CERN has selected HP networking solutions to further improve its network infrastructure performance, reliability and security needed to support its ground-breaking discoveries.

CERN’s campus network infrastructure is designed to ensure efficient and robust communication between CERN sites. To ensure that, a decision has been made to shortly introduce IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6), an internet layer protocol for packet-switched networking.CERN’s research community includes more than 10,000 scientists and engineers who need to share large amounts of data quickly and securely with other researchers at CERN and around the world. Faced with the explosion of information and data analysis, CERN turned to HP to improve its network infrastructure.

HP networking solutions are core to HP Converged Infrastructure, which integrates servers, storage and networking into pools of interoperable resources.

“We needed a reliable, secure and proven network infrastructure that could support IPv6 for faster communications and multicast capabilities for new applications,” said Jean-Michel Jouanigot, group leader, Communication Systems, IT Department, CERN. “HP provided us with a five-year roadmap that clearly met our criteria and growth objectives. They are a strong partner and share our dedication to developing advanced technology through long-term research and development efforts.”

HP and CERN have a long history of researching and developing advanced networking technologies. The CINBAD (CERN Investigation of Network Behaviour and Anomaly Detection) project, launched in 2007 in collaboration with HP, is based completely on HP networking technology.

CINBAD’s charter is to understand the behavior of large computer networks in the context of high-performance computing and campus installations such as CERN. With more than 50,000 active user devices interconnected by 10,000 km of cables and fibers, as well as more than 2,500 switches and routers, CERN’s campus network can study and test a wide range of network applications.

The networking choice of leading scientists

CERN’s sites in the Geneva region are now supported by HP E-series switches. These sites house CERN’s six particle accelerators, including the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, and the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) project, the world’s largest international scientific grid service. WLCG enables scientists to share, store and analyze 15 petabytes (15 million gigabytes) of data each year.

For data center server-edge connectivity across its Geneva sites, CERN has selected HP E6600, E5412 and E8212 switches and HP E3500 advanced intelligent edge switches. These open standards-based solutions ensure that CERN’s network is manageable, flexible, secure and expandable, enabling the organization to move forward with IPv6 easily and cost-effectively.

HP’s world-class product portfolio includes intellectual property created through its long-term relationship with CERN.