CANARIE rolls out new network

CANARIE is describing it as the most important step forward for advanced networking since the arrival of CAnet 4. The advanced research and networking organization is deploying the cornerstones of a new optical network with almost unlimited potential bandwidth that will soon be serving major science projects and education and training needs throughout the country's busiest networking corridors.

This new network infrastructure will operate in CAnet 4's busiest corridors: Chicago-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal-New York City, and Seattle-Victoria-Vancouver-Kamloops-Calgary.

EXPANSION CONTEMPLATED

Linking these two corridors to each other through Saskatchewan and Manitoba and expanding into Atlantic Canada are challenges that will be addressed with a renewed mandate and funding for CAnet 5, which is currently under discussion with Industry Canada.

The new capacity is being driven by an almost insatiable demand among Canada's science and business communities and their international partners for high-bandwidth, dedicated network connections (called lightpaths), as well as for greater control over the network itself.

CANARIE has already partitioned off some 80 lightpaths on the current CAnet 4, many of which are for permanent connections to distributed high-performance computing sites, remote sensors, experimental facilities and data repositories across the country. Another six research groups are waiting in queue for capacity or facilities to be constructed.

The new network is one of the first in the world to using a new generation of optical equipment based on Reconfigurable Optical Add/Drop Multiplexing (ROADM) technology from Nortel Networks Corp.

With potential to be upgraded to as many as 72, 10 Gbps optical wavelengths (with each wavelength having the further potential to be upgraded to 40 Gbps in the future), the ROADM network has enough core capacity to accommodate all foreseen applications for perhaps as long as another decade. It will also enable next generation Internet architectures by bringing this technology right to the desk top of the user.

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