Internet2, NORDUnet, CANARIE and SURFnet, four advanced Research and Education (R&E) Networks from both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean, announced on past November the completion of a collaborative advanced network, called ANA-200G, that spans the North Atlantic, enabling R&E users to transfer data between North America and Europe at speeds that were previously only possible within the continents. 

(Source: Internet2) ANA-200G is a redundant 100 Gbit/s ring between four open exchange points spanning the North Atlantic. The ring nature of ANA-200G without single points of failure protects against an outage in the unprotected individual 100 Gbit/s transmission paths. ANA-200G builds on the success and the lessons learned in the pilot phase that started in June 2013 and ended in October, and was called ANA-100G.

This milestone opens up a new era for todays most advanced research, enabling scientists to take advantage of the ongoing wave of data being constantly created by sensor networks, research instruments, and people.

Before this milestone, intercontinental transmission speeds lagged behind one generation compared to the advanced networks on the continents. This brand new 100 Gbit/s ring enables clear channel 100 Gbit/s data transfers for R&E between researchers in the United States and Northern Europe. Demonstrations of ANA-200G took place in November at SuperComputing (SC14) in New Orleans.

The open exchange points that play a pivotal role in ANA-200G are MAN LAN in New York City, WIX in Washington, D.C., NetherLight in Amsterdam, and GÉANT Open in London. At these exchange points there is an open connection policy, enabling anyone to connect to the exchange fabric. It requires permission from the link owners, of course, to use the links.

This four-partner collaboration has delivered the 100 Gbit/s ring around the North Atlantic Ocean. They are dedicated to further advancing the collaboration, undertaking research into federated operations and admission control, ensuring that demanding science applications have dedicated and resilient data transmission paths, while the general purpose R&E data traffic continues to flow, also in circumstances of an outage.

The ANA-200G collaborators welcome other R&E networks to join the collaboration, on the way to new and innovative ways of sharing resources on a global scale, and are happy that discussions are underway with other organizations to have them partake in this collaborative initiative.

For more information, visit:

• Internet2 
• NORDUnet 
• CANARIE
• SURFnet