Brocade routers power 100-Gigabit Ethernet research network

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) says that its MLXe routers are enabling 100-Gigabit Ethernet (100GbE) connectivity at the Janelia Farm Research Campus research facility for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). The Janelia Farm facility performs neuroscience and imaging research.

HHMI is a nonprofit medical research organization that focuses on biomedical research and science education in the United States to the tune of approximately $770 million in biomedical research per year. It has an endowment of $14 billion. Its Janelia Farm Research Campus in Ashburn, VA houses more than 250 staff scientists.

The application of the MLXe-32 and MLXe-16 routers, which offer 56 ports of 100GbE capacity, has boosted network capacity 10-fold. The routers are connected via Brocade Multi-Chassis Trunk (MCT), which enables network-level virtualization and enhanced network reliability. From the core, Janelia Farm Research Campus link bonds two ports of 100GbE to create a single 200 gigabit logical connection in both directions. The aggregation routers are two fully populated Brocade MLXe-32 routers with more than 2,400 GbE ports and a large subset of 10GbE ports.

"We have 200-gigabits connections to each of our network wiring closets," said Spartaco Cicerchia, director of network infrastructure systems for the Janelia Farm Research Campus. "Then we have 10GbE connections going directly down to researchers' systems in order to support the massive volumes of data they have collected. This new infrastructure enables our research team to obtain results 10 times faster than before. This performance advantage will allow us to set a new standard for research process cycles."

The deployment of the new routers enabled a more simplified network infrastructure. "We were able to reduce the number of routers in our network infrastructure and simultaneously enhance performance," said Cicerchia. "Therefore we completely eliminated a layer of the network and improved our overall efficiency by about 50 percent."