Comcast Biz Connects Steel City Supercomputing Center

The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, a nonprofit collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh that offers advanced supercomputing infrastructure for solving large-scale, data-intensive problems in science and engineering, is using Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) Business Ethernet for connections to eight associated colleges and universities. With the agreement, each school can access advanced computing technologies, offsite data storage and other major research and education networks.

Comcast's business services arm is providing PSC with a 10 Gbps Ethernet Virtual Private Line, which has been allocated into 1 Gbps links to eight members of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania. The service helps connect the institutions directly to the Three Rivers Optical Exchange (3ROX), a high-speed network hub for Pennsylvania and West Virginia educational institutions managed by PSC.

In addition to providing member institutions with general Internet access, the agreement among 3ROX, Comcast and PSC allows the eight schools to access research resources like PSC's Data Supercell and its supercomputers via a shared network.