AARNet Extends 10Gbps Service into North Queensland
AARNet, Australia’s Academic and Research Network has announced an agreement with Powerlink to upgrade the AARNet network between Cairns and Brisbane to a dual link 10Gbps service.
The 10Gbps access speed is over 10,000 times faster than what is typically available for ADSL2+ broadband users in Australia. This upgrade is expected to accelerate collaboration and learning opportunities between the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences (AIMS), Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), CQUniversity and James Cook University (JCU) with the wider academic and research community in Australia and around the world.
Mary Fleming, Business Development Director of AARNet said, “AARNet is committed to improving our network to support research, education and collaboration. This network upgrade will enable further scientific breakthroughs in the study of climate change impacts on Australia’s marine ecosystem.”
AIMS, CSIRO and JCU provide research data to the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) program and the network enhancement will boost the sharing of information with the IMOS repository at the University of Tasmania.
AIMS monitors changes in the physical environment of the Great Barrier Reef and explores the ability of coral to adapt to warmer seas. Its researchers rely on data generated by the IMOS program to look at ways to conserve the reef.
James Smith, Manager of ICT Services of AIMS said, “The Sunshine Backbone upgrade is welcomed by AIMS, providing a significant enhancement to the quality and reliability of the Institute’s high speed connectivity, improving our collaborative efforts with researchers at locations such as JCU, around Australia and throughout the world. The performance improvements from this upgrade will scale to meet our needs for years into the future and will be a major enabler of new tools for science and outreach.”
CQUniversity relies on AARNet to connect eight campuses in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria and the upgrade is expected to enhance teaching, drive High Performance Computing research and allied health programs.
Roy Pidgeon, Associate Director of the CQUniversity Information Technology Division said, “CQUniversity highly values the benefits AARNet delivers. With the network upgrade, we can now stream high quality live lectures across five regional campuses and deliver rich media lecture content on-demand to our students. We will also be able to improve online collaboration for our distance learning students, medical researchers and practitioners in many different ways.”
JCU is an internationally recognised research leader in areas such as marine sciences, tropical ecology and global warming. JCU researchers require a very high speed network to share research data and supercomputing resources around the globe, which AARNet delivers. The new network will not only service the needs of JCU and CQUniversity, but provide benefits to other AARNet members with facilities spread throughout Queensland.
Kent Adams, Director of Information Technology and Resources at James Cook University and Chairman of the Queensland Regional Network Organisation (QRNO) said, “The AARNet network upgrade is a significant win for research and education institutions in Queensland. We can now participate in bandwidth intensive projects and access a wider range of resources that will enable us to enrich our engagement with the Australian and international research and academic communities.”
The dual link upgrade between Cairns and Brisbane is expected to be completed by 2011 and this will upgrade AARNet’s network from its current capacity from Cairns (118Mbps) to Brisbane, Townsville (1Gbps), Mackay (70Mbps) and Rockhampton (1Gbps).
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For further information, please contact:
Gabriel Wong
Max Australia
0412 868 306
gabriel.wong@maxaustralia.com.au
About AARNet
AARNet Pty Ltd (APL) is the company that operates Australia's Academic and Research Network (AARNet). It is a not-for-profit company limited by shares. The shareholders are 37 Australian universities and the CSIRO. AARNet provides high-capacity leading edge Internet services for the tertiary education and research sector communities and their research partners. AARNet serves more than one million end users who access the network through local area networks at member institutions. For further information, please visit: www.aarnet.edu.au.
