First 100 Gbps community network in Southeast Asia is powered by Brocade

The Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network (SingAREN) has taken the wraps off the SingAREN-Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX), a 100 Gigabit per second (Gbps) community network with a Brocade MLXe-4 router at its core.

SLIX, a collaboration project between SingAREN, A*STAR, NUS and NTU, delivers one hundred times more capacity than SingAREN’s previous generation of network infrastructure, providing stronger support for complex, data- and bandwidth-intensive research in areas such as genome and meteorological studies. 

The new network includes a dedicated dual fibreoptic ring – capable of supporting multiple 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) links – that provides a resilient backbone connecting Singapore’s key research and education sites. This opens up new possibilities as a test-bed for the Singapore research and education community, extending database mirroring services, bilateral disaster recovery, high-performance computing federation and shared services, high volume peering with content data networks, and other value-adding services.
Professor Francis Lee Bu-Sung, President of SingAREN, said the first 100 GbE international connection is likely to be made within the next year as a result of a US funding call for a 100 Gbps research network link to Asia. “We see Brocade as a key technology partner to meet the challenges of building an agile, scalable, high-speed network infrastructure and Internet exchange point,” he said. 

“The Brocade MLXe routers are often the choice for high-performance networks, and we’re very proud of the fact that one has now been deployed as the core of Southeast Asia’s most advanced research and education network,” said Adam Judd, Brocade VP for Asia Pacific. “Apart from the outstanding, non-stop performance and flexibility, a key factor in SingAREN choosing the Brocade solution is our strong support for software-defined networking.”
The MLXe-4 core router provides a clear path for the use of software-defined networking (SDN) in SLIX’s network. According to Professor Lee, SingAREN is already experimenting with the Brocade MLXe-4’s SDN capabilities, which he sees as playing a critical role in the future of SLIX. “SDN will enable the dynamic configuration of connections to deliver fast transit over ‘clean pipes’ for researchers and educators who need to transfer big data payloads across SingAREN and international research networks,” he said.