Learn. Collaborate. Innovate. Without the network, education techniques are limited and discovery is hampered. Research & Education networks—from the campus to national backbones and across the world—carry petabytes of limitless possibilities every minute. Unlimited knowledge is now truly at our fingertips.
R&E networks lead the industry in open, collaborative networking across many geographies and institutions. Often early adopters, they serve as a proving ground for innovative technologies such as terabit and 100G, coherent optical detection, and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) applications.
Keep pace with voracious bandwidth demand—for less than you think
Maximize your existing and future network investment
Support advanced network services that empower global learning and research collaboration with agile service delivery
The R&E network of the future is a dynamic, programmable, agile, and adaptable infrastructure for running applications and connecting places, people, and machines—whether across campus or across the globe.
SDN and Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) are poised to fundamentally change how we consume and manage network resources. Vendor-agnostic multi-vendor, multi-layer, and multi-domain orchestration is available today. The challenge directly in front of most organizations and network operators is assessing where to incorporate SDN and mapping out the evolution. The surge in bandwidth demand shows no sign of slowing. R&E networks need to lay the foundation today that will support future growth and agility.
R&E networks are experiencing a surge in capacity demand as a result of massive growth in the use of streaming media and video applications, growing utilization of cloud-based services, and the continued need to support increasingly large scientific data file transfers for researchers collaborating around the globe.
As in many industries, R&E network users have come to expect access to everything at any time, from any location. R&E network operators must keep pace with new services and bandwidth demand, but many operators are finding that leveraging existing infrastructure can add to an already complex network environment and often proves to be cost-prohibitive.
Today’s R&E networks must evolve to meet the ever-changing demands of research collaboration, the delivery of education, and the voracious bandwidth appetite of students on campus. Because R&E network organizations typically do more with fewer resources, simplifying network design, provisioning, and management are key success factors.
Evolution does not require forklift upgrades. A highly converged infrastructure for R&E networks enables scale and reduces the number of network elements requiring management, space, and power. Programmability will enable better control and orchestration of each component as a holistic network ecosystem.
The Adaptive Network
