Juniper Networks today announced that BCNET, a not-for-profit organization federally incorporated in Canada to support and promote advanced networks for British Columbia’s research and higher education communities, has deployed Juniper’s MX480 Ethernet Services Routers to provide its clients with 10Gbps access to the research networks that drive innovation and discovery among British Columbia’s academic and research institutions.

BCNET recently sought to upgrade its networking infrastructure to meet expanding user demand. Because of the large volume of data transmitted between various universities and research centers across the province, BCNET needed to migrate its 1Gbps Ethernet routed network to a higher capacity 10Gbps architecture.

This provides faster and more reliable network connections to BCNET’s research and higher education members, providing them better performance and more secure access to the CANARIE Network, Canada’s advanced network organization. Through Juniper’s high performance networking technology, BCNET is now connecting the province’s academic institutions reliably and consistently.

By deploying Juniper Networks MX480s, BCNET has not only addressed increased bandwidth requirements, but is also reducing ongoing energy and operational costs. Juniper’s scalable solutions can be easily deployed across any network configuration, while its Ethernet routing provides the necessary compatibility, seamless integration and flexibility needed by BCNET to work with customers that have unique network specifications and customization requirements. Juniper’s MX480s have also allowed BCNET to reduce the total amount of hardware deployed in their network environment at each of its transit exchanges across the network. This, in turn, has helped the organization to reduce energy costs and environmental impact.

“Juniper has become one of BCNET’s trusted partners and one of our most reliable vendors since we began working with them with the installation of the M10i Multiservice Edge Routers,” said Marilyn Hay, manager of network engineering, BCNET. “Juniper’s JUNOS Software provides an open, highly scalable operating system regardless of hardware or software. Our engineers find JUNOS to be a consistent and easy-to-understand OS, well suited to support the migration of our existing logical router constructs onto the new MX480 platform while preserving our existing infrastructure. Juniper has proven to be a best-in-class partner, providing us with the technology and support we need at the price point and value we demand.”

In a recent commissioned study of ten customer sites using JUNOS and Juniper routers and switches, Forrester Consulting found that users could achieve a 41% reduction in overall network operations costs based on dollar savings across specific task categories: planned events, reduction in frequency and duration of unplanned network events, the sum of planned and unplanned events, the time needed to resolve unplanned network events and the "adding infrastructure" task.¹

One of the greatest challenges BCNET faced was related to its transit exchange. With the compounded growth in network traffic between institutions, an increase in core capacity and link bandwidth was required. Juniper’s MX480 routers have helped BCNET migrate to multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) on the core to consolidate existing services and provide new services. This allows BCNET to deploy advanced MPLS related features such as Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPNs, virtual routing and virtual private LAN service (VPLS) to support their customers’ needs for connectivity, application support, quality of service, and security while minimizing the complexity of supporting a rapidly growing network.

“BCNET serves academic research and higher education customers that generate large volumes of data transfers over its network, and requires the bandwidth and infrastructure to support this traffic,” said Tim Lambie, vice president, Americas International, Canada, Caribbean and Latin America, Juniper Networks. “By working with BCNET management, we were able to offer a very specific solution that provides BCNET with the flexibility and customization it needs to respond effectively to its clients’ current mandates and positions it for future growth.”

Currently, BCNET is serving six core members: University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, University of Victoria, University of Northern British Columbia, Thompson Rivers University, and British Columbia Institute of Technology. In addition, BCNET connects over 30 research organizations to its Optical Regional Advanced Network (ORAN).