost to launch now with new technologies could be as little as a few hundred thousand dollars. The suggestion is a multimillion dollar cost from previously required proprietary systems.
Another idea they looked to get across is this technology will allow services on demand, meaning enterprises will be able to more easily order and purchase them from their carriers.
A typical branch office today where the list on the right represents separate boxes
Most importantly they say CIOs will be able to buy services on a per-use basis instead of signing long-term contracts. Moreover, new services from the company will be activated in as little as three minutes.
Takashi Ooi, NTT Com's Vice President of Enterprise Network Service said "It is not only about saving capital and operational costs." He continued, "NTT Com's services transform enterprise WAN to enable customers to stay agile and responsive to the ever-changing business environment."
One of the benefits touted is the removal of redundant equipment from the customer closet such as antivirus boxes, firewalls and other boxes seen in the diagram above.
NTT acquired Virtella this past January in order to provide these services. "Virtela and NTT Com's SDN and NFV innovations give enterprises unprecedented choice and control in transforming their global enterprise networks," said Virtela President Ron Haigh. "We are accelerating the delivery of new innovative services, setting the highest bar in the industry with a flexible subscription model that enables CIOs to simplify network architecture and allow them to focus on their core business."
NTT Com's new portal will allow you to instantly boost local internet performance and use a policy-builder to set a policy based on URL filtering or other criteria. In addition, cloud-based application acceleration can be activated in minutes between offices if needed. Likewise, IPSEC gateways and global VPNs can be instantly initiated. Services can be deactivated just as easily they say.
The company touts 50 cloud centers globally which will supply four new services, SSL VPN to connect small/home offices, IPSEC gateway services, firewall and application acceleration. They will continue to add-on new functions over time.
Another point made in the conference was firewalls configured separately on a per-office basis cause an inconsistent security environment which can potentially be dangerous (see diagram above).
The company thinks they are many years ahead of the competition and are very proud to make this announcement. Based on my experience, they are correct and should be.
Continuing, NTT Com says revenue in the wireless market has moved to Apple and Google and carriers have become just pipe providers. This, they say is the reason why carriers need to act... As CIOs need a new model and architecture. In other words, service providers that adopt the new model – I call them software telcos will take business from the competition. They believe enterprise customers will come for the flexibility and stay if the service is good. They continued by saying that carriers need to to give enterprises more flexibility.
The service will be available in every city in 190+ countries where they provide network connectivity starting in July.
My colleague Paula Bernier has thoughts on this news which is worth reading. Here is the presentation from the company in PDF.
See also:
To learn more about NFV & SDN, be sure to come to Software Telco Congress Aug 12-14, 2014 collocated with ITEXPO
Any second now - its 8:05 am in New Orleans
The event has kicked off with a keynote presented by Steve Gleave - which has been preceded by a few well-produced videos. The idea so far is tying in the theme of the event "The brains of the new global network" with Steve's brain. The cast of characters behind the scenes show how they tinker with Steve's brain - he eventually comes out on stage on a Segway with Harley Davidson sound-effects. And we are off.
Now to the theme of the presentation:
Steve went on to correlate the brain with network and to explain how evolution in the network - like the move to network functions virtualization or NFV. Media gateways, SDN and other technologies were woven into the brain discussion. From there there was talk of sensory maps in the brain which are roughly analogous to the functions in the carrier network.
Metaswitch CEO John Lazar takes the stage
John talked about the move to cloud, IP, software and a more open platform which will allow for things like fast-failure. IP interconnect is an example he cited. He went on to say networks need to be more progammable. He also said we need networks which ar ebetter at generating revenue. He continued by discussing OTT solutions like Skype and WhatsApp which are killing revenue. From there he discussed services like Netflix which can take up to 50% of the bandwidth with no corrsponding revenue.
He summarized by saying networks need to be more compeitive as they dont compete with the new entrants effectively.
Another point he made was the brains of the network on the move refers to the idea that network functions are moving to open systems such as OTS computers made by companies like Dell, etc.
He went on to say the data plane and media processinga are also moving to open systems. This has to work with a cloud orchestration layer in order to work in an elastic way.
Jason Silva , Futurist and Host of National Geographic's Brain Games takes the stage
Silva starts off by talking about how incredible technology is - how it evolves in an exponential fashion versus the linear evolution which our brains have experienced. Quoting Ray Jurzweil, he discusses the 30 linear step example which compares 30 linear and 3 0 exponential steps. The point is if you double the number each step you get to a billion in the exponential example.
Maybe the funniest line of the day so far:
If you dont have ADD today, you arent paying attention.
From here we started to watch some short video clips he produced.
Here is one example video called "Awe"
EarthLink is now 20 years old and the consumer business is less than 20%. Discussion of internal info - CEO change, the brand is trusted, etc. They will be investing to take advantage of this fact soon he says. Interesting - acquisitions perhaps?
Lots of discussion on product mix - wholesale, retail, MSP, cloud, etc.
Hosted voice is one of their fastest-grwoing products.
Went into a case study: Ciao Bella Gelato, had problems with email, small IT staff and too much time troubleshooting IT inffrastructure. EarthLink came in and put the voice and data in cloud - avoiding CAPEX and performance increased because equipment is connected to their network backbone. Three-weeks later super-storm Sandy took their HQ out of power for two weeks but their operations weren't affected. They would have been out of business for two-weeks he said.
