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SUCCESS STORY University of Victoria
Technology Category
- Networks & Connectivity - Network Management & Analysis Software
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
The University of Victoria (UVic) is a globally recognized, research-intensive university offering innovative programs for more than 20,000 students. UVic research teams connect to colleagues, cutting-edge projects, and powerful resources around the world through a number of networks. Many research departments at UVic require access to CANARIE, including the particle physics group. UVic’s particle physicists collaborate over the network with the international research community enabled by the HEPnet organization. Until recently, downloading a multiterabyte data sample took hours or days, and slow transfer times slow down science. UVic researchers are among 3000 physicists in 35 countries, all of whom are looking for answers to complex physics questions and publishing their findings. A saturated connection reduces the university’s competitive positioning among researchers’ peers.
About The Customer
The University of Victoria (UVic), located in British Columbia, Canada, is a globally recognized, research-intensive university offering innovative programs for more than 20,000 students. Approximately 1,000 research faculty teach and conduct work in a wide range of areas, including oceans and climate, genomics and proteomics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, engineering, and computational modeling. UVic research teams connect to colleagues, cutting-edge projects, and powerful resources around the world through a number of networks. UVic connects to BCNET, a regional education network that provides connectivity to Canada’s Research and Education Network (CANARIE) backbone, which connects 12 network partners. In turn, CANARIE connects to peers across Canada and to more than 100 global research and education networks, such as Internet2, Pacific Wave, ANA-200, GÉANT, and more, enabling Canadian participation in collaborative, data-intensive global research initiatives. CANARIE carries more than 95,000 terabytes of data annually and has recently been upgraded to 100 Gbps speeds.
The Solution
After evaluating its options, UVic chose the Brocade MLX Series Core Router for its high performance and built-in OpenFlow 1.3. The university also took advantage of the Brocade Network Subscription, an open-ended solution that enables organizations to acquire network infrastructure with pay-as-you-go flexibility. It offers unlimited upgradability when the university is ready, making it easy for the UVic team to align IT infrastructure capacity and project costs with network demands. The Brocade MLX Router was placed into the production network, where it serves networking research and development needs, as well as researchers’ production data transfer needs. It connects all of the research computing facilities at UVic. Researchers with large data samples in astronomy, ocean science, engineering, and other disciplines will benefit from more capacity, higher speeds, and fast connections over the CANARIE network to research networks in Canada and abroad. Adding 100 Gbps connection also has placed the university at a competitive advantage for attracting research grants and private partnerships.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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