Fortinet extended its free security training indefinitely after receiving more than 800,000 registrations since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The world’s biggest technology vendors’ battles boiled over in 2020, and this year the feuds stretched from the clouds to court and even to a galaxy far, far away.

The year that unraveled and continues to highlight the best and worst in all of us ends with all three major U.S. carriers claiming nationwide 5G coverage.

Cisco workers are ‘anxious’ about job cuts; Ciena shared its lessons learned rom Q4; and Orange helped Siemens hit 80% SD-WAN migration.

Rural U.S. carriers most impacted by the “rip and replace” mandate have been lobbying for a government reimbursement to offset the costs of swapping out equipment considered insecure.

The service provider transitioned 80% of Siemens' global network, spanning 1,000 sites in 94 countries, to its Flexible SD-WAN just two years into the six-year contract.

As Ciena looks to put the pandemic behind it, the company is leaning on its 800 Gb/s optics and upcoming pluggables to grow its market share.

Arista added Awake to Attack Surface Assessment; Cisco's security exec jumped ship for Google; and Juniper won a network overhaul deal.

The investment research firm remains just as skeptical as ever about 5G use cases and the difficulty operators will confront in gaining a meaningful return on their 5G investments.

The analyst group predicts mainstream adoption of 800 Gb/s optics, upgrades to 400 Gb/s line rates across all spans, and wider application of wavelength division multiplexing.

IBM rolled out next-gen encryption; the Linux Foundation debuted its DENT switch; and Cisco confirmed job cuts.

The use of Acacia's pluggable optics allows Telia Carrier to interface directly with the routing and switching hardware, the operator's Johan Gustawsson said.

SEAPATH is the second project under the LF Energy's DSAS umbrella that seeks to optimize digital substations through open source technology.

Ericsson slapped Samsung with a patent lawsuit; AWS stuffed Cisco SD-WAN into VPC; and Orca scored a $55 million Series B funding round.

The bolstered Silver Peak service will run alongside the Cisco-based managed SD-WAN that Verizon Business has offered for nearly 5 years.

128 Technology is key to enabling Juniper's AI-driven WAN aspirations, says Juniper's Sudheer Matta.

Delayed spectrum auctions, permitting, technology evaluations, and testing have all been delayed by about nine to 12 months due to the ongoing global pandemic, Cisco's Jonathan Davidson said.

"We probably have fewer vendors, when you look at the entire ecosystem, than most incumbent carriers do,” Dish Network's Stephen Bye said.

The partnership will see Telus deploy a variety of Nokia technologies in order to better manage its network and eliminate truck rolls.

This customer win comes about a month after Nokia said it will move its on-premises IT infrastructure to Google Cloud.

The partnership will see the service provider deploy 128 Technology's Session Smart SD-WAN platform across its network to address application performance challenges.

"We’re not prioritizing one over the other. We’re building a platform that allows us to serve each of those segments concurrently, and that’s really important," Dish's Stephen Bye said.

Nokia warns that network traffic may spike again, especially as COVID-19 infections surge and public health restrictions are being re-instituted in many regions.

Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen, as he reflexively does during earnings calls, provided analysts and investors with almost equal doses of bravado and humility.