Jisc has announced that it is upgrading its Janet network to triple capacity across parts of the network over the next three years.
The Janet network serves 18 million users worldwide and provides UK research and education with a reliable, high capacity, world-class network, enabling national and international communication and collaboration.
The upgrade will see the core network capacity across some paths increased from 200Gb to 600Gb, improving potential access to distance learning and web-based educational resources while continuing to provide organisations, students, researchers, academics and staff with an efficient, high-speed network that enables effective collaboration.
The Janet network upgrade has been made possible by funding that Jisc secured from the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the funding councils in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The change will offer organisations greater capacity and more flexibility to ensure that present and future needs are met. It will support new business models like the surge in data intensive research, analytics, media-rich teaching, the growth of satellite campuses and the increase in cross-organisational and industry collaborations.
As the government pushes for more collaboration between universities and for the sharing of big data, the Janet network update will support academics so they can continue to access, store and share their research with peers and partnering organisations. The extended capacity will, for example, allow universities across the world to share petabytes of research data every day. To put this into context, a single petabyte is enough to store the DNA of the entire US population and clone them twice.
The upgrade will also play a major role in improving the student experience. The Janet network will make video-based teaching, group working and online interactions between students and lecturers more effective and seamless. The added capacity will also support a larger number of technology options, allowing students and staff to log in anywhere at any time and connect their own devices to the network.
The investment follows continued growth in data traffic across the Janet network. Data traffic has consistently doubled every two and a half years since 2010, with the demand being driven by a considerable rise in the use of cloud-based services. A recent survey conducted by Jisc revealed that 69% of institutions are either planning to adopt cloud resources, or have already done so.
The Janet network's capacity is reviewed and upgraded on a regular basis, in line with current trends, policy requirements and technological advancements, to ensure it continues to meet the objectives of connected organisations.
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