UK researchers' and educators' demands for high performance computing are now reportedly secured until at least 2022, thanks to an initial £30 million e-infrastructure investment from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the higher and further education funding councils.
The investment will build Janet6, the next generation of the UK's national research and education network, adding value across the sector from high-end research to universities, colleges and schools. It will also enable research to stay competitive on both a national and international level, and support the £60 billion contribution that higher education brings to the UK economy.
Research shows that as institutions use innovative methods to deliver digital resources to their students, so their use of different devices over the network grows. The pattern of data across Janet shows that data usage doubles every 18 months and this is unlikely to change.
However, in addition to this normal usage increase, there will also be a 'data deluge' from data intensive research, which means that future network demands are set to increase. The high capacity network means that research in biomedical sciences, climate science and genomics can continue at current rates, even with the need for the transfer of large data sets, as well as high performance computing, that are needed for research and analysis in these subject areas.
A seamless transition to the new network, and a proactive approach to network provision where it is needed, means that most customers should not see any disruption in service. The new network will reportedly continue to provide unseen yet essential support to the work of researchers and educators, enabling them to communicate easily and share large data sets across international boundaries.
Service provider SSE Telecoms has been awarded the contract to provide the fibre for the Janet infrastructure in the largest UK deployment of its kind, this year. The Janet6 infrastructure will be based on Ciena's platform, which will enable the network to easily scale from 100G to 400G and beyond as requirements change over time. Janet6 will be fully operational by October 2013.
Janet6 has been developed in the context of the Government's Public Services Network (PSN) programme, and as Janet6 unfolds, the Janet team will continue to work closely with the PSN programme to ensure maximum efficiency in public-sector ICT spend.
The Janet6 programme is aligned with, and co-funded by, the BIS e-infrastructure initiative. BIS investment in both the core Janet network and in extending Janet means that it can better serve additional data intensive research disciplines.
