Technology demonstrations showcase innovations in 100G and distributed computing methods

LINTHICUM, Md., Nov. 15 -- Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, today announced details of its high-performance optical networking demonstrations at the SC Conference 2010 (SC10) in New Orleans, La., November 15-18. Ciena will highlight its innovations for high-capacity networks, while showcasing the real-world impact those advances bring to researchers and the broader population.

Several of Ciena's demonstrations at SC10 involve collaboration with some of the world's most renowned research institutions on leading technologies, including:

• CANARIE (Ciena Booth #3445): Ciena welcomes and hosts CANARIE, Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network, to show how high-speed research networks, based on Ciena's ActivFlex 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, can accelerate medical discoveries in brain research and help eliminate the challenges of geography in delivering medical education to remote areas. The content is provided by Canadian Brain Imaging Research Network (CBRAIN), which 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. CANARIE and Ciena recently partnered to support the first research and education network in North America to demonstrate 100G on a production network.
   
• Internet2 (Internet2 Booth #3539): Ciena will be participating in the Internet2 100G demonstration network, a live network connecting the StarLight Communications Exchange in Chicago to the New Orleans show floor via a 100G circuit. Within this demonstration network, Ciena will be providing 100GbE connectivity over a singular wavelength from Baton Rouge to the show floor in New Orleans over the LONI network. Institutions with traffic operating on the network to the SC10 conference include DOE ESnet, NASA, NOAA, Caltech/US LHCnet, CANARIE and the Dutch Research Consortium. The Internet2 booth will present the showcase through the use of perfSONAR-PS network performance monitoring software, which will provide real-time traffic flow visualization on the full 100GigE circuit.
   
• NASA/NOAA (NASA Booth #3839 and LAC/iCAIR Booth # 3521): In collaboration with NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Ciena is participating in a connectivity demonstration of low cost disk-to-disk data transfer for Petascale science and supercomputing. Ciena will be providing spectrally efficient 100G wavelength connectivity between the NASA booth and the LAC/iCAIR booth on the show floor in New Orleans, providing NASA with ten 10GbE connections for the demonstration. NASA will also originate traffic from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, and run traffic to Chicago where it will travel on the Internet2 demonstration network.
   
• University of Amsterdam (Ciena Booth #3445 and Dutch Research Consortium Booth #4049): Partnering with the University of Amsterdam via a 40G connection between the Dutch Research Consortium and Ciena, Ciena is demonstrating 40GbE functionality with demonstrated interoperability for distributed computing and file transfer. The University and Amsterdam and Ciena recently partnered in a similar experiment that produced a high-speed, long-haul 40GbE network showcased at the GLIF meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

In addition, for the third year in a row, Ciena will be providing 100G optical infrastructure for SCinet, SC10's production quality network. SCinet delivers high-bandwidth connectivity to the show floor and through research and education networks worldwide.

Finally, Ciena will be participating in the SC10 Exhibitors Forum, where Rod Wilson, senior director for Ciena's external research program, will provide an overview of technologies driving advancement beyond 100G to Terabit networking. The presentation is Thursday, November 18 from 10:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

About Ciena

Ciena (NASDAQ: CIEN) is the network specialist. The company 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. Ciena routinely post recent news, financial results and other important announcements and information about the company on its website. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.

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Source: Ciena Corp.