LightNet, an association of educational and research institutions in Italy, has deployed the ADVA FSP 3000 from ADVA Optical Networking as it launches a telecommunications infrastructure designed to provide collaboration, medical, and scientific capabilities.
ADVA Optical Networking’s carrier-class, 40Gbit/s Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) is providing high-speed connectivity and dynamic bandwidth allocation within and among LightNet’s 10 member institutions, as well as to Italy’s and neighboring countries’ national research and education networks (NRENs) and the commercial Internet.
“State-of-the-art services, robust performance, the ability to transport different types of traffic and significant savings were our objectives. The ADVA FSP 3000 has allowed us to achieve them,” explains Prof. Fernando Liello, director of the LightNet project. “We also needed to provide individual institutions their own fiber pairs to enable separate and full performance across the network. We got the features that we required, as well as the flexibility to add new services for our member institutions. ADVA Optical Networking has been a strong partner to us in delivering this advanced infrastructure project.”
LightNet sought DWDM functionality able to deliver reliability and performance end-to-end across the network, reveals a spokesperson. LightNet selected ADVA Optical Networking’s ADVA FSP 3000 to enable a topology of interconnected, redundant fiber rings spanning 320 kilometers.
LightNet typically supports services with speeds up to 4Gbit/s; yet, with ADVA Optical Networking’s Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) capability, users can configure LightNet for services up to 40Gbit/s. Bandwidth can be booked and used for a given period between any two points on the network for real-time resource sharing, says a representative.
“Multi-site computation and data mining, virtual laboratories, digital libraries, distributed learning, and telemedicine are just some of the critical applications enabled by our optical-networking solutions in research-and-education networks around the globe,” says Stephan Rettenberger, vice president of marketing with ADVA Optical Networking. “This first generation of LightNet is already transforming the scope and capabilities of the Italian research-and-education community, and our FSP 3000 provides a flexible, scalable foundation for ongoing growth in both its number of network users and the innovative ways that LightNet is employed.”
More than 40,000 users span LightNet’s project partners, including the Conservatory of Music Giuseppe Tartini; the AREA Science & Technology Park; the Consortium GARR (Italian NREN); the International Centre for Theoretical Physics - ICTP; the National Institute of Astrophysics - INAF; the Institute of Marine Sciences – ISMAR/CNR; the National Institute of Oceonography and Experimental Geophysics - OGS; the Sincrotrone Trieste SCpA; the International School for Advanced Studies – SISSA; and the University of Trieste.
LightNet delivers users bandwidth speeds that are at least 200 times faster than commercially available Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) access, enabling applications such as high-definition broadcasts of surgical operations, telemedicine procedures, precise and remote control of microscopes, and other scientific instruments, and high-speed downloads of entire libraries of data.