BLOOMINGTON, Ind.—Research flowing between the United States, Europe and Africa got a significant boost early this year when Indiana University and its partners flipped the switch on a new 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) transatlantic link. The new network runs over the America-Europe Connect (AEConnect) subsea cable system provided by vendor Aqua Comms DAC in support of the Networks for European, American and African Research, or NEAAR, grant.
Dr. Jennifer Schopf, director of International Networks at IU, is theprincipal investigator on the NEAAR award, which provides services and bandwidth connecting researchers in the U.S. with their counterparts in Europe and Africa. NEAAR is funded through the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) International Research Network Connections program. In fact, NEAAR supports the majority of the NSF-funded research sharing between Africa and the United States.
“Indiana University has a long history of supporting high performance networking as a tool to advance research and education collaborations around the world,” said Dr. Schopf. “This new circuit continues that mission, enabling important work in bioinformatics, geoscience and medical research. We’re excited to be able to offer this additional capacity to U.S., European and African researchers.”
The new link, which runs over the AEConnect cable between the U.S. and Ireland, marks IU’s latest foray into transatlantic networking. The university collaborated with the pan-European network for research and education and NEAAR co-lead, GÉANT, as well as Aqua Comms to bring the 3,431-mile undersea cable network to life this month. AEConnect replaces the previous connection between the researchers and provides three times faster connectivity than previously possible.
Indiana University has a long history of supporting high performance networking as a tool to advance research and education collaborations around the world.
Dr. Jennifer Schopf
Cathrin Stöver, chief collaboration officer at GÉANT, celebrates the intercontinental partnership. “From food security to viral diseases and climate change, the challenges we face are very much global,” she said. “Our mission is to support researchers in solving these challenges, combining their knowledge wherever they are to allow faster discovery. Through increased transatlantic capacity and the European Union-funded AfricaConnect2 project, GÉANT is proud to enable faster data sharing between researchers on three continents.”
“We’re pleased to partner with IU and to support its NEAAR award over our AEConnect subsea cable system,” said Nigel Bayliff, chief executive officer, Aqua Comms. “Utilizing innovative optical technologies to provide flexible and scalable connectivity between continents, AEConnect provides IU and NEAAR with a level of reliability, security and performance necessary to conduct their research with complete confidence.”
About International Networks at IU
International Networks at IU leads several projects related to large-scale international research networks that link scientists around the world. These include the NSF-funded America Connects to Europe network; TransPAC4, which connects the U.S. to Asia; and NetSage, which enables active and passive monitoring of international networks.
About Aqua Comms DAC
Aqua Comms DAC is the owner and operator of the transatlantic cable AEConnect and the Irish Sea cable CeltixConnect, and was established with a vision to build, acquire or merge with subsea fibre-optic cable networks to provide capacity networking solutions to the global media, content providers and IT companies.
About GÉANT
GÉANT is the pan-European network that delivers high-performance connectivity and advanced services to more than 50 million research and education users across 40 European countries. GÉANT interconnects European national research and education networks with a high-bandwidth and highly resilient backbone and links them to over 100 countries worldwide. GÉANT (at the time known as DANTE) collaborated with Indiana University on the ACE project, the precursor to NEAAR, and provided shared trans-Atlantic R&E capacity to support science and engineering research between the U.S. and European communities.
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