SARNET is a four year collaboration agreement between the University of Amsterdam (UvA), the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), an airline and Ciena to explore methods for autonomous Internet security.

The SARNET project allows researchers to automatically create, manipulate, move and remove network services as needed. With added software intelligence, the network can be programmed to instantly reconfigure, self-provision and self-heal, helping to prevent attacks, such as denial-of-service (DOS) attacks, which have more than doubled in the last year according to the 2015 Akamai State of the Internet security report.

The research network leverages Ciena’s SDN-enabled 8700 Packetwave platform with multiple research laboratories, including UvA, which is connected to Ciena’s Ottawa, Canada R&D facilities via its OPn research network. International connectivity is achieved via CANARIE in Canada; Internet 2, Starlight and ESnet in the United States; and, SURFnet in the Netherlands. It also includes computers and storage clouds based on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) exoGENI architecture.