Customer Success Story
400G facilitates Ohio’s economic growth and research leadership
400G is a critical step in Ohio’s plan for economic growth, academic leadership, and research prowess. With digital services transforming public and private sectors, OARnet migrated to 400G to provide affordable, plentiful connectivity to higher education, K-12 schools, healthcare, libraries, public broadcasting stations, and state and local governments.
Juniper’s 400G approach simplified the move, allowing OARnet to scale its network while preserving its capital investment and expertise. OARnet is one of the first networks to connect at 400G to the faster Internet2.
400G
Connection to next-generation Internet2
5,500-mile
Statewide network connecting 625 K-12 school sites, 469 higher education sites, 102 healthcare facilities, 13 research sites, 27 public broadcast sites, and 2,900 state and local government sites
100%
Of OARnet member colleges and universities will have at least a 10-Gbps connection to campus by the end of 2022
$1.2 billion
In research and development funding at Ohio State
Propel Ohio’s knowledge economy through technology
OARnet is a division of the Ohio Department of Higher Education’s Ohio Technology Consortium (OH-TECH). It’s focused on increasing access to affordable broadband, reducing technology costs for its customers, and maximizing shared services. OARnet has been serving the state’s research and education community since 1987.
“OARnet strives to ensure Ohio’s role as a technology leader,” says Pankaj Shah, executive director of OARnet. “By teaming with our anchor institutions and communities, OARnet facilitates innovation as a competitive edge in Ohio’s economic development and prominence in research and development.”
The plans for 400G were already in the works when the pandemic first spread, shining a light on the importance of readily available high-speed connectivity in education, healthcare, and government services.
A smooth migration to 400G
“The upgrade to 400G gives us plenty of headroom for growth,” says Mark Fullmer