ACADEMIA

LEARN will eventually connect 14 cities, 25 colleges and universities: ADVA Optical Networking today announced that the Lonestar Education and Research Network (LEARN) has deployed the ADVA Fiber Service Platform (FSP) 3000RE as part of its ongoing expansion to 14 cities and 25 colleges and universities across Texas. LEARN, a non-profit collaboration of the institutions linked by the network, has deployed an architecture that supports advanced network services for research, education, healthcare and economic development. The protocol-agnostic ADVA FSP 3000RE supports 1- and 10Gbit/s applications across LEARN’s entire network, including spans approaching 400km distances. The Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) features of the FSP 3000RE enable the transport of multiple channels of data, voice, video or storage application traffic along the same optical-fiber path. The scalability enables LEARN to support emerging bandwidth and application requirements, without physical expansion of its fiber network. “The ADVA Optical Networking solution enables us to expand LEARN’s benefits quickly and cost-effectively to more parts of Texas,” said Jim Williams, executive director of LEARN. “LEARN provides Texas with access to other important research-and-education networks such as Internet2 and National LambdaRail, shoulders several state-wide educational intranets and will support service deployment for telemedicine.” “The No. 1 driver in our decision to go with the ADVA Optical Networking solution is the fact that it lowered our OPEX (operational expenditures) considerably. Given the geographic expanse covered by LEARN, we simply cannot afford for network components to demand a high number of truck rolls or manual intervention,” said Akbar Kara, LEARN’s chief technologist. “Plus, the FSP 3000 family has a terrific reputation in the research-and-education world for its advanced network features including GMPLS (Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching) control plane and multi-degree ROADM (reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexing) functionality. These features will eventually allow us to turn up or turn down wavelengths – on demand - and quickly connect with partners domestically or around the globe for collaborative research projects.” “We are excited that LEARN has partnered with us to scale its service offering and network infrastructure,” said Brian P. McCann, chief marketing and strategy officer with ADVA Optical Networking. “Research-and-education entities like LEARN are pioneering deployment of innovative optical-networking capabilities to support demanding applications such as statewide intranets and grid computing.” The ADVA Optical Networking FSP 3000RE is a scalable, dynamic optical transport platform that provides a multitude of service interfaces for central offices, customer premises, co-location and carrier hotel applications. Using Raman amplification, the FSP 3000RE can also support regional networks, where reach requirements can be up to 2,000km. The FSP 3000RE provides a versatile, cost-effective and compact platform for access, metro and regional applications ranging in speed from 100Mbit/s to 40Gbit/s. Customer premises and small office services can be equipped with minimal startup costs in ring and linear topologies. Wavelengths can be selectively configured at any node, with ROADM or with fixed OADM filters, delivering an assortment of transparent, protocol-independent or aggregated services.