Internet2: 8.8 Terabits - Now That's Bandwidth!

ANN ARBOR, MI and LINTHICUM, MD – Internet2, the national research and educational network, is upgrading its national backbone network with help from broadband stimulus funding. Through a partnership with network specialist Ciena, Internet2 will increase its network’s bandwidth from approximately 100 Gbps to 8.8 Tbps (terabits per second) to be able to connect more than 200,000 community anchor institutions nationwide as part of the U.S. Unified Community Anchor Network (U.S. UCAN) project. The new network will also support the exponential growth in capacity needs by the research and the higher education community that Internet2 serves today.

U.S. UCAN will connect community anchor institutions - including K-12 schools, libraries, community colleges, health centers, hospitals and public safety organizations - to next-generation applications that use the Internet2 Network. These organizations will be able to serve their constituents with advanced telemedicine, distance learning and other applications that are not currently possible with consumer-grade Internet service.

“This new collaboration with Ciena to create a groundbreaking new national backbone scalable to 88 waves of 100G builds on a long-standing and successful partnership. After several successful field trials with Ciena, we are confident in their field-proven technology, strong product roadmap and focus on optimizing total costs to support a large scale deployment like this,” says Robert Vietzke, executive director of network services at Internet2.

Internet2 will use Ciena’s ActivFlex 6500 Packet-Optical Platform equipped with WaveLogic coherent optical processors for its new network and will leverage its ability to deliver high network capacity while reducing overall operational expenses through automated wavelength provisioning and restoration.