Janet (UK) has completed a programme to upgrade the Janet core network from 10Gbit/s circuit capacity to 40Gbit/s, making it the largest deployment of 40Gbit/s over an NREN in Europe.
The 40Gbit/s deployment took place in two phases.
Phase One was completed at the end of September 2008 and involved installing four 40Gbit/s circuits at the heart of Janet between the Janet Points of Presence (PoPs) in Reading and London Kings Cross and those at London Canary Wharf Telehouse and Telecity, to which Janet connects for its external connectivity.
Phase Two, now coming to a close, will provide 40Gbit/s upgrades to the circuits from the PoPs at Reading and London to Warrington and Leeds with a direct link from Reading to London, routed via Bristol.
The initial trial, which took place over the last 12 months, was run on the busiest parts of the network from London Canary Wharf to London Kings Cross.
Jeremy Sharp, head of strategic technologies at Janet (UK), said: 'The trial was a great success.
'Technology and network applications are developing at an ever-increasing rate, which, together with the rapid growth of our user base, results in significant challenges for the Janet service.
'It has always been our aim to build a network that is flexible enough to meet future demand and with 40Gbit/s technology we are able to meet these challenges now and for the foreseeable future.' Sharp added: 'While introducing 40Gbit/s technology is an important move that will support traffic growth over the next few years, we're already envisaging the next evolutionary bandwidth step of 100Gbit/s services and are planning an ambitious programme to trial this technology on the backbone during 2009.' The requirement for 40Gbit/s bandwidth was identified in the planning stages of the network upgrade in 2005 based on analysis of traffic growth at the time.
The use of high bandwidth demands have made this requirement a reality with applications such as video, high-speed internet, web services, multimedia content distribution and real-time imaging playing their part in increasing demand for bandwidth over the network.
Janet worked closely with its industry partners Verizon Business, Ciena Corporation, Alcatel-Lucent, Juniper Networks and Nortel Networks to deliver this upgrade.
Verizon Business acted as the overall provider and integrator of the network solution for Janet, leveraging its experience in deploying, certifying, testing and evaluating leading edge 40Gbit/s technology.
On the Janet network Verizon Business deployed 40Gbit/s technology from various providers including Ciena's Corestream Agility Optical Transport System.
As Ciena's platform enables in-service upgrades of granular 40Gbit/s wavelengths alongside 10Gbit/s wavelengths, Janet has the flexibility to upgrade and adapt the network for large bandwidth services as needed.
Additionally, Nortel's OME6500 platform has been used to support 40Gbit/s transmission over Ciena's existing transmission equipment on the same fibre system.
Janet has been able to migrate seamlessly to 40Gbit/s without interruption to the network or the need to build a separate, standalone network.
Under an existing agreement with Janet (UK) to deliver the Janet network, Alcatel-Lucent has provided network implementation and support services for the IP infrastructure and Juniper Networks has provided the core routing gear where the network was migrated from the T640 to T1600 to facilitate the bandwidth growth and enhance the 40Gbit/s interface density of the platform.
