The Southern part of the NORDUnet network, going to Geneva, has seen a massive upgrade. Connectivity to CERN is now up from 20G to 100G. NORDUnet is collaborating with its long time partners PSNC in Poland and SURFnet in the Netherlands to create a ring from Hamburg via Frankfurt to Geneva, and from Geneva via Amsterdam back to Hamburg. Hamburg connects to Copenhagen, and Amsterdam connects to London.
– We are using the Alien Wave technology to make this happen, says Lars Lange Bjørn, Manager, Network Planning and Engineering.
– The setup uses the newest Juniper’s coherent 100G cards, called Cordoba. When we helped build Sunet’s new nationwide network in the beginning of 2016, Sunet was the first real customer trying out this new card that enables IP over DWDM, meaning you can cut out the need for transponders in a network.
– The reason for the upgrade is primarily that more data is coming out from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Likewise, the data we’re moving in and out of Frankfurt is increasing as well, so the time was right for an upgrade. With our experience from using Alien Wave in the new Sunet network we felt confident we could do something similar with our partners in Poland and the Netherlands.
The NORDUnet Southern Core upgrade will be implemented during the month of October.
