SCIENCE

ADVA Optical Networking has announced that LightNet has deployed the ADVA FSP 3000 to enable the launch of a powerful, flexible and reliable telecommunications infrastructure that delivers its users unprecedented collaboration, medical and scientific capabilities. ADVA Optical Networking's carrier-class, 40Gbit/s Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) provides high-speed connectivity and dynamic bandwidth allocation within and among LightNet's diverse roster of 10 member institutions, as well as to Italy's and neighboring countries' national research and education networks (NRENs) and the commercial Internet.

"State-of-the-art services, robust performance, the ability to transport different types of traffic and significant savings were our objectives. The ADVA FSP 3000 has allowed us to achieve them," said Prof. Fernando Liello, director of the LightNet project. "We also needed to provide individual institutions their own fiber pairs to enable separate and full performance across the network. We got the features that we required, as well as the flexibility to add new services for our member institutions. ADVA Optical Networking has been a strong partner to us in delivering this advanced infrastructure project."

LightNet sought DWDM functionality that would deliver reliablility and high performance end-to-end across the network. After an evaluation of about 20 vendors and a public tender addressing both technical and business requirements, LightNet selected ADVA Optical Networking and its partner, Telecom Italia SpA.

LightNet deployed the ADVA FSP 3000 to enable a topology of interconnected, redundant fiber rings spanning 320 kilometers. LightNet typically supports services with speeds up to 4Gbit/s. But thanks to ADVA Optical Networking's innovative Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexer (ROADM) capability, users can now dynamically configure LightNet for services up to 40Gbit/s as they require. Bandwidth can be flexibly booked and utilized for a given period between any two points on the network for real-time resource sharing.

More than 40,000 users are encompassed across LightNet's project partners, including the Conservatory of Music Giuseppe Tartini; the AREA Science & Technology Park; the Consortium GARR (Italian NREN); the International Centre for Theoretical Physics - ICTP; the National Institute of Astrophysics - INAF; the Institute of Marine Sciences - ISMAR/CNR; the National Institute of Oceonography and Experimental Geophysics - OGS; the Sincrotrone Trieste SCpA; the International School for Advanced Studies - SISSA; and the University of Trieste. LightNet delivers users bandwidth speeds that are at least 200 times faster than commercially available Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) access, enabling revolutionary applications such as high-definition broadcasts of surgical operations, telemedicine procedures, precise and remote control of microscopes and other scientific instruments and high-speed downloads of entire libraries of data.

"Multi-site computation and data mining, virtual laboratories, digital libraries, distributed learning and telemedicine are just some of the critical applications enabled by our optical-networking solutions in research-and-education networks around the globe," said Stephan Rettenberger, vice president of marketing with ADVA Optical Networking. "This first generation of LightNet is already transforming the scope and capabilities of the Italian research-and-education community, and our FSP 3000 provides a flexible, scalable foundation for ongoing growth in both its number of network users and the innovative ways that LightNet is employed."