Keysight - Experts & Thought Leaders

As the world works on developing renewable energy resources, one growing challenge is how to have enough battery energy storage systems (BESS) to support the increasing number of electric vehicles (EVs) and the evolving smart grid. Surprisingly (or not), the humble school bus is emerging as a great candidate in the drive toward a low-carbon grid. It starts with a vision to lower carbon emissions by switching from diesel-powered to electrified fleets. Upgrade old school buses to zero-emission models In the United States of America (USA), the US EPA Clean School Bus Program has set aside US$ 5 billion in funding to upgrade older school buses to clean, zero-emission models over the next five years. According to the US PIRG, nearly half a million school buses ferry half of America’s children to and from school According to the US PIRG, nearly half a million school buses ferry half of America’s children to and from school, but less than 1% of this fleet is electric. Considering diesel exhaust contains more than 40 cancer-causing substances, the health benefits of an all-electric school bus fleet are apparent. Another less obvious but equally exciting potential is how these new all-electric school buses will support the development of the vehicle-to-grid, or V2G infrastructure, and serve as distributed energy resources (DER) on wheels. What is V2G? V2G is a communication system connecting electrified transportation and the power grid. In conventional charging, vehicles draw and use energy in a one-way flow of electricity. In a bidirectional V2G system, the EV’s battery can supply electricity back to the grid when it’s plugged in. When the grid experiences a sudden spike in demand, these EV BESS can supply energy back into the grid to help balance this temporary peak demand. Why electric school buses to start with? The reason is that these fleets operate on fixed schedules, and many sit idle during summer holidays or for a good part of the night when electricity demand peaks. This is when the energy in the battery can flow back to support the grid. Potential V2G Benefits The idea of clean energy produced from wind turbines and solar panels is much adored internationally; however, the output from such renewable energy sources is less predictable than that from a power plant. The proliferation of renewable energy sources via photovoltaic (PV) systems puts more stress on the ‘duck curve’ conundrum. During daily or seasonal peak irradiation, the renewable energy source produces more energy than is needed. This is represented by the duck’s belly, which has sagged over the years as PV energy production increases. Balancing the energy curves is costly Utility providers may need to curtail PV energy production during peak irradiation periods Utility providers may need to curtail PV energy production during peak irradiation periods, reducing its economic and environmental benefits. As the sun sets, power generation plants must quickly ramp up electricity production (represented by the duck’s neck). Balancing these energy curves is costly. This is where a network of EVs connected via V2G can help to alleviate the peaks and troughs, and balance the grid. The fleets of electric school buses can serve as BESS to store excess electricity, when net load is low, and release it back to the grid when demand picks up. Cost benefits of integrating school buses into V2G use model There are also cost benefits for integrating school buses into the V2G use model. According to a study by the University of Delaware’s Center for Carbon-Free Power Integration, choosing an electric bus with V2G capabilities over a traditional diesel bus would save US$ 6,070 per seat. Without V2G revenues, an electric bus would not be cost-effective, costing thousands of dollars per seat (US$ 2,000 per seat). Besides electric school buses, other electrified fleets such as public buses, delivery trucks, vans, and even cars may soon form an essential part of the intelligent DER ecosystem. With the global adoption of bidirectional EV charging and the addition of V2G services, the EV battery pack goes from being just a consumer product that powers the vehicle to be able to supply electricity back to the grid. Global EV charging standards But energy providers and utility agencies worldwide enforce stringent rules and standard test requirements around DERs and their interconnection and interoperability with the grid. The various global EV charging standards make it even more complicated for EV and EV supply equipment manufacturers to ensure global compliance of interconnection with the local grid. The learning curve is steep, but the potential holds enormous promise. Join Keysight and their industry partners as they explore best practices in the design and testing of V2G, and the broader future mobility ecosystem, which includes technology to enable more safety and self-driving capabilities.

