JANET CHOOSES CIENA TO FORM BACKBONE OF UK’S NEW RESEARCH AND EDUCATION NETWORK

What Our Customers National Research and Education Network Are Saying (NREN) Janet connects the UK’s research “As well as providing super-high-speed connectivity and education communities. With traffic for universities, colleges and schools and supporting the on its network doubling every 18 months, latest learning applications, our new Ciena infrastructure the organization decided to build a new, will comfortably meet the needs of researchers engaged UK-wide fiber optic network infrastructure in data-intensive work.” called Janet6. Jeremy Sharp Head of Strategic Technologies Janet Janet6 will be based on Ciena’s next-generation 6500 family of packet-optical transmission equipment. This will provide 100G connectivity and the ability to provision new wavelengths for customers on demand between any two points on the network.

The Ciena infrastructure will help Janet meet the spiraling bandwidth needs of the UK research and education community for the next ten years. Working in close partnership with Ciena, Janet is building a clear roadmap to 200G, 400G, and terabyte networking in the future, ensuring that the UK remains a world leader in both scientific research and networking innovation.

Challenges To provide the best educational experience, schools and universities across the UK are harnessing next-generation technologies such as interactive whiteboards and video conferencing, and providing high-speed broadband access for staff and students. At the same time, researchers in data-intensive fields such as particle physics, astronomy, and bio-informatics need access to super-computing resources and high-speed networks to collect, store, and share data globally and push the boundaries of current scientific understanding.

C Case Study To meet the networking needs of the UK’s research and education communities, Summary Janet, the UK’s NREN, operates a powerful, nationwide network infrastructure. Known Challenges as SuperJANET5, this network connects UK universities, further education colleges, > Deliver virtually unlimited research councils, specialist colleges, and adult and community learning providers, bandwidth for the UK’s research and supports a national schools’ network managed by the UK Government’s and education communities Department for Education. The network provides connectivity for more than > Transition from a managed 18 million end-users across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. service to a wholly-owned network infrastructure New, high-bandwidth broadband services and increasingly data-intensive research were putting increasing pressure on SuperJANET5. With traffic doubling on the network > Manage the network and provision services from the every 18 months, the existing infrastructure and service delivery model were limiting Janet NOC scalability and driving up costs. Solution Jeremy Sharp, head of Strategic Technologies at Janet, says, “SuperJANET5 is delivered > Janet6, a 5,700 kilometer fiber by a third party as a fully managed service and this arrangement has served us well. network spanning England, However, if we were to use the same delivery model going forward based on how Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland requirements have evolved since the start of SuperJANET5, there would be a negative impact on our ability to scale up services to meet customers’ growing bandwidth needs. > Ciena 6500 Packet-Optical This is because we are tied to a pre-defined bandwidth growth profile for the period Platform equipment for the transmission layer, deployed of a contract, and anything different would inevitably require protracted negotiations at 70 points of presence with the service provider. What’s more, the managed service would make it difficult to > Multiple Ciena 100G control costs as we continue to scale up network capacity.” wavelengths between key points on the network To increase agility and scalability while controlling costs, Janet decided to build Janet6, a new, wholly-owned, UK-wide network infrastructure. Funded by the UK Government’s > ROADM technology for Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) and the higher and further education real-time provisioning of wavelengths between any funding councils, this infrastructure is due to replace the current SuperJANET5 two points on the network backbone in October 2013. > End-to-end network “Janet6 must provide virtually unlimited scalability for the research and education management and service provisioning via the Janet NOC community, meeting spiraling bandwidth needs for at least the next decade,” says Sharp. “To make this vision a reality, we needed to build the new network on Benefits technologies that support super-fast, cost-effective services, with the option to scale > Virtually unlimited bandwidth available bandwidth on demand.” to support the needs of the research and education communities for the next Solution decade

Janet went to market for a new fiber network infrastructure to connect the research > Ability to scale bandwidth for and education community across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. customers on demand After a competitive tender process, Janet procured 5,700 kilometers of dark fiber > Direct network ownership and from SSE Telecom. management reduce costs

“We were looking for a single partner that could deliver fiber links between all major > Ciena’s lean OPn architecture locations, institutions, and regional networks currently served by SuperJANET5,” says and coherent wavelength technology reduce hardware Sharp. “SSE has extensive fiber assets across the UK and could deliver the vast majority footprint and costs of connections we needed directly,” he adds. “They also offer excellent value for stakeholders, and were able to meet our stringent service level requirements.” > Constant availability for critical, customer-facing services In parallel with its successful fiber procurement, Janet began a competitive public > Strategic relationship with sector procurement process based on “Competitive Dialogue” for optical transmission Ciena provides a clear roadmap equipment to light up the new fiber infrastructure. “We published our broad to 200G, 400G, and terabyte connectivity requirements and solicited proposed network designs from all the major network providers,” says Sharp. “We looked at the bidders’ track records, financial stability, and technical propositions and created a shortlist of just six potential partners.”

2 Using the stage-one responses to hone its technical wish list, to ensure our infrastructure is constantly available and Janet requested final tenders and ultimately chose Ciena to performing well,” says Sharp. provide the transmission layer of Janet6. “Ciena provided the closest match for our technical requirements at an extremely Benefits competitive price-point,” says Sharp. “We’re very happy and Janet6 will provide the enormous bandwidth required to comfortable with the decision to build Janet6 on next- support the needs of the UK research and education generation Ciena technology.” community for the next ten years.

