EU goes ultra-high-speed

Nieuws | de redactie
31 juli 2013 | European researchers will soon have even faster internet at their disposal. The upgrade of GÉANT up to 100GB per second will benefit people at 32000 knowledgecentres. “The data side of the research equation is almost as important as the research itself today”, says EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes.

GÉANT, the superfast pan-European research network that helped discover the Higgs Boson, announced today that it could reach speeds up to 2Tbps (terabits per second) thanks to a major network upgrade. From today, capacity of up to 500Gbps is available across the core network. This means individual users across 32,000 universities, higher education institutes, research institutes, schools, libraries, museums, national archives and hospitals can transfer data at speeds of up to 100Gbps.

“We need high speed and high capacity to keep in the global research race. The data side of the research equation is almost as important as the research itself today. With this upgrade, GÉANT demonstrates it is the leader of the research network pack”, says Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission.

Massive amounts of data

Speeds like this will enable faster collaboration on critical projects and meet the rapidly increasing demand for data transfer capacity. The creation and sharing of research data is increasing exponentially, impacting the ICT infrastructures in particular research networks. Major projects involving global partners generate massive amounts of data that need to be distributed, analyzed, stored and accessed.

With today’s high speeds the GÉANT network will provide the essential capacity to support all scientific disciplines: from high-energy physics and deep space research to those addressing societal challenges like ageing populations, disease diagnosis and climate change. 

The ultra-high-speed network also had some practical implications Mark Johnston, DANTE’s Chief Network Operations Officer explains: “The project to upgrade the GÉANT network involved renewing 50,000km of backbone infrastructure and the replacement of legacy equipment with leading edge transmission and switching technologies, a significant undertaking and long term investment. The new network brings several key benefits: greatly increased capacity, faster provision of service, and even higher levels of resilience.”


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