DIDCOT, UK and HANOVER, Md., Sept. 6 -- Ciena Corporation, the network specialist, today announced that its 6500 packet-optical platform, equipped with WaveLogic™ Coherent Optical Processors, has been selected for Janet6, the next generation of the national Research and Education (R&E) network in the United Kingdom, which will go live by October 2013. The highly flexible, scalable and cost-effective network will help drive the UK’s knowledge economy by connecting and supporting the unique requirements of the research and education community.

Key Facts:

• Ciena’s future-proof optical network will allow Janet to effectively meet the requirements of its users on three fronts:
• Capacity: Based on Ciena’s OPⁿ architecture, the 100G coherent network will support the exponential growth in bandwidth needed by applications such as large scale e-science, distributed computing and storage, and cost-effectively scale to 400G and beyond as requirements change over time.
• Services delivery: The highly agile, reliable and flexible network will also enable Janet to easily and rapidly set-up services for strategic research campuses. Moreover, the network supports a range of protocols needed for the provisioning of high-bandwidth services, in particular cloud computing, future Internets, and super high-definition video delivery.
• Partnerships and collaboration: Janet will benefit from Ciena’s extensive experience in connecting the R&E community, supporting local and global collaboration between research institutions - a key requirement for large, innovative research projects. For example, Janet’s participation in the Higgs Boson project at CERN and the European VLBI Network (EVN) of telescopes depends on the distribution of vast amounts of data from around the world to UK research institutions for further analysis.
• Janet’s dedicated network supports the needs of the UK’s research and education institutions, connects them to their peers worldwide and also enables network development experiments using dedicated end-to-end connectivity through their Lightpath Service. Janet serves more than 18 million users and connects UK universities, further education (FE) Colleges, Research Councils, Specialist Colleges and Community Learning Providers as well as the national school network.
• Ciena and Janet are working closely together to enable a seamless network transformation from SuperJANET5 to the new network, ensuring users do not experience any disruption in service. The agreement includes a suite of Ciena services, including network design, installation, technical and operational support as well as network maintenance for a five-year period.
• The pioneer and market leader in coherent technology for optical transmission, Ciena has to date shipped over 16,000 coherent 40G/100G line interfaces to more than 100 customers across the globe, with over 15 million coherent kilometres deployed worldwide. Ciena’s customers in the R&E community include CANARIE (Canada), Internet2 (US), RENATER (France), SURFnet (the Netherlands), and VERNet (Australia). 

Executive Comments:

• “Effectively supporting ground-breaking research in the UK as well as international projects, a world leading education sector, and closer links to industry requires a state-of-the art network with the power to catalyse innovation and collaboration amongst our customers.  With Ciena’s pioneering coherent technology and extensive expertise in the research and education sector, Janet’s users will have access to a highly reliable and flexible 100G network that will reach the 400G milestone as requirements evolve.” 
  - Jeremy Sharp, Head of Strategic Technologies at Janet
• “Research and education networks are early adopters of cutting-edge technology and therefore close partners in the development of tomorrow’s networks, which our OPⁿ architecture supports by enabling the economical and exponential scale required to support high-bandwidth, collaborative research projects. Ciena is proud to be working with Janet on the evolution of its network, helping it support innovative new services and meet the exacting - and sometimes as yet unknown - demands of eScience projects that have the potential to change our understanding of the world, from particle physics to genetics and astronomy.”
  - John-Paul Hemingway, Vice-President and General Manager, EMEA at Ciena

Supporting Resources:

·         Case study: Internet2: Building America’s First National 100G Network

·         Case study: SURFnet and Ciena Deliver a Next-Generation Network  

·         Data Sheet: 6500 packet-optical platform

·         Video: 100G and Beyond for Research and Education Networks

·         Video: WaveLogic 3

·         Whitepaper: Enabling a Bigger and Smarter Network with Ciena’s WaveLogic 3 

·         Whitepaper: Key Technology Enablers of 100Gbs in Research and Education Networks

About Janet

Janet provides a world-class network infrastructure to meet the needs of the UK’s research and education community. With over 25 years of uninterrupted service to date, the Janet network now has a community of 18 million users. Janet additionally provisions services, including videoconferencing, and brokers third party services to enable the Janet community to get the best and most competitive services available, such as cloud.

The concept of a community underpins everything Janet does and the network is based on the need for organisations to communicate, collaborate and co-operate in the shared interests of education and research.

Janet manages the operation and development of the network on behalf of the UK technology consortium JISC for the UK Further and Higher Education Funding Councils with the primary aim of providing and developing a network infrastructure that meets the needs of the research and education communities.

The delivery of this specialist, reliable, high bandwidth, high speed network means that Janet can provide the UK with the perfect breeding ground for innovation; from high end research to dynamic ways for teaching and learning and access to remote campus’ over Janet6. The big science projects we enable would be unthinkable without the high speed, high capacity network.

The high capacity network means that research in biomedical sciences, climate science and genomics can continue at current rates, even with the requirements for the transfer of large data sets as well as high performance computing that are needed for research and analysis in these disciplines.

About Ciena
Ciena is the network specialist. We collaborate 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 services and software that delivers the industry’s leading network automation. We routinely post recent news, financial results and other important announcements and information about Ciena on our website. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.

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Source: Ciena Corporation