First research & education network in North America to demonstrate 100G on a production network

LINTHICUM, Md., and OTTAWA, Oct. 18 -- Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, and CANARIE, Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network, today announced a successful joint 100G demonstration running over CANARIE's production network that highlights its ability to deliver powerful applications across a wide range of industrial, educational and research sectors. The demonstration showcases two CANARIE-funded research projects that use the CANARIE network to accelerate medical discoveries and innovations in brain research, and help eliminate the challenges of geography in delivering medical education to remote and rural areas. The live demonstration will be operational throughout the month of October as part of an advanced technology event for Ciena customers.

The geographic size and distributed population of Canada provide a perfect example of the challenge facing many countries as they struggle to deliver common access to high-quality healthcare education, services and research. To address this need, CANARIE is utilizing its network to ensure Canadian students, researchers and patients in remote areas have access to the same resources and care as people in the country's large metropolitan cities. The two applications in the demonstration illustrate CANARIE's work in this area and underscore the ways in which its 100G network may be leveraged:

Health Service Virtual Organization (HSVO) -- connects healthcare practitioners and students to leading-edge medical devices, information and expertise on-demand for training, patient care and research collaboration. It uses technology to overcome key challenges in healthcare delivery by expanding the reach and accessibility of distributed medical experts and healthcare resources, thereby increasing the quality of patient care and leveraging the investment in sophisticated medical equipment and resources.

Canadian Brain Imaging Research Network (CBRAIN) -- enables scientists to access, process, manipulate and analyze the massive and growing volume of 3D and 4D brain imaging and mapping data and conduct collaborative research to advance the understanding of brain development throughout life, including the physical and cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

As evidenced by this live demonstration, CANARIE's network is easily upgradeable to 100G by simply adding 100G interfaces to its installed Ciena ActivFlex 6500 equipment without changing any network infrastructure or completely re-engineering the network, protecting CANARIE's network investment while delivering ten times the capacity for advancing Canadian research, education and innovation.

"Our demonstration with Ciena showcases the value of our technology investments and 100G capabilities, as it proves CANARIE's network to be a flexible platform supporting researchers, educators and innovators across Canada working to improve our health, our economy, our environment and our future," said Jim Roche, president and CEO of CANARIE. "More importantly, the actual applications demonstrated over the live network help move the industry conversation beyond simply building faster networks to how that bandwidth can be utilized -- through applications in healthcare, as demonstrated today, but also in applications exploring everything from carbon-free computing to new energy sources, from easing traffic congestion to better managing our ocean resources."

Spanning across Canada, CANARIE's network connects more than 87 universities, 103 colleges, 49 CEGEPS, 84 provincial and federal government labs and research parks, 58 hospitals and health networks, 31 cultural institutions, thousands of K-12 schools, 12 provincial and territorial optical network partners, and more than 100 international peer networks in 80 countries. Its unparalleled footprint and diverse user base enabled the transmission of 19,000 Terabytes of data last year, equivalent to the contents of a bookshelf that circles the globe almost five and a half times. Current and evolving user needs highlight the requirement for CANARIE's deployment of advanced optical networking equipment that can scale to 100G.

"Today's demonstration not only underscores our continued market leadership in 100G technology, but also extends our long history of collaboration and deployments with research and education customers who are at the forefront of advanced technology adoption," said Philippe Morin, senior vice president, global products group at Ciena. "Beyond needing to push more traffic to smartphones or stream online videos, our work with CANARIE highlights the capabilities of its 100G-ready network and the real impact high-capacity networking can have on improving research collaboration to accelerate discoveries in science, medicine, education, renewable energy and other disciplines."

Using Ciena's ActivFlex 6500 and ActivSpan Common Photonic Layer, the demonstration originates from Chicago's StarLight GIGApop and includes uncompressed HD video data streams from the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) and other sources, along with the CANARIE applications. Using Ciena's 40/100G Adaptive Optical Engine technology -- which includes coherent optics, electronic dispersion compensation, and directionless and colorless ROADM functionality -- the 100G wavelength travels 1,300 km to Ciena's Ottawa labs for displaying the video content.

Ciena has a long standing commitment to the research and education sector and powers several of the world's largest research networks including Internet2, CANARIE, JANET, SURFnet and others. For additional information on Ciena's collaboration with the R&E community, visit http://www.ciena.com/researchandeducation.

About Ciena

Ciena (NASDAQ: CIEN) is the network specialist. Ciena collaborates with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. With focused innovation, Ciena brings together the reliability and capacity of optical networking with the flexibility and economics of Ethernet, unified by a software suite that delivers the industry's leading network automation. The company routinely posts recent news, financial results and other important announcements and information about Ciena on its website. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.

About CANARIE

CANARIE Inc. is Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network. Established in 1993, CANARIE manages an ultra high-speed network, hundreds of times faster than the Internet, which facilitates leading-edge research and big science across Canada and around the world. More than 39,000 researchers at nearly 200 Canadian universities and colleges use the CANARIE Network, as well as researchers at institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories throughout the country. The CANARIE Network enables researchers to share and analyze massive amounts of data, which can lead to ground-breaking scientific discoveries. CANARIE's network, programs, and strategic partnerships with 12 regional networks in Canada, and 100 international networks in more than 80 countries, stimulate research that delivers economic, social, and cultural benefits to Canadians. CANARIE is a non-profit corporation supported by membership fees, with major funding of its programs and activities provided by the Government of Canada. For additional information, visit www.canarie.ca.

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Source: CANARIE Inc.; Ciena Corporation