Janet6 will be built on transmission equipment from Ciena’s “As well as providing super-high-speed connectivity for 6500 family, deployed at 70 Points Of Presence (POPs) across universities, colleges, and schools and supporting the latest the UK. Based on Ciena’s lean OPn architecture design, the learning applications, our new Ciena infrastructure will network will offer a uniquely light hardware footprint, helping comfortably meet the needs of researchers engaged in reduce hardware and management costs. “Ciena equipment data-intensive work,” says Sharp. “UK researchers will be able will power both our amplifier POPs, where we have long to access and process information from some of the world’s wavelengths, and our transmission POPs, where we just need most important experiments in real time, from the CERN to add and drop wavelengths,” says Sharp. “The elegant particle accelerator to the global network of radio telescopes network design will give us the perfect blend of scalability that contribute to Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry projects. and efficiency.” In the future, the UK will also be able to work with data from The Ciena 6500 infrastructure will enable Janet to scale its the new square kilometer telescope array being built in South network seamlessly and respond faster to customers’ changing Africa and New Zealand, which will generate vast volumes of bandwidth needs. Sharp says, “Ciena’s ROADM technology, new data about the cosmos.” which is a key feature of the 6500, enables us to provision With Janet6, Janet can scale up available bandwidth for wavelengths between any two points on the network, with no customers extremely quickly as their needs change. “Before, need to deploy new chains of transponders, virtually with the we had to raise an upgrade request with our managed service click of a mouse. As a result, we can quickly meet customers’ provider and they had to negotiate costs with their own changing bandwidth requirements, with no additional suppliers, causing frustrating delays for customers,” says hardware investments and no negotiations with external Sharp. “Now, with Ciena ROADM technology and direct service providers.” network management from the Janet NOC, we can provide Janet took ownership of the fiber and POP infrastructure for additional bandwidth for customers on demand, in near-real Janet6 in March 2013. To ensure the transmission layer was time, with minimal administrative work.” deployed on time, Ciena pre-staged equipment at its lab This flexibility will increase customer satisfaction and help in Newport. “Ciena racked all our equipment for us and Janet accommodate the high-bandwidth applications and configured it for issue-free installation in our POPs,” says services of the future. “We’re now a lot more agile in terms Sharp. “We hope to have all our Ciena infrastructure installed of the services we can deliver over the network,” says Sharp. and configured for the circuits we need by the end of April “Whatever new services come online in the future, we’ll be 2013. By June the network will be fully operational, well in able to integrate them on Janet6 quickly, and at low cost.” advance of the switch-off date for SuperJANET5 in October.” With Ciena and direct network management, Janet is lowering When Janet6 goes live, it will be managed in-house from the overall networking costs for the benefit of its customers. “Our Janet Network Operations Center (NOC). Ciena is currently direct relationship with Ciena means there’s no middleman for training the Janet NOC team to manage the network, and a equipment procurement or deployment,” says Sharp. “As a Ciena engineer will work on site at the NOC for nine months result, we can minimize the “per-bit” cost of service delivery to ensure all management and wavelength provisioning on the network, which is great news both for us and our activities run smoothly. customers.”

Janet has signed a five-year maintenance and support contract Lean network design is also contributing to significant cost with Ciena to ensure any technical issues are addressed quickly savings. “With Ciena’s coherent wavelength technology, we and efficiently before they negatively impact service for need fewer amplifiers across the network, reducing equipment customers. “Ciena will continue to deliver on-site engineering and management costs significantly,” says Sharp. support when required, as well as a managed spares service

3 Reliability is a critical consideration for Janet and its customers, and Ciena equipment About the Client is helping the organization achieve near-100 percent uptime for key services. “We’ve Janet operates the UK’s National always been impressed by the availability and performance of Ciena equipment and the Research and Education Network software that powers it,” says Sharp. “With Ciena, we can provide the uninterrupted, (NREN). This infrastructure high-speed services our customers need.” is dedicated to the needs of research and education in the Ciena has built a close working relationship with Janet that goes far beyond traditional UK. It connects the UK’s research supplier or vendor agreements. Janet engineering teams have access to early product and education institutions to releases and development roadmaps, which means they can feed into the process and each other, as well as to the rest help shape future Ciena products. of the world, through links to the global . In addition, Janet “It’s extremely important for us to be an early adopter and take advantage of the latest, includes a separate network that most powerful networking technologies,” says Sharp. “We were one of the first to have is available to the community for 40G and 100G technology in our network, and we will have multiple 100G connections experimental activities in network development. on Janet6. Working in close partnership with Ciena, we want to be a pioneer for 200G and 400G optical transport, and we are even looking forward to a time when we have The Janet network connects UK Ciena-powered terabyte connections in our network.” universities, further education colleges, research councils, This close working partnership is also delivering major benefits for Ciena. “We have specialist colleges, and adult and certain areas of our network where we can test the latest technologies without community learning providers. impacting live services,” says Sharp. “Ciena is taking full advantage of this to test its It also provides connections latest releases in production, helping us move towards terabyte networking together.” between the Regional Broadband Consortia to facilitate the Department for Education’s

Ciena may from time to time make changes to the products or specifications contained herein without notice. Copyright © 2013 Ciena® Corporation. initiative for a national schools’ All rights reserved. CS065 4.2013 network. Over 18 million end-users are currently served by the Janet network.

The range of activities facilitated by Janet allows individuals and institutions to push back the traditional boundaries of teaching, learning, and research methods. For example, Janet’s videoconferencing and video streaming capabilities are being used to deliver lectures to remote groups of students. For researchers, the high capacity of the Janet backbone allows the linking of large data storage and high-performance computing facilities at a national and international level.

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