A study by EMA - Enterprise Management Associates, found that 66% of organizations do not have the network visibility they need. And 79% of enterprises believe it is important to establish an end-to-end visibility architecture for physical on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments. The study stresses the importance of how data points for network visibility provides security and monitoring tools the data they need to secure networked applications. Keysight Vision E400S network visibility solution The new Keysight Vision E400S is the next-generation network visibility solution with comprehensive feature sets to meet the ever-evolving visibility needs of production networks, for up to 400 Gbps network speed. What makes the Vision E400S Next-Gen Network Packet Broker so special? The box is highly compact with its 1 RU size and the front panel provides 24 QSFP56 and 16 QSFP-DD ports. Each QSFP-DD can break out into smaller speed ports (200G, 100G, 40G, 50/25/10G) with the special fan-out cables. It is the only NPB that supports all possible permutation of speeds, increasing the chance of interoperating with existing devices while maximizing design flexibility. At the center of the device is the new IntelTM 2, P4-programmable silicon chip, which provides breakthrough performance for complex networking needs (cloud, hybrid, AI, mobile, 4G/5G, remote work, metadata, and more) which allows fast implementation of a new parser or header stripping option of any new protocols, well-known or proprietary. Supports both NRZ and PAM4 standards for maximum port density and flexibility. New load balance options support load balancing per port group. In addition to traditional session-aware load balance, new options also allow load balancing like asymmetric, weighted or random using tunneled IP header. NEW PacketStack+ capabilities will perform advanced packet processing such as header (protocol) stripping, data masking, time-stamping and GRE / VxLAN tunnel origination at all ports of all speeds. Edge aggregation and traffic distribution solution Vision E400S is very versatile and with its 1 RU size can be perfectly used for top-of-rack aggregation solutions Customers’ feedback (enterprise and service providers) found that a lot of traffic needs be handled efficiently on the network edge and not to overload the backbone network. This next generation packet broker is the perfect solution for IT organizations with a lot of edge aggregation needs. The Vision E400S is very versatile and with its 1 RU size can be perfectly used for top-of-rack aggregation solutions. Need to plan ahead for ever-increasing bandwidth demand On monitoring the ever-increasing bandwidth demand from users and applications, now is the time to consider the requirements for network edge devices, which can grow and support any combination of speeds - 10G, 25G, 40G, 50G, 100G, 200G and 400G. The Vision E400S from Keysight is the best investment that users can make today and enjoy a great ROI over the coming years.

Following the introduction, earlier this year, of the first test solution for authentic validation of zero trust networks, Daniel Munteanu, the Product Manager at Keysight, is extremely excited to take this opportunity to provide more information about this major milestone that is shaping the future of network application and security testing. Typically, for a product, a 2.0 release marks the transition into the maturity stage (or, even a brand-new initiative), but with CyPerf 2.0 it is more than that. It is about delivering unique, unmatched capabilities that are raising the bar for network application and security testing. Keysight CyPerf - instantly scalable zero trust test solution Keysight CyPerf is the industry’s first instantly scalable zero trust test solution for distributed cloud Keysight CyPerf is the industry’s first instantly scalable zero trust test solution for distributed cloud. CyPerf’s light-weight traffic generation agents can be deployed across a variety of physical, cloud and containerized environments, in order to deliver unprecedented insights into end-user experience, security posture, and performance bottlenecks. By realistically modeling dynamic application traffic, user behavior, and threat vectors at scale, CyPerf validates hybrid networks, security devices, and services for more confident roll-outs. Testing zero trust enabled network architectures The key highlight of CyPerf 2.0 is the new capability for testing zero trust enabled network architectures with native support for authentication and contextual traffic generation. In this release, client traffic agents are able to state-fully interact with Palo Alto’s Prisma Access Policy Enforcement Point and authenticate with Okta Identity Provider, before generating test traffic. A comprehensive state-full workflow is implemented within the test agents to mimic real user behaviors. Access and retrieve data from the protected application While trying to gain access to a specific protected application, they are first redirected to authenticate, and once the authentication is successful, they are again re-directed to finally access and retrieve data from the protected application. To make testing more relevant and insightful, CyPerf test agents can be configured to use a very large set of credentials (using playlists of username and passwords), or to access custom application paths. This opens the path for unique test scenarios, relevant to the zero-trust world, such as: Emulating end-to-end legitimate user workflow to test the functionality, performance, and scale of zero trust network architectures. Use authenticated users trying to access resources that are not available to them. Combine legitimate, unauthorized, and unauthenticated users to validate least-privilege access policies. Client Zero Trust Statistics A test tool is only as good as the accuracy and relevancy of the statistics it is providing A test tool is only as good as the accuracy and relevancy of the statistics it is providing. Because network security is critical, there was no scope to lower the bar for providing relevant metrics in zero trust scenarios, so implementing new dedicated stats dashboards like Client Zero Trust Statistics was the only option. Access to granular KPIs and metrics provide users with insights into the status of the interaction with 3rd-party elements like the Policy Enforcement Point transactions or the Identity Provider’s response codes. CyPerf 2.0 While the zero trust functionalities are the highlight of CyPerf 2.0, the other new features added in this release cannot be overlooked. CyPerf now supports HTTP Redirects, which makes it easier to interact with devices under test (DUTs) that use this technique for various purposes. CyPerf’s deployment and usability has also been significantly improved with support for Microsoft Azure marketplace and the ability to deploy CyPerf test agents’ as.deb packages on top of both Ubuntu 20.04 and Ubuntu 18.04. Expanded attack capabilities On the content side, the attack capabilities are expanded with over 700 new high-profile security attacks. This includes malware samples like Maze, Bumblebee, TrickBot, QakBot, Cerber, XtremeRAT etc. or various exploits like Log4j, SVCReady, Atlassian Confluence OGNL, Spring Expression Resource Access Vulnerability and others.