A £29m, next-generation network to support education and research launches today, to deliver greater reliability, resilience and cost-effectiveness.

Traffic on Janet, the UK’s academic network, doubles almost every nine months, and the new fibre backbone, known as SuperJanet5, will increase capacity.

The UK Education and Research Networking Association (Ukerna), which manages the network for higher-education IT body the Joint Information Systems Committee, says the research community will benefit most from the ability to exchange high levels of data.

Chief technology officer Bob Day says Janet has supported the academic community for 20 years, but that a new network is needed to improve its reliability, resilience and scalability.

‘We already have a high-capacity network, but not the ability to scale bandwidth up and down when needed,’ Day told Computing. ‘To do this, we would have to buy bandwidth in the marketplace, which can be expensive.

‘We have invested in a fibre backbone, which enables us to provide the level of bandwidth required by researchers quickly and cost-effectively,’ he said.

Vendor Verizon Business is providing the network, which will increase in capacity from 10Gbit/s to 200Gbit/s. It will provide the fibre infrastructure to 19 regional networks across the UK, supporting up to 18 million users.

Day says SuperJanet5 will manage increasing data requirements from individuals and research teams exchanging data.

Students and staff are also increasingly making use of multimedia content in learning and teaching, with streaming adding to bandwidth use.

Gartner research director Jan-Martin Lowendahl says upgrading to a fibre backbone gives Ukerna greater control of point-to-point data transfers.

‘There is an increasing burden on the academic network because researchers a re transferring massive amounts of data as part of their projects,’ he said. ‘If they were to use a common network, it could take up all available bandwidth.

‘But Ukerna needs bandwidth for everyday activities, such as email, at academic institutions.’

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