Education network begins trials of 40Gbit/s bandwidth

Increase is required to meet rising traffic

Education organisations will have greater bandwidth

Janet is to become the first network for education and research organisations in Europe to deliver 40Gbit/s of bandwidth on a single channel.

The network has the ability to scale up according to traffic demand and has started trials of 40Gbit/s bandwidth because traffic on individual links is growing beyond the existing 10Gbit/s available.

The increase in bandwidth is more cost effective and less complex than adding additional 10G/bit/s links because traffic is aggregated over single larger channels.

‘The increased capacity means that we are able to adapt to increased levels of traffic, while continuing to offer a high quality service to the education and research sectors,’ said Jeremy Sharp, head of strategic technology, Janet UK.

The trial of 40Gbit/s bandwidth is being run by Verizon Business and Ciena at the transmission level and Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper Networks at the IP level.

The trials are taking place on one of the busiest parts of the network, connecting Canary Wharf and Kings Cross. If successful, the 40Gbit/s channels will be widely deployed across the Janet backbone next year.