MARTINSRIED, Germany -- ADVA Optical Networking announced today that Merit Network has deployed the ADVA 100G Metro solution to provide increased bandwidth capacity on a critical path of its core network that spans from Ann Arbor to Detroit and Lansing, Michigan to its optical fiber ring in Chicago. This connectivity provides Merit Network's community of research and education (R&E) organizations with dramatically increased speeds to access the Internet national high-speed backbone, which is connected to Merit Network's fiber ring in Chicago. As Michigan's only access to Internet, this connectivity is vital for Merit Network R&E Members that wish to collaborate on bandwidth-intensive national and international science projects. Stretching across 800 km of fiber, the ADVA 100G Metro transports data from Michigan to Merit's Chicago fiber-optic ring to get to the Internet network without any regeneration. This distance is a first for the ADVA 100G Metro direct detect technology in a commercial network.

"Our Membership community features some of the world's leading research universities, who are continually pushing the boundaries of science and exploring new methods of educational collaboration. To succeed here requires network performance and capacity on a very large scale," said Don Welch, president and CEO, Merit Network. "The ADVA 100G Metro removes any limits to our Members in Michigan, ensuring they can participate on any scientific research project, whether it be national or even global. This is critical for Merit and our Members, especially when we're discussing the exchange of petabytes of data. Thanks to the team at ADVA Optical Networking, Merit is able to continually scale our network to outpace the needs of our Membership. That's why we've been a customer for over 10 years."

The increased capacity to Merit Network's core also bolsters its Members' data access to Tier 1 Internet and peering connections with content providers. Additionally, the ADVA 100G Metro enables Merit Network to support a significant portion of Members' "On-Net" traffic over the upgraded core network path. As a key value, Merit Network offers free bandwidth for data exchange between Merit Members and Member sites that does not leave the Merit backbone in Michigan. As a result, the majority of Member traffic stays On-Net at significant savings.

ADVA Optical Networking