Pan-European Academic Network Receives Terabit Upgrade

Researchers across Europe will soon benefit from even faster Internet speeds, as GEANT data network has announced plans to upgrade its pan-European network to achieve the capacity of one terabit.

Funded by the European Union and operated by the Cambridge-based organisation DANTE, the network is used by more than 40 million researchers. Millions more students will benefit of transfer speeds of up to 100Gbps following the first implementation of the system.

This speed would be fast enough to download the contents of a Blu-ray disc in just two seconds.

It’s all academic

GEANT claims that the upgrade will future-proof the network until 2020, and says that high speed networks are essential for successful European research and are a testbed for future commercial networks. It adds that the sheer amount of data created by large projects such as the Large Hadron Collider must be stored, distributed and accessible for analysis. The network will easily facilitate these functions and allow for real-time collaboration.

“GEANT’s objective is to underpin European research and this major new investment will ensure we continue to provide a network and services that  meet changing needs,” said Matthew Scott and Niels Hersoug, joint general managers of DANTE in a statement. “Our new network will meet the requirement for rapidly growing bandwidth from the Research and Education community, providing a scalable platform well into the future for research collaboration across Europe and beyond, as well as acting as a testbed for the latest technology and innovation.”

The network architecture is based on two types of equipment, optical transmission and switch platforms. Infinera will supply optical transmission equipment, lighting all the dark fibre in the 50,000km GEANT backbone network, while Imtech will provide the data packet switching using the Juniper equipment. Both have signed four year contracts. Rollout of the technology will commence in the second quarter of 2012.

“After an extensive procurement process, Infinera and Imtech demonstrated the best match for our stringent criteria, combining leading edge technology with ease of use and a vision for the future that matches our needs moving forward,” said Michael Enrico, CTO of DANTE. “. We look forward to working closely with them to deliver the benefits of this highly advanced network to our 40 million plus users across Europe.”

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