STARKVILLE, Miss., Jan. 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In another first
for its trailblazing Tech Movement initiative, C Spire and several
other technology partners successfully tested the first
Terabit-speed connections on a Mississippi university campus in November as
part of its continuing improvements and innovation for the
Mississippi Optical Network (MissiON).
Engineers from C Spire, Nokia and EXFO, a Canadian firm that
specializes in network test, monitoring and analytics, worked with
the information technology staff at Mississippi State University to provide the Allen
data center on the Starkville
college campus with super-fast Terabit-speed connections.
The engineers and campus IT staff used fiber optic connections,
specialty gear and electronics and test measuring equipment from
Nokia and EXFO to complete the trial, which successfully downloaded
data 1,000 times faster than current 1 Gigabit per
second (Gbps) services on the market today.
Terabit speed research networks promise to dramatically lower
data transport times, allowing the download of 125 gigabytes every
single second, the equivalent of an entire season of HBO's popular
Game of Thrones series, 25 full-length movies in high
definition, 2,083 hours of streaming music, 62,500 photos and
695,000 web pages.
The R&D arms at Ole Miss, the
University of Mississippi Medical
Center, Mississippi State,
Jackson State, the University of Southern Mississippi, Stennis Space
Center, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers' Engineering Research and
Development Center and the national Internet 2 consortium are all
part of the consortium.
C Spire was chosen to overhaul the MissiON network under a new state
telecommunications contract awarded to the company last year by the
Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services
(ITS). The firm finished the upgrade in record time and
tripled capacity, cut overall costs and added four regional
universities to the consortium.
Leveraging its 8,800 route miles of high-capacity fiber optic
infrastructure, C Spire has designed the network to support direct
collaboration for the first time among the state's research
universities and regional institutions as well as access to
resources in the ITS State Data Center and C Spire data centers in
Jackson and Starkville.
"We're excited to be a part of this proof-of-concept trial, and
we look forward to continuing our work with C Spire to make this
vital infrastructure second to none," said Dr. David Shaw, vice president for Research and
Economic Development at Mississippi State
University and chairman of the MissiON Network Advisory
Council.
Shaw said the MissiON network plays
an essential role in Mississippi's
economic development and business expansion initiatives.
"Bolstering this network is critical in order to enhance our
research institutions' capacity to continue competing successfully
for science and technology grants and funding from federal
agencies, business and industry, foundations and private
endowments. We're operating in an increasingly competitive
environment, and MissiON is an
indispensable resource in our efforts," he added.
C Spire, Nokia and EXFO also emphasized the importance of
"future-proofing" the research network infrastructure to enable
Mississippi research institutions
and businesses to compete on a global scale in the
future.
"As Mississippi's leading broadband communications provider, C
Spire is proud to provide innovative, leading-edge technology and
the latest fiber optic infrastructure to help power the important
work of the MissiON network and enable
researchers to pursue comprehensive solutions to 21st
century challenges," said Eric
Hollingsworth, vice president of Network and Service
Delivery. "We are committed to helping the consortium continue to
build this world-class network."
Hollingsworth said that while the terabit speeds are not part of
the MissiON network upgrade, it is
important to continue to work with consortium members to perform
trials and tests to plan for future improvements. "We need to
offer a robust network capable of helping researchers stay on the
cutting-edge of technology," he added.
"We work with partners like C Spire to design optical networks
to meet future demands," said Sam
Bucci, head of Nokia's Optical business. "MissiON and other higher education research
networks must continue to push the limits of communications to
adapt to changing conditions and future unforeseen
applications."
EXFO played a key role in the ground-breaking trial, generating
Terabit ethernet speeds with five combined 100 Gigabit dual-port
test modules. The high-speed traffic was injected into the
network and then returned to EXFO's test platform to validate data
transport and other critical performance measurements.
"As a leading pioneer in test, monitoring and analytics, EXFO is
pleased to bring its high-speed transport test expertise to such a
forward-looking project," said Stephane
Chabot, vice president of Test and Measurement.
"Future-proofing tomorrow's network infrastructure and supporting
research leaders such as the MissiON
partners is core to EXFO's vision and values."
As part of a comprehensive upgrade announced last September, C
Spire boosted bandwidth speeds up to 10 times faster for consortium
partners, lowered overall latency, added a new interconnection with
Internet 2, built new route diversity and redundancy to ensure
optimal MissiON network uptime and
eliminated a single point of failure from the previous
network.
C Spire launched its ground-breaking Tech Movement initiative in
2017 to encourage innovation, promote education and improve access
to broadband internet through technology leadership and investments
that transform its service areas and by helping more consumers,
businesses and schools grow the state's economy, create more jobs
and improve the quality of life for everyone.
To learn more about C Spire's efforts to improve the Mississippi
Optical Network infrastructure, visit www.cspire.com/missiON.
To learn more about the C Spire Tech Movement initiative, visit
www.cspire.com/techmvmt.
About C Spire
C Spire provides a full suite of
world-class, customer-inspired dedicated Internet, IP Voice, data,
managed services, cloud services, value added resale and mobile
communications to businesses and wireless, 1 Gigabit consumer
Internet access and related home services for consumers. This
news release and other announcements are available at
www.cspire.com/news. For more information about C Spire, visit
cspire.com or follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/cspire or
Twitter at twitter.com/cspire. For more information, visit
www.cspire.com.
About Nokia
We create the technology to connect the world. Powered by the
research and innovation of Nokia Bell
Labs, we serve communications service providers,
governments, large enterprises and consumers with the industry's
most complete, end-to-end portfolio of products, services and
licensing. We adhere to the highest ethical standards as we
create technology with social purpose, quality and integrity.
Nokia is enabling the infrastructure for 5G and the Internet of
Things to transform the human experience.
www.nokia.com
About EXFO
EXFO (NASDAQ: EXFO) (TSX: EXF) develops
smarter test, monitoring and analytics solutions for fixed and
mobile network operators, webscale companies and equipment
manufacturers in the global communications industry. Our customers
count on us to deliver superior network performance, service
reliability and subscriber insights. They count on our unique blend
of equipment, software and services to accelerate digital
transformations related to fiber, 4G/LTE and 5G deployments. They
count on our expertise with automation, real-time troubleshooting
and big data analytics, which are critical to their business
performance. We've spent over 30 years earning this trust, and
today 1,900 EXFO employees in over 25 countries work side by side
with our customers in the lab, field, data center and beyond. For
more information, visit www.exfo.com.
![](https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/451346/C_Spire_Foundation_Logo.jpg)
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/successful-first-test-of-terabit-speed-university-research-network-in-mississippi-300781559.html
SOURCE C Spire