UK education network successfully trials 100Gbs

JANET, the UK’s National Research and Education Network, has completed a 100Gbs network trial.

The trial was conducted using a 103km section of fibre between London and Reading in April.

The fibre was provided by Verizon Business, which also supplies and operates JANET’s UK backbone network, while Nortel supplied the 100Gbs optical technology and test equipment.

JANET is the network that connects Britain’s education and research organisations, such as schools, universities and research councils, to each other and the rest of the world.

JANET recently completed a big upgrade of its national backbone network to 40Gbs, and has worked with Verizon Business for more than eight years.

Jeremy Sharp, head of strategic technologies at JANET, said in a statement that introducing 40Gbs technology was important in supporting traffic growth over the next few years, but that 100Gbs could be needed in the busiest parts of the network.

He said: “This trial is an important preparatory step towards doing this, and we are pleased to have worked with our industry partners to achieve this.”

According to Nortel, its 40Gbs/100Gbs ‘Adaptive Optical Engine’ technology corrected the signal degradation that occurred due to fibre impairments resulting from the higher speeds.

It should mean that there is no need for ‘expensive’ network engineering, and can use existing in-ground fibre, meaning that new fibres wouldn’t have to be leased.

Roy Zisapel, chief executive of Radware, said this showed that speeds and feeds were getting bigger, together with an increasing demand to connect more users.

He said: “This is basically laying the first level of connectivity - but then you have build upon it.”

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