From "old reliable" MPLS, and why it isn't going away anytime soon, to the next-generation 5G vRAN, our coverage this week ran the gamut of legacy tech that still works fine to the newest, shiniest toy.

In between the old and the new, there was the same-old same-old of ransomware (non-spoiler alert: also not going away anytime soon) from security editor Nancy Lui.

On a side note: Lui spent much of the week in Las Vegas at the Black Hat conference and managed to dispatch several stories from there, despite being warned not to plug into anything to avoid being hacked. She actually went behind the scenes there to see how the security ops center works to keep attendees safe, if you haven't seen her story yet.

Here's this week's top 5 stories as chosen by you, our faithful readers.

1. 5 reasons why MPLS isn’t dead yet – and won’t be anytime soon

Despite the hype generated by SD-WAN and secure access service edge (SASE) , MPLS remains a top enterprise WAN option. According to the research firm IMARC Group, the worldwide managed MPLS market hit $60B in 2022 and is forecast to grow to $80.6B by 2028. SD-WAN, in contrast, was a fraction of the size of MPLS in 2022, reaching only $4B, according to Global Market Insights.

2. What is open RAN backer Tareq Amin’s Rakuten legacy?

High-profile Rakuten executive Tareq Amin has left the Japanese operator and platform provider, taking with him a legacy of leading that firm’s innovative open radio access network (RAN) development and deployment.

3. Why telecom operators struggle with the cloud

A recent survey and report from Accenture found that 98% of communication service provider (CSP) executives said growing data demands from the consumer and enterprise sectors “have outstripped the current capabilities of networks.”

4. Akamai ransomware report shows zero-day exploitation, exfiltration rising

Akamai’s latest report showed a shift in ransomware strategies — an uptick in the exploitation of zero-day and one-day vulnerabilities. The vendor also found ransomware groups are increasingly targeting file exfiltration as their primary means of extortion.

5. Samsung and Intel expand integration to power next-gen 5G vRAN

Samsung is integrating its latest virtualized radio access network (vRAN) product onto Intel’s Xeon processor and vRAN Boost platforms in a push to further accelerate the performance of 5G RAN deployments.

The move has Samsung porting its vRAN 3.0 software onto Intel’s 4th-Gen Xeon Scalable processors that have the vRAN Boost accelerator platform secret sauce. This combination will be able to support more cells with the same number of servers, which can result in higher performance, power savings and cost efficiencies.