DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /    ( Table of Contents )

Breaking News - Networking:

ADVA Announces Polish Supercomputing Center As Customer

ADVA Optical Networking, a leading global provider of optical networking solutions, and CNT, one of the world's largest providers of comprehensive storage networking solutions, products and services, announced that ADVA's Fiber Service Platform (FSP) 3000 Slimline is delivering 10Gb/s of end-to-end bandwidth across the 2,600 kilometer-and-growing Polish Optical Internet initiative, called "PIONIER."

The Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center (PSNC) -– one of PIONIER's research and development centers for next-generation networks, Grids and portals –- deployed ADVA's FSP 3000 Slimline in combination with Extreme Networks' Black Diamond switches. ADVA partner CNT managed sales and logistics for the ADVA solution. The equipment has been integrated into the PIONIER network by ALMA, a local systems integration company.

Prior to deployment of ADVA's 10Gb/s optical networking solution, Polish researchers were restricted by the bandwidth limitations of 622Mbit/s Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) leased-line connections. PIONIER became fully operational in 2003 with an initial network deployment of 2,600 kilometers. Thanks to the self-built and managed national fiber infrastructure, PIONIER is today the largest scientific network of this power ever deployed by a European country. It is scheduled to reach a total 5,500 kilometers by the end of 2004 when the final five of 21 academic metropolitan area networks (MANs) are interconnected.

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Polish scientific and academic research is being transformed by PIONIER's tremendous capabilities. The PIONIER network now supports astronomy and physics applications requiring extraordinary levels of bandwidth. Polish scientists are, for the first time, exploring the possibilities of state-of-the-art applications such as GRIDS, distributed storage and computation, optical virtual private networks (VPNs), virtual laboratories, distance learning, collaborative work groups, multimedia streaming, remote visualization and networked knowledge bases.

"PIONIER is not just a network; it's a complete development program," said Maciej Stroiski, technical director at PSNC. "The long-term purpose of PIONIER is, simply, to facilitate the ongoing development of the information society in Poland. ADVA and its technology together with its business partners, CNT and ALMA, have given us the robust, flexible network architecture to enable this vision."

To achieve PSNC's ambitious price points fixed by government funding allocations, ADVA streamlined the FSP 3000 Slimline to meet the project's single-wavelength requirement of today. Fifty-one ADVA FSP 3000 Slimline systems have been deployed to-date. And yet, via Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology, the FSP 3000 Slimline supports native-speed performance and satisfies PIONIER's requirement for long-term scalability and flexibility. As PIONIER's application needs evolve, new services can be introduced simply and rapidly with a few mouse clicks at the FSP Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) interface.

"Other vendors which offered the networking power that PIONIER required failed to meet our price point; and other vendors which approached the price point that PIONIER required failed to deliver the power of the FSP 3000 Slimline," said Jürgen Hansjosten, chief sales officer at ADVA Optical Networking. "Our unique understanding, experience, and position in the optical networking space –- plus an uncommon flexibility and willingness to meet a customer's specific needs –- gave us the opportunity to be part of this exciting and challenging project."