Scientists around the world are increasingly collaborating to address global issues such as clean energy, medicine and protecting the environment. Their ability to share and analyse data is essential for advancing research, and as the size of those datasets grows, the need for high-speed global network connectivity becomes ever more critical.
Collaborating Across the Atlantic
That is why research and education (R&E) networks in Europe and North America have joined forces to find new ways to help facilitate and enable scientific collaboration. Between them, the R&E networks on the two continents have now deployed links providing a total bandwidth of 740 gigabits per second (Gbps).
This record-breaking connectivity and resilience is the work of the Advanced North Atlantic (ANA) Collaboration. Started in 2013, ANA consists of six leading R&E networks: CANARIE (Canada), ESnet (USA), GÉANT (Europe), Internet2 (USA), NORDUnet (European Nordics), and SURFnet (The Netherlands).
“We’ve seen a tremendous growth in transatlantic connectivity since we have set up the first 100 Gbps R&E transatlantic link at TNC 2013,” said Erwin Bleumink, CEO of SURFnet. ”I am very pleased with the success of this international collaboration, in which SURFnet has been involved from the beginning.”
“Collaborations between research and education networks are unique and enable us as a community to address the exponentially growing data needs of science collaborations worldwide,” said Inder Monga, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s ESnet, which deployed four trans-Atlantic links comprising 340 Gbps in December 2014. “The combined capability offered to the research and education community far exceeds what any single organization can provide and moves us many steps forward towards accomplishing our vision of ‘scientific progress being completely unconstrained’.”
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