News for and about the Internet2 community

[Angela Stark <>]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Advanced North Atlantic 100 Gbit/s Ring for Research & Education Now Operational

 

ANA-200G delivers on its promise

 

NEW ORLEANS, La., Nov. 17, 2014—Internet2, NORDUnet, CANARIE and SURFnet, four advanced Research and Education (R&E) Networks from both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean, today announced the completion of a collaborative advanced network, called ANA-200G, that spans the North Atlantic, enabling R&E users to transfer data between North America and Europe at speeds that were previously only possible within the continents. 

 

ANA-200G is a redundant 100 Gbit/s ring between four open exchange points spanning the North Atlantic. The ring nature of ANA-200G without single points of failure protects against an outage in the unprotected individual 100 Gbit/s transmission paths. ANA-200G builds on the success and the lessons learned in the pilot phase that started in June 2013 and ended last month, and was called ANA-100G.

 

This milestone opens up a new era for today’s most advanced research, enabling scientists to take advantage of the ongoing wave of data being constantly created by sensor networks, research instruments, and people.

 

Before this milestone, intercontinental transmission speeds lagged behind one generation compared to the advanced networks on the continents. This brand new 100 Gbit/s ring enables clear channel 100 Gbit/s data transfers for R&E between researchers in the United States and Northern Europe. Demonstrations of ANA-200G will take place this week at SuperComputing (SC14) in New Orleans.

 

Dave Lambert, President and CEO of Internet2, says “Research and education are worldwide endeavors, with teams collaborating on single ‘big science’ projects across the globe. Likewise, leading R&E networks from around the world also partner on a global scale to jointly advance the state of the art for the benefit of the networks’ users. With this major milestone in ANA-200G, we deliver on an important pathfinder for a novel Global Network Architecture for R&E that is just as robust as each of our domestic capabilities.”

 

René Buch, CEO of NORDUnet, adds “ANA-200G advances not only subsea 100G technology and service roll-out, it also advances the way leading R&E networks work together. This achievement brings new insights to sharing links, sharing operations, and sharing costs. We are able to move quickly by always adhering to the Keep It Simple paradigm.”

 

Data transfers in science disciplines such as high-energy physics, genetics, climate research, and radio-astronomy are ever increasing. Not only are datasets increasing rapidly in size, also the speed at which they can be generated and be processed is constantly increasing. Having R&E Networks that push the envelope in advancing the state of the art of data networking remains as important as ever.

 

Jim Ghadbane, President and CEO of CANARIE, says “We are delighted to be a partner in this exciting collaboration. As Canadians are at the forefront in a range of data-intensive research disciplines, it is our role to work with global partners to advance the technology and the opportunities for collaboration that lead to groundbreaking discoveries and innovations.”

 

Erik Huizer, CTO of SURFnet, adds “It is great to see that a team of dedicated network architects blueprinted ANA-200G, and in a short time frame converted the blueprint into reality, in time for supporting ground-breaking demonstrations for SC14.”

 

The open exchange points that play a pivotal role in ANA-200G are MAN LAN in New York City, WIX in Washington, D.C., NetherLight in Amsterdam, and GÉANT Open in London. At these exchange points there is an open connection policy, enabling anyone to connect to the exchange fabric. It requires permission from the link owners, of course, to use the links.

 

This four-partner collaboration has delivered the 100 Gbit/s ring around the North Atlantic Ocean. They are dedicated to further advancing the collaboration, undertaking research into federated operations and admission control, ensuring that demanding science applications have dedicated and resilient data transmission paths, while the general purpose R&E data traffic continues to flow, also in circumstances of an outage.

 

The ANA-200G collaborators welcome other R&E networks to join the collaboration, on the way to new and innovative ways of sharing resources on a global scale, and are happy that discussions are underway with other organizations to have them partake in this collaborative initiative.

 

About Internet2
Internet2® is a member-owned advanced technology community founded by the nation's leading higher education institutions in 1996. Internet2 provides a collaborative environment for U.S. research and education organizations to solve common technology challenges, and to develop innovative solutions in support of their educational, research, and community service missions. Internet2 also operates the nation's largest and fastest, coast-to-coast research and education network, in which the Internet2 Network Operations Center is powered by Indiana University. Internet2 serves more than 90,000 community anchor institutions, 260 U.S. universities, 65 government agencies, 40 regional and state education networks, 85 leading corporations working with our community and 65 national research and education networking partners representing more than 100 countries. Internet2 offices are located in Ann Arbor, Mich.; Denver, Colo.; Emeryville, Calif.; Washington, D.C; and West Hartford, Conn. For more information, visit www.internet2.edu or follow @Internet2 on Twitter.

 

About NORDUnet
NORDUnet is a collaboration between the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) of the five Nordic countries; Denmark (DeIC), Iceland (RHnet), Norway (UNINETT), Sweden (SUNET), and Finland (Funet). NORDUnet operates a world-class network and e-infrastructure service for the Nordic R&E community. The five NRENs develop and operate the national research network infrastructures, connecting more than 400 research & education institutions with more than 1.2M users. NORDUnet and the Nordic NRENs continuously work to further develop leading edge services and to push the technology envelope. NORDUnet provides global network connectivity, and is a key contributor to international partnerships such as GÉANT, GLIF, and GLORIAD.

For more information, please visit www.nordu.net.

 

About CANARIE
CANARIE designs and delivers digital infrastructure, and drives its adoption for Canada’s research, education and innovation communities. CANARIE keeps Canada at the forefront of digital research and innovation, fundamental to a vibrant digital economy. CANARIE’s roots are in advanced networking, and CANARIE continues to evolve the national ultra-high-speed backbone network that enables data-intensive, leading-edge research and big science across Canada and around the world. One million researchers, scientists and students at almost 2,000 Canadian institutions, including universities, colleges, research institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories have access to the CANARIE Network. CANARIE also leads the development of research software tools that enable researchers to more quickly and easily access research data, tools, and peers. In support of Canada’s high-tech entrepreneurs, CANARIE offers cloud-computing services to help them accelerate product development and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace. Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with the major investment in its programs and activities provided by the Government of Canada. For more information, please visit: www.canarie.ca.

 

About SURFnet
SURFnet is the National Research & Education Network (NREN) organisation in The Netherlands. SURFnet ensures that researchers, instructors, and students can work together simply and effectively with the aid of ICT. SURFnet links ICT services, scientific instruments, and people with reliable ICT infrastructures, made up of a network infrastructure and a collaboration infrastructure. SURFnet also demonstrates what is possible by developing and testing innovative ICT services. SURFnet is part of SURF, the Dutch higher education and research partnership for ICT. More information about SURFnet: www.surfnet.nl/en.

 

Media Contacts:

Angela Stark, Internet2, +1 202 803 8996,

René Buch, NORDUnet, +45 32 46 25 00,

Kathryn Anthonisen, CANARIE, +1 613 943 5454,

Lonneke Walk, SURFnet, +31 30 2305 305,