The Australian Academic and Research Network, AARNet, a not-for-profit company that provides Internet services to universities and the CSIRO, has signed a 10-year AU$2.1 million contract with fibre broadband carrier Uecomm for the provision of a dark fibre network.
A dark fibre network is a private network closed to the general Internet community.
"The development ensures that all Sydney Basin Universities will have broadband access to a high speed data network," said Dr Keith Burston, UNSW and consortium chair in a statement. "This network will engender collaboration in education between Sydney Basin Universities and will form the core for future network projects in the area of education, research and culture."
Don Robertson, deputy executive director of AARNet, told ZDNet Australia the network was essential for Australian research. At the moment the Sydney Universities are using 34 Mbps microwave broadband.
"Any advanced network network features we want to implement rely heavily on broadband connectivity, we're talking gigabit speeds," said Robertson. He said one use of the network would be to remotely operate high-powered electron microscopes, so only the samples have to be sent to the microscopes location rather than a team of specialists.
The network will provide the optical fibre infrastructure for sub-campuses of the five Sydney Basin Universities, as well as partner and affiliate sites. Funding was obtained through a Department of Education, Science and Training grant of AU$1.6 million, and contributions from the University of Sydney and University of NSW. The NSW State Government sponsored the management of the project.
AARNet has also arranged a fibre-swap between the new network and the CSIRO backed CENTIE project. There are also plans to connect to GrangeNet, the 5-10 Gbps link that joins Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, which will be opened on Wednesday.
This is not the first education institution to use Uecomms' services. Its customers also include Monash University and the Queensland University of Technology.
