GÉANT, Europe’s leading collaboration on e-infrastructure and services for research and education (R&E), and operator of the pan-European R&E network that interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), has deployed the Infinera Cloud Xpress to extend their 100 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) network connectivity into data centers.
Initial connectivity is being provided to Jisc, the UK organization for education and research digital services and solutions, which enables the Janet network, and CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, to deliver connectivity to their data center in Budapest. The addition of the Cloud Xpress allows GÉANT to extend GbE services seamlessly into more European data centers with hyper-scale density, operational simplicity and low power consumption.
http://www.infinera.com/geant-deploys-cloud-xpress-100-gbe-for-data-center-interconnect/
Europe’s GEANT Deploys ONOS
GEANT, the European research network formed last year through the integration of the TERENA and DANTE initiatives, has deployed the Open source SDN Network Operating System (ONOS) on its pan-European testbed network. The ONOS installation allows researchers to define, build, test and rebuild highly scalable, high capacity virtual networks quickly, easily and cost-effectively.
Specifically, GEANT is running a new Inter Cluster ONOS Network Application (ICONA) – developed by CREATE-NET and the University of Rome Tor Vergata/CNIT in collaboration with the ONOS project – to efficiently manage the intercommunication of geographically distributed ONOS clusters and deliver faster controller response time during network events such as failures or congested links.
GEANT’s GTS network is currently comprised of four points of presence (PoPs) located in Amsterdam, Bratislava, Lubiana and Prague, creating a software-defined network entirely based on OpenFlow. Each external entity (e.g. CREATE-NET and University of Rome) connected to the testbed exposes a “legacy” Border Gateway Protocol (BGP ) router that peers directly with the border router placed in the Amsterdam PoP of the GTS network, thus exchanging IP routes with the rest of the global network IP prefixes. This enables the entities connected to communicate together and with the rest of the universities and the research institutions attached to the global network. In fact, the Amsterdam PoP connects GTS directly with Internet2 in the U.S. Through ONOS’ application intent framework, the ONOS clusters are able to provide L2 connectivity between all the “legacy” routers connected at the edge of the network.
