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Australian Research Network Plans For 100Gbps

Posted by samzenpus on from the LAN-party-of-the-gods dept.

angry tapir writes "The Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) has announced a wide range of initiatives around network upgrades, collaboration, and mobility as part of a new five-year plan. The plan includes delivering a 100Gbps backbone to its education and research customers, to ensure sufficient 'headroom' for major projects such as the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope."

15 of 24 comments (clear)

  1. Headroom... ha! by bernywork · · Score: 1

    They are talking about the network that connects all their universities and colleges to the internet as well as to each other. They'll fill that in a year. 10 x 10Gbps links for a backbone? That should be minimum connection for a site.

    100Gb/s isn't far away and DWDM kit will be capable of this in 5 - 7 years, if they are planning it, this is what they should be planning for.

    --
    Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
    1. Re:Headroom... ha! by NNKK · · Score: 1

      I wonder if this might not be getting dumbed down for public consumption.

      Fiber is fiber, and once you have a bunch of good-quality fiber laid down, your theoretical bandwidth is beyond anything we're actually going to use, the trick is waiting for the equipment that hooks up to it to advance.

      It's 100gbps today, but as better gear becomes commercially available, gradual upgrades can bring it towards 1tbps, then 10tbps, then...

    2. Re:Headroom... ha! by bernywork · · Score: 1

      AARNet was originally run by Optus and was a 45Mbps connection, that's now been taken over by Telstra and they offer 100Mb/s or 1Gb/s connections. Telstra will have to plan this 5 years out as they will have to put fibre / wavelegnths aside on their interstate backhauls to accomodate this. So, the fibre is already there, they just haven't allowed for enough bandwidth to serve the requirements. It's stuff like this that is holding back telecommunications in asia.

      --
      Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
    3. Re:Headroom... ha! by bernywork · · Score: 1

      So Telstra just manages the fibre network and doesn't AARNet doesn't use any of it's bandwidth?

      --
      Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
    4. Re:Headroom... ha! by Lennie · · Score: 1

      You have to remember Australia is by size-comparison one of the worst connected regions in the world. I doubt their national connections are in much better shape.

      There is 'one' 5.12Tbps 'cable' which delivers almost half of their capacity.

      Funny thing is, not many might be lit, but even something as remote as Svalbard has that much capacity.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
    5. Re:Headroom... ha! by Lennie · · Score: 1

      Sorry, I was just looking at that 5.12Tbps which handles Australia and turns out it isn't even in service yet.

      --
      New things are always on the horizon
    6. Re:Headroom... ha! by bernywork · · Score: 1

      The moment that providing such bandwidth at a reasonable price even domestically (Within Aus) comes closer to parity to what's paid in Europe and America for bandwidth, let me know. I'll give you an example, get a 1Gb internet line with unlimited data (Truly unlimited) for AUD $2k or a 1Gb to the US for AUD $4k. My comment came from the fact that Australians (And a number of other countries around Asia) are used to ordering low bandwidth lines because of the extortionate pricing that you are made to pay over there.

      If you can put 100Gb links in the hands of researchers and uni students when they get older and go into decision making positions, they will be wondering why bandwidth like what they had 10 years ago isn't common place and will change things.

      10Gb for the financial markets are now common place in Europe and America, 100Gb is not far off. This is where Aus has to be looking at and looking at now if it's not going to be left behind again.

      --
      Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
    7. Re:Headroom... ha! by Cimexus · · Score: 1

      This isn't really accurate. There is plenty of capacity. Domestic and international. We're a large area but we have a tiny population remember. We have approximately 8 Tbps total to the outside world at the moment but some of it's not even lit, and of the portion that's lit, it's nowhere near fully utilised. And that extra 5.12 Tb cable you mention is due to come online in the next 18 months. So there really isn't a capacity issue in Australia, and per capita, we are connected adequately.

      Svalbard is an oddity (and has the benefit of being close to masses of capacity available in Scandinavia). Australia is at the end of the line, so to speak. You don't go through Australia to get to anywhere. This, combined with very small population, is a problem that will always mean our bandwidth infrastructure costs more. Actually it affects everything there, from the price of goods, to the ability of Australian airlines to compete with Asian and Middle Eastern carriers who are relatively more 'central' geographically, and hence can capture passengers not just from their local markets, but people merely transiting through their countries to other places.

  2. So when the NBN arrives... by crafty.munchkin · · Score: 1

    ... we'll all be able to max out our connections on something local, before we hit the international bottleneck!

    --
    ... wait, what?
    1. Re:So when the NBN arrives... by Cimexus · · Score: 2

      The 'international bottleneck' is a bit of a myth. The capacity we have now, on SXC, PPC1, AJC and others, isn't fully utilised. In fact, some of those cables aren't even being close to fully ~lit~. Plus, our total international capacity is due to almost double in the near future as the Pacific Fibre cable project is completed (estimated to be in 2013). ~The particular ISP you are using~ may be too stingy to spend the money on buying enough international capacity (and hence you may experience slower connections to overseas hosts than you would like). But that doesn't mean there's a bottleneck for the country as a whole.

      Either way this has little to do with AARNet, which isn't a residential ISP and which buys more than sufficient international capacity. I certainly didn't notice any international bottleneck when I lived on campus (i.e. connected to AARNet). Well-connected overseas sites were just as fast as well-connected domestic ones and often came close to maxing out the 100 Mbit interface speed. Good on em for continuing to plan for the future (though I don't think this is particularly newsworthy - every decent network is planning the same way).

    2. Re:So when the NBN arrives... by bernywork · · Score: 1

      To sorta go along with the previous poster, the ISPs don't need to throttle you internationally, latency does that for you. Look up TCP window sizes and have a play with it on your computer and watch your speed go up.

      --
      Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
    3. Re:So when the NBN arrives... by dregs · · Score: 1

      I get 70meg a second at my desk
      (And the Microsoft guys we had in last month, couldn't believe you can download the Windows 7 iso, in under 5 minutes until they all did it themselves)
      I guess it makes up for the crappy pay......

  3. The internet is for porn of course by dasherjan · · Score: 1

    but...but...with their porn filter what's the point? j/k

  4. Biting tongue.... by Ngarrang · · Score: 1

    ...trying hard to avoid a pirate joke. Trying...so...hard...

    --
    Bearded Dragon
  5. Australian net censorship by Graham+J+-+XVI · · Score: 1

    Hopefully the SKA's IP doesn't land on their national blacklist...