1 October 2002 -- Ethernet networking infrastructure supplier Extreme Networks Inc has announced that the Cambridge-based Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has gone live with a new Gigabit Ethernet local area network (LAN) to fulfil its expanding research requirements over the next 12 months.
The new network was designed and implemented by networking specialist Telindus, an Extreme Networks' Solutions Partner. It consists of two centralised Extreme Networks BlackDiamond core switches and 45 localised Summit 5i switches.
Formerly the Sanger Centre, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute was founded in 1993 by the Wellcome Trust and is one of the world's leading sequencing centres, dedicated to analysing and understanding genomes. Through large-scale analysis and focused research, its programmes underpin biological and medical research worldwide. It works on projects such as the Human Genome Project, genomes of disease-causing organisms and the Cancer Genome Project.
The Human Genome Project is now scheduled to finish earlier than first predicted. The Sanger Institute's research will now move on into functional genomics, determining the function of each gene within the genome, and comparative genomics, comparing whole genomes to understand evolution and to help identify genes.
To support the large and unpredictable volumes of data that this new research would generate The Sanger Institute realised that it would need to migrate its legacy ATM network onto a new technology that would offer increased scalability, higher performance, enhanced storage capabilities and improved Quality of Service (QoS).
"Over the next four or five years, as our research moves into comparative and functional genomics, we expect to generate some 60 to 70 Terabytes of data a year, so we need a system that is scalable," says The Sanger Institute's head of IT, Phil Butcher. "Also, due to the unpredictable nature of research, we need a system that can handle the variable levels of research data on the network," he adds. "We have to deploy scalable and flexible systems as rapidly and as seamlessly as possible".
"Extreme Networks was recommended by the Cavendish Cambridge Institute, a research institute working in a similar area," says Martin Van Schooten, Extreme's marketing director for EMEA.
The Sanger Institute joins Extreme customers such as Southampton University, Dublin Institute of Technology and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts.
* At September's SunNetwork 2002 event in San Francisco, Extreme Networks demonstrated next-generation network services across a production 10 Gigabit Ethernet infrastructure.
The 10 Gigabit backbone demonstrated offers advanced Quality of Service (QoS), security and resiliency features, such as Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS), and provided 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity for the Sun Microsystems Sun Ray Thin Client enterprise system running the StarOffice application suite.
Extreme's 10 Gigabit infrastructure allows very high-performance applications such as the Sun StarOffice suite to effectively use maximum available bandwidth without encroaching on resources available for other applications. By providing a reliable, ultra-high-bandwidth foundation for advanced applications, the availability and response time can be dramatically improved across the network.
Extreme Networks' 10 Gigabit infrastructure provides a beneficial underpinning to computing-intensive environments, such as Sun Microsystems' GRID computing architecture, which provides a high-performance clustering environment.
* Nortel Networks Ltd and Extreme Networks Inc have entered into a confidential patent cross license agreement. The pending lawsuit between Nortel Networks Ltd, its US subsidiary Nortel Networks Inc and Extreme Networks in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Civil Action No. 01-10443, has been dismissed.