Canarie Optical Network Solution From Nortel Opens New Innovations Opportunities

OTTAWA - CANARIE, Canada’s advanced Research and Education network, has deployed a new optical network from Nortel* [NYSE/TSX: NT] to provide scientists and researchers with enough bandwidth to deliver the network capacity required for major science and research projects as well as education and training.

Nortel’s Metro Ethernet optical solution has more than quadrupled CANARIE’s previous network capacity. This allows more information sharing and provides additional bandwidth for multimedia, detailed simulation and modeling, and other compute-intensive applications.

“Today’s researchers are heavily dependent on collaboration and access to high-bandwidth data which require very high speed, high capacity and reliable networks,” said Andrew Bjerring, president and CEO, CANARIE. “Nortel has been instrumental in providing the technology and the expertise that enable CANARIE’s ability to provide one of the world’s highest performance, largest capacity, and most sophisticated networks for research and education”

“CANARIE has taken a highly aggressive approach to ensuring that Canada remains a center of excellence for industries that require an ultra high-performance, research and education network,” said Philippe Morin, president, Metro Ethernet Networks, Nortel. “The CANARIE network is a prime example of the tremendous potential the future holds for research and education initiatives. Continued expansion of networks carrying everything from multimedia and video conferencing to data will be instrumental in answering the world’s most challenging scientific research questions.”

CANARIE’s advanced optical network forms a national backbone that is helping address increased bandwidth demand from scientists, researchers and universities. CANARIE is also an important international network that provides the highest possible connectivity and collaboration between Canadian and international research organizations. Similar to gains made with deployment of CAnet 4, in which provincial networks and universities, schools, research facilities, government entities and international partners were connected via an optical network, CANARIE expects this latest network upgrade to provide Canada with significant competitive advantage in innovation. It is planned to help in attracting and retaining investment and talent from regional research network operators, government laboratories and researchers requiring pooled resources for compute-intensive and high-performance applications.

The CANARIE network in British Columbia and Alberta, and in Ontario and Québec has been enhanced with reconfigurable optical add/drop multiplexing (ROADM) technology from Nortel. This provides CANARIE and the affiliated provincial networks with operational simplicity and network agility for easy addition of new services, resulting in a more cost-effective, reliable infrastructure. CANARIE also deployed Nortel’s unique electronic Dynamically Compensating Optics (eDCO) which simplifies networking by extending wavelengths over 2,000 km without requiring dispersion compensation modules or their associated amplifiers.
With capacity of up to 72 optical wavelengths operating at 10 Gbps at its core and future enhancements to 40 Gbps/wavelength, the CANARIE network will give Canadian scientists and researchers the most advanced tools possible. It is based on Nortel’s Common Photonic Layer (CPL), a key building block in migrating to more agile, adaptive, all optical intelligent networking. The network also includes Nortel Optical Multiservice Edge 6500, an optical convergence platform that efficiently manages and transports converged TDM, data and wavelength services.