Electronics Design
network for experimental purposes.
Unleashing the potential Today a trend that’s gathering momentum is geared around how we can now start to utilise this valuable, unused resource. The business case for doing so is already being made via the owners of the fibre optic cables leasing them out to third parties such as academic institutions. And much research is being conducted into the future potential of dark fibre communications. The USA has already witnessed a number of academic organisations buying up dormant dark fibre solely for research purposes and now the same is happening in the UK.
One specific area under consideration by researchers is the use of dark fibre to power the future internet. To this end, a National Dark Fibre Infrastructure Service (NDFIS) is being created in the UK for researchers to develop the underpinning communications technologies for the future internet.
The NDFIS is being funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to the tune of £2.5 million. This high level of funding alone illustrates how much of a commercial gain experts are predicting if the researchers’ work proves fruitful.
A five-year contract for NDFIS has been awarded to UCL as the prime contractor for a consortium that consist of the universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Southampton. The idea is that NDFIS will provide access to a dedicated dark fibre network connecting these universities.
That would then incorporate onward connection to European and worldwide research networks via telecommunications facilities in London.
This network, called Aurora2, will be engineered with equipment that can be configured remotely and it will be an
example of a software-defined network (SDN), which is another emerging trend.
The fibre connections, comprising 800km of single mode fibre, together with control and monitoring systems, will be provided to NDFIS by Janet, part of the Jisc group, funded by the department for Business, Innovations & Skills (BIS) through its e-Infrastructure programme. Jisc describes itself as “the UK’s expert on digital technology for education and research”.
At time of press, fibre is being installed and equipment is being delivered with the service due to be rolled out imminently.
Researchers in the UK will be able to access the Aurora2 network both directly by placing equipment at consortium sites and remotely using the Janet Lightpath service.
A future-proof internet Regarding the new network, Professor Periklis Petropoulos at the University of Southampton said: “The internet is playing an increasingly pervasive role in our lives and our expectations of what we can use it for are always growing. As we use it more often, on more devices, in more data-intensive ways, we are putting strain on the internet’s existing capacity. This network will allow our researchers at the University of Southampton to experiment with new technologies that will shape a faster, future-proof internet, capable of meeting our demands both now and in years to come.”
The new service builds on previous work carried out by the consortium using a fixed path dark fibre network, Janet Aurora.
The Aurora2 network will offer programmable transmission parameters, dynamic reconfiguration into multiple sub- networks and the ability to handle multiple transmission formats simultaneously. l
www.engineerlive.com 35
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39