Italian academic research organization picks Metrobility for GbE service provisioning

July 27, 2005 Merrimack, NH -- Metrobility Optical Systems announced that Italy's Consortium GARR has adopted the company's Radiance suite of products for the implementation, management, and expansion of a national telecommunications network. The consortium, established by major Italian academic and research organizations, aims to boost that country's high-bandwidth network for purposes of university and scientific research. The GARR network connects with other European and worldwide R&D networks to support education and scientific research.

GARR says the Metrobility platform has allowed it to move from E3 leased line circuits to high-speed Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) services. The consortium says moving to the platform has streamlined the provisioning of its network. The consortium says the platform's CWDM and Ethernet technology enables it to use its network more efficiently, while providing greater bandwidth to end users at no additional cost.

"GARR network users are top researchers, students and faculty who have a wide range of requirements and differing levels of expertise," says Massimo Carboni, coordinator of planning and operations for the GARR consortium. "Many are involved in national and international projects and experiments that are demanding in terms of bandwidth requirements, reliability, and advanced end-to-end services. With Metrobility, we are able to support these demanding requirements and create an ideal network environment that provides quality services that world-class academic institutions require."

"Academic research institutions like GARR are at the leading edge of technology adoption, particularly in terms of optimizing voice, video, and data network services to users," adds Alex Saunders, president and CEO of Metrobility. "We are pleased to work with the GARR community, and to be supporting international students and researchers by helping to provide a more advanced and reliable network experience."

Metrobility says it provides managed CWDM platforms supporting 16 standard-based ITU-grid wavelengths not only to the GARR network, but also to several major metropolitan and regional networks in Italy, including the academic MAN of Bari University, the Milan regional R&E network, and the Gigabit link between the GARR network and the Cineca Supercomputing Centre in Bologna. The platforms' technologies range from 10/100/1000-Mbit/sec Ethernet to STM-16 data rates. The network at Cineca uses the company's patented line protection and restoration technology to enable a secure, managed GbE service over CWDM. In Milan, the platforms interconnect five metropolitan sites in a ring configuration using GbE and STM protocols over CWDM. At the University of Bari, the company says it efficiently utilized the existing fiber-optic infrastructure to provide Ethernet services to five sites over CWDM.