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About the CANARIE Network
In 1998, CANARIE deployed CAnet 3, the world's first national optical Internet research and education network. CAnet 3 was among the most advanced in the world when it was built, and its design has since been replicated by many network operators, both in the research and education as well as commercial domains. However, exponential growth in network traffic, expected growth in new high bandwidth applications, and planned extreme high bandwidth grid projects require that a new network be built to support leading-edge research in Canada. To this end, the Government of Canada committed $110 million to CANARIE for the design, deployment, and operation of CAnet 4.
CAnet 4, as did its predecessor CAnet 3, interconnects the provincial research networks, and through them universities, research centres, government research laboratories, schools, and other eligible sites, both with each other and with international peer networks. Through a series of point-to-point optical wavelengths, most of which are provisioned at OC-192 (10 Gbps) speeds, CAnet 4 yields a total initial network capacity of between four and eight times that of CAnet 3.
CAnet 4 embodies the concept of a "customer-empowered network" which will place dynamic allocation of network resources in the hands of end users and permit a much greater ability for users to innovate in the development of network-based applications. These applications, based upon the increasing use of computers and networks as the platform for research in many fields, are essential for the national and international collaboration, data access and analysis, distributed computing, and remote control of instrumentation required by researchers.
