ACADEMIA

National Research & Education network will support the UK’s knowledge economy by meeting requirements for bandwidth growth, resiliency and flexibility

Ciena 6500 packet-optical platform, equipped with WaveLogic Coherent Optical Processors, has been selected for Janet6, the next generation of the national Research and Education (R&E) network in the United Kingdom, which will go live by October 2013. The highly flexible, scalable and cost-effective network will help drive the UK’s knowledge economy by connecting and supporting the unique requirements of the research and education community.

Key Facts:

Ciena’s future-proof optical network will allow Janet to effectively meet the requirements of its users on three fronts:

• Capacity: Based on Ciena’s OPⁿ architecture, the 100G coherent network will support the exponential growth in bandwidth needed by applications such as large scale e-science, distributed computing and storage, and cost-effectively scale to 400G and beyond as requirements change over time.
• Services delivery: The highly agile, reliable and flexible network will also enable Janet to easily and rapidly set-up services for strategic research campuses. Moreover, the network supports a range of protocols needed for the provisioning of high-bandwidth services, in particular cloud computing, future Internets, and super high-definition video delivery.
• Partnerships and collaboration: Janet will benefit from Ciena’s extensive experience in connecting the R&E community, supporting local and global collaboration between research institutions - a key requirement for large, innovative research projects. For example, Janet’s participation in the Higgs Boson project at CERN and the European VLBI Network (EVN) of telescopes depends on the distribution of vast amounts of data from around the world to UK research institutions for further analysis.

Janet’s dedicated network supports the needs of the UK’s research and education institutions, connects them to their peers worldwide and also enables network development experiments using dedicated end-to-end connectivity through their Lightpath Service. Janet serves more than 18 million users and connects UK universities, further education (FE) Colleges, Research Councils, Specialist Colleges and Community Learning Providers as well as the national school network.

Ciena and Janet are working closely together to enable a seamless network transformation from SuperJANET5 to the new network, ensuring users do not experience any disruption in service. The agreement includes a suite of Ciena services, including network design, installation, technical and operational support as well as network maintenance for a five-year period.

The pioneer and market leader in coherent technology for optical transmission, Ciena has to date shipped over 16,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces to more than 100 customers across the globe, with over 15 million coherent kilometres deployed worldwide. Ciena’s customers in the R&E community include CANARIE (Canada), Internet2 (US), RENATER (France), SURFnet (the Netherlands), and VERNet (Australia).

“Effectively supporting ground-breaking research in the UK as well as international projects, a world leading education sector, and closer links to industry requires a state-of-the art network with the power to catalyse innovation and collaboration amongst our customers. With Ciena’s pioneering coherent technology and extensive expertise in the research and education sector, Janet’s users will have access to a highly reliable and flexible 100G network that will reach the 400G milestone as requirements evolve," said Jeremy Sharp, Head of Strategic Technologies at Janet.

“Research and education networks are early adopters of cutting-edge technology and therefore close partners in the development of tomorrow’s networks, which our OPⁿ architecture supports by enabling the economical and exponential scale required to support high-bandwidth, collaborative research projects. Ciena is proud to be working with Janet on the evolution of its network, helping it support innovative new services and meet the exacting - and sometimes as yet unknown - demands of eScience projects that have the potential to change our understanding of the world, from particle physics to genetics and astronomy," said John-Paul Hemingway, Vice-President and General Manager, EMEA at Ciena.