Martin Taylor , CTO, Metaswitch takes the stage
Martin is setting up a talk which espouses the virtues of NFV - for more, check out my blog for stories on the topic and come to Software Telco Congress in Las Vegas this August. I expected a more technical deep-dive - interesting that we are getting an overview. I am sure the company knows what it is doing here as NFV is in th early-stages still and most carriers here are smaller meaning they aren't paying as much attention to the latest specifications and standards coming out of ETSI.
Having said that, the value prop being discussed is proprietary boxes are not only less powerful than OTS servers, they become boat anchors after a while. He says we are shacking network functions to a hardware replacement cycle. With the open-server model, the software lives on beyond the hardware cycle. Finally, he said, "You have disconnected your network function lifecycle from hardware relacement lifecycle."
He continued, saying software vendors have lower time-to-market than hardware companies and costs are lower as well. He then tied in the idea that Metaswitch is perfectly adapted to this world where telco expectations on software quality ae tremendous as we need to retain five-nines, etc.
Another point he made is software procurement and deployment should be much faster than hardware meaning less time to market for new and enhanced services.
Multi-tenancy is another area he focused on - explaining that carriers can sell wholesale services on virtualized systems which are isolated from one another.
Moreover, he says with NFV or a software-model, it is easier to customize services for particular customers far more easily.
He also said with virtualized solutions you can allow applications ot be installed in the IMS solution - or you can allow the enterprise to upload changes etc. The idea here isnt you arent risking your entire IMS operation if something goes wrong.
He also touched on power consumption - the idea being servers which aren't being used can be powered down... Think nights for example. He then went on to discuss how orchestration needs to handle this sort of thing. Here are the specific things he mentioned at this point:
Service chains can be customized to meet the needs of various customer classes he said. He further discussed how orchestration can handle servers which go down by spinning up new functions on other servers and gets you back up and running. Dynamic scaling allows a virtual network function or VNF on a CPU to be monitored. So lets say utilization gets above 60%... At this point you can spin up new instances to handle growing demand. Conversely, you can spin down servers as needed.
He advised that everyibe gets VMWare and Openstack running in a lab. He suggested using old servers for testing - this isnt producted he suggested. He says we need to learn new ways of operations management.
I have been in the industry for more than 20 years and I havent seen anything ad exciting or as earth-shatttering as NFV and SDN.
Day 2 Start
Rob High , CTO and IBM Fellow, Watson Solutions, IBM Software Group takes stage
Keynote title : Cognitive Computing - The Brain on a Chip
The session starts off with a video touting how advanced Watson is - the video seems oriented to developers who can access the company's APIs.
The discussion moved quickly to the challenges Watson had to overcome to be able to successfully performcognitive analysis. Much of the discussion so far centers around the game show Jeopardy where Watson successfully competed. A complex flowchart shows us the reasoning that Watson employs. He says they are looking for weak signals in noise to help them improve accuracy.
In closing, they think cognitive computing will be huge in the future. They have invested over a billion dollars into this area and they have an ecosystem allowing ISVs to develop applications and deliver them content. They also have a $100M fund to help launch new companies in this space.]]>


text:
Columbus Blue Jackets clinch playoff spot with win over Dallas
The Blue Jackets had a 1-0 lead when the puck dropped because that was the score March 10, the night the original game was postponed after Dallas' Rich Peverley collapsed.
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DALLAS—Artem Anisimov and Mark Letestu added goals to the one Columbus already had when the makeup game started, and the Blue Jackets clinched the second playoff berth in franchise history with a 3-1 victory over the Dallas Stars on Wednesday night.
The Blue Jackets had a 1-0 lead when the puck dropped because that was the score March 10, the night the original game was postponed after Dallas forward Rich Peverley collapsed on the bench because of an irregular heartbeat.
Anisimov doubled the margin on an unassisted goal just 1:33 into the game. That was 71 seconds faster than the goal last month by Nathan Horton, who got credit for it even though he didn't officially play because he missed the makeup game with a lower-body injury.
The Blue Jackets set a franchise record with 42 wins, beating the previous mark from their only other playoff season in 2008-09.
Columbus was swept by Detroit in the first round five years ago, and now those teams are in a battle for playoff position in their first season since being moved to the Eastern Conference.
The Stars never really gave themselves a chance to build a cushion on Phoenix for the final playoff berth in the West. Dallas (89 points) has a two-point lead over the Coyotes, who have three games left to two for the Stars.
Dallas trailed 3-0 after the first and couldn't capitalize on power plays with fresh ice at the start of the second and third periods against Columbus goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who stopped 17 of 18 shots in the third period and 33 of 34 overall.
The Russian had to work harder at the start of the third, stopping Tyler Seguin on a backhand shot in the crease after Dallas' leading scorer skated around the defence and turning away Jamie Benn from the wing a few seconds later.
The Stars scored when they pulled goalie Tim Thomas for a 6-on-4 power play with 13 minutes left in the game. Bobrovsky made a sprawling save before Trevor Daley punched in a rebound in a crowd in front of the net.
Dallas outshot Columbus 18-2 in the third period, when the Stars went with an empty net for a total of about 5 minutes.
The Stars ended up playing four times in five nights because of the makeup game, the same thing the Blue Jackets are doing to finish the season. Columbus was on the second night of a back-to-back and is the first team to play on four of the last five days of the season since Ottawa in 1993.
Because of the busy schedule, Dallas coach Lindy Ruff went with Thomas over Kari Lehtonen.
Thomas was fooled by Anisimov for the Columbus centre's third goal in two games against the Stars, and Letestu made it 3-0 when his shot went off Daley's stick to the side of Thomas and somehow slid between the goalie's legs.
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