UEN PROVIDES BANDWIDTH ON DEMAND FOR THE RESEARCH COMMUNITY What Our Customers Working with the University of Utah, the Are Saying Utah Education Network has connected the “We were able to start deploying 100G wavelengths alongside our research community with a super-fast, 100G existing 10G wavelengths right transport infrastructure built on Ciena’s 6500 away, giving us a tenfold uplift in available bandwidth capacity for the Packet-Optical Platform. local research community.” The Utah Education Network (UEN) connects all universities, school districts, schools, “It costs the same to buy and turn libraries, and anchor institutions across the state. To meet the needs of super users at up a wavelength on the Ciena the University of Utah and other research institutions, the organization needed to infrastructure as it costs to lease an upgrade its existing 10G network infrastructure. equivalent service from a third-party provider for one year. After that, we Working with the University of Utah and Ciena, with local project support from Ciena only have maintenance costs to partner CenturyLink, UEN deployed new 100G wavelengths to connect the university’s think about, which means we high-performance computing center with its new data center in downtown Salt Lake achieve major ongoing savings.” City. A third 100G connection links the university to the U.S. national research and education network, Internet2. Kevin Quire Manager of Network Engineering The new metro optical network, which is built on Ciena’s 6500, provides virtually Utah Education Network unlimited, on-demand bandwidth for the research community. It will support the diverse research portfolio of researchers and students across Utah for many years to come, offering robust scientific computing and visualization capabilities in the areas of biomedicine, genomics, geophysics, combustion, molecular dynamics, fluid dynamics, and climate modeling. Challenges To access and share data from major scientific experiments, researchers need access to high-performance computing clusters and super-fast networks. This is the case in the state of Utah, where scientists’ networking needs are met by the UEN. C Case Study Connecting all universities, school districts, schools, libraries, and anchor institutions across Summary the state, the UEN has invested heavily in its infrastructure in recent years. However, the Challenges organization’s existing 10G wavelengths were no longer able to meet the needs of > Meeting researchers’ rapidly superusers at the University of Utah and other research institutions across the state. Kevin growing bandwidth demands Quire, manager of network engineering at UEN, says, “With local researchers collaborating on data-intensive experiments, we were reaching capacity on several of our existing 10G circuits.” > Limited capacity on existing 10G circuits To keep pace with the needs of Utah researchers, UEN had to increase transport speeds > High costs for leased circuits to 100G between the University of Utah’s high-performance computing center, the university’s new data center in downtown Salt Lake City, and the Point of Presence (PoP) for the U.S. national research and education network, Internet2. “No carrier locally is Solution capable of providing 100G wavelengths, so our only option was to build out our own > A dark fiber infrastructure dark fiber infrastructure and 100G DWDM infrastructure,” says Quire. powered by Ciena’s 6500 UEN went to market for an optical transport solution that could support the 100G > 100G wavelengths connect the networking needs of the University of Utah and other higher education institutes across University of Utah and Internet2 the state. “We wanted a solution that was easy to deploy and manage, with tools for > 10G wavelengths connect other turning up 100G services quickly and cost-effectively,” says Quire. “We were also universities across the state looking for a platform that could provide seamless support and simple management for > End-to-end network all our services, from 10G and 100G Ethernet to Fibre Channel.” deployment and support from Ciena Solution After shortlisting transport solutions from major suppliers, UEN and the University of Benefits Utah chose to build the new 100G infrastructure on Ciena’s 6500. > Virtually unlimited bandwidth Steve Corbató, deputy CIO at the University of Utah, says, “We selected Ciena as our on demand for the Utah research community infrastructure provider for two reasons. First, Ciena is an experienced technology provider to the research and education community that focuses on understanding our > Scalability to meet future complex networking needs. Second, its industry-leading, coherent optical solutions bandwidth needs provide a high-capacity, resilient, and scalable optical backbone to support research > Fast, simple wavelength carried out by our students and faculty.” provisioning To ensure success, Ciena supported every stage of UEN’s network rollout. “Ciena > Efficient, unified network management engineers characterized our fiber for us, set up all the gear we needed, and turned up and tested the network,” says Quire. “We were able to start deploying 100G > Enhanced troubleshooting wavelengths alongside our existing 10G wavelengths right away, giving us a tenfold and support uplift in available bandwidth capacity for the local research community.” > Cost savings compared to leased wavelengths As well as the services provided directly by Ciena, UEN benefited from local project support from Ciena’s partner, CenturyLink, which also provides managed services that extend the reach of UEN’s network beyond the scope of its fiber assets. “CenturyLink stepped in to help us scope the infrastructure requirements for our new Ciena infrastructure,” says Quire. “We were also able to procure all the Ciena equipment we needed through CenturyLink quickly and easily, which simplified the process and helped us meet our challenging project schedule.” In total, UEN has deployed 52 wavelengths on the new Ciena infrastructure, including three 100G links, 43 10G Ethernet wavelengths, and six Fibre Channel links. Two of the 100G connections run from the University of Utah Center for High Performance Computing to its new data center in downtown Salt Lake City in a fully redundant configuration. The third 100G link connects the University of Utah campus to the local Internet2 PoP, providing super-fast connectivity to universities and research institutions across the U.S. and internationally. 2 In addition to the new 100G links, UEN is deploying additional issues, and we can refer any issues we can’t fix ourselves to 10G wavelengths on the Ciena infrastructure to provide Ciena Services.” additional bandwidth capacity for researchers at Brigham Ciena’s unified management tools have helped UEN achieve Young University in Provo and Utah State University in Logan. significant reductions in management workloads and costs. “We use the Ciena’s management suite to provision and Benefits proactively monitor all wavelengths on the network, whether The new Ciena-powered metro optical network will support the they are 10G Ethernet, 100G Ethernet, or Fibre Channel diverse research portfolio of researchers and students across links,” says Quire. “With a single set of management tools, Utah, providing virtually unlimited bandwidth on demand. The we are saving time and focusing on projects that directly infrastructure will support future scientific discoveries by providing benefit our customers.” robust scientific computing and visualization capabilities in the areas of biomedicine, genomics, geophysics, combustion, Finally, UEN is achieving significant cost savings across its molecular dynamics, fluid dynamics, and climate modeling. network operations with Ciena. “It costs the same to buy and turn up a wavelength on the Ciena infrastructure as it costs to The Ciena 100G infrastructure will also help local researchers lease an equivalent service from a third-party provider for one contribute to major national and international networking year,” says Quire. “After that initial 12-month period, we only experiments. “Researchers at the University of Utah are have maintenance costs to think about, which means we collaborating on networking initiatives such as the Internet2 achieve major ongoing savings with Ciena.” Advanced Layer 2 Services, the GENI network research project, and others,” says Quire. “With our Ciena-powered 100G Based on the success of the 100G deployment, UEN’s infrastructure, they can transfer large datasets between partnership with Ciena is going from strength to strength. universities, or from campus to the Internet2 facility, in fractions “As well as offering us an industry-leading, proven 100G of a second.” solution, Ciena has been great to work with,” says Quire. “The Ciena team did an excellent job of designing and Additional 100G wavelengths can be deployed with no need to deploying the network, and the account team keeps us up to replace equipment chassis, extending UEN’s return on its date on latest products and services to help us plan future Ciena investments. “When our existing 10G wavelengths reach network evolution.” 70 percent of their capacity, we will be able to upgrade them to 100G on our existing Ciena infrastructure quickly, simply, and The success of the project will have a profound impact on at low cost,” says Quire. education in Utah for many years to come. Ray Timothy, executive director and CEO of Utah Education Network, says, With simple tools for turning up new wavelengths