JULY 9, 2007 -- Ciena Corp. (search for Ciena) today announced that JANET has successfully delivered its first 40-Gbit/sec service in a production environment across JANET, the UK's national research and education network, using the new 40-Gbit/sec capabilities of Ciena's CoreStream Agility Optical Transport System (search for CoreStream). According to Ciena, this is the first time that a national research and education network (NREN) in Europe has deployed a true 40-Gbit/sec signal across a single optical wavelength to carry live production traffic between sites.
The Ciena-enabled 40-Gbit/sec service was delivered across a dedicated optical fiber link connecting the Canary Wharf and Kings Cross points of presence (PoP) in London, one of the busiest parts of the JANET network.
Funded by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), JANET provides what it claims is a highly robust and scalable UK-wide optical network to support the diverse requirements of a user base of 18 million, including research institutes, universities, further education, and primary and secondary schools. Ciena's CoreStream Agility platform forms the foundation of the JANET backbone transmission infrastructure to deliver high-speed connectivity for end-users. Additionally, Ciena's FlexSelect CN 4200 (search for CN 4200) Advanced Services Platform connects 19 UK regional networks to the JANET backbone, report Ciena representatives, who note that both products provide a seamless upgrade to 40 Gbits/sec of capacity per wavelength as needed.
With the first 40-Gbit/sec connectivity now in service between two PoPs, JANET says it plans to migrate its entire CoreStream Agility-based transport infrastructure to 40-Gbit/sec interfaces during the course of 2008, dependent on network traffic growth. As Ciena's equipment enables new 40-Gbit/sec wavelengths to be intermixed with existing 10-Gbit/sec wavelengths on the same fiber system, JANET will be able to migrate seamlessly to 40 Gbits/sec, without interruption to the existing 10-Gbit/sec network or the need to build a separate, standalone network, say JANET representatives.
"With the support of our technology partners such as Ciena, we are very confident that the migration to 40 Gbits/sec will be successful," contends Jeremy Sharp, head of strategic technologies at JANET. "By increasing single wavelength capacity, we are able to scale the JANET network whilst continuing to offer a very high quality service to the education and research community."Â
Ciena says it began 40-Gbit/sec research and development in 2000, and has since participated in multiple live industry demonstrations and field tests. In anticipation of customer demand, all of Ciena's optical transport systems, including CoreStream Agility and the CN 4200, were made 40G-ready by 2005, says the company. As part of that strategy, Ciena's FlexSelect 40G Shelf extends serial 40-Gbit/sec optical transport capabilities for Ciena's CoreStream Agility and CN 4200 platforms as an in-service upgrade to help JANET and other customers scale bandwidth capacity to keep pace with increasing network traffic, say company representatives. The FlexSelect 40G Shelf features eight hot-swappable and wavelength-provisionable line cards that support 40-Gbit/sec clients, aggregate 4x10-Gbit/sec clients, and generate a 40-Gbit/sec signal or regenerate 40-Gbit/sec signals for SONET, SDH, or OTN protocols up to 43 Gbits/sec, says Ciena.
According to John-Paul Hemingway, chief technologist for Ciena in EMEA, JANET's 40-Gbit/sec deployment is a significant milestone for both Ciena and Europe's research and education community. "With growing demands on today's research and education networks, it is essential that organizations such as JANET(UK) deliver a high-performance backbone that is easily scalable to 40 Gbits/sec per channel to cost-efficiently increase bandwidth," says Hemingway. "We are proud to help JANET take the lead in this area with our new 40-Gbit/sec solution, which provides more capacity while managing fewer wavelengths," he adds.
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