DANTE Opens New Network Operations Centre
October 27, 2009 | Cambridge UK:
Delivers end-to-end monitoring
for major international research networks
DANTE, the international research and education network provider, has announced the opening of its new Network Operations Centre (NOC). Based in Cambridge, the NOC will manage and monitor the day to day operations of GÉANT, the high bandwidth pan-European research network, the EUMEDCONNECT2 network which covers seven countries across the Mediterranean area and the E2ECU, the End-to-End Coordination Unit for multi-domain circuits. These networks have a total capacity of 500 Gbps and the NOC will provide a full service facility to enable highly reliable, efficient and effective services to users.
The DANTE NOC, previously outsourced, has been established to reduce operational costs and to provide an effective 24-hour support service. Employing 10 people, the major focus of the NOC is to meet user demands and provide well defined service levels and support for the advanced connectivity services that GÉANT offers. These include network monitoring, security and bandwidth provisioning applications.
Using multi-domain, end-to-end monitoring tools and collaborating closely with National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), the DANTE NOC will provide a seamless, high speed network for the research and education community. The NOC’s main responsibilities are monitoring the network (troubleshooting and fixing any problems which arise) and scheduling and managing planned maintenance and upgrades.
“Research networks are underpinning vital collaboration in areas such as climate change, medical research and astronomy and our new NOC will ensure the highest levels of service across our large-scale, complex networks,” said Dai Davies, general manager, DANTE. “By investing in the creation of our own Network Operations Centre we aim to deliver seamless connectivity for GÉANT and EUMEDCONNECT2 users, as well as reducing our operational costs through direct control in this area.”
GÉANT is the high-bandwidth, pan-European research network serving Europe’s research and education community. Through the NRENs it connects, GÉANT can connect an estimated 40 million researchers across 40 European countries. Together with its links to several other world regions, GÉANT is at the heart of global research networking.
For further details contact:
DANTE
Phone: +44 (0)1223 371 300
E-mail: noc@dante.org.uk
About DANTE
DANTE is a non-profit organisation, coordinator of large-scale projects co-funded by the European Commission, and working in partnership with European National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) to plan, build and operate advanced networks for research and education. Established in 1993, DANTE has been fundamental to the success of pan-European research and education networking. DANTE has built and operates the high bandwidth pan-European network, GÉANT, which provides the data communications infrastructure essential to the success of many research projects in Europe. DANTE is involved in worldwide initiatives to interconnect countries in the other regions to one another and to GÉANT. DANTE currently manages projects focussed on the Mediterranean, Asia-Pacific and central Asia regions through the EUMEDCONNECT, TEIN and CAREN projects respectively. For more information, visit www.dante.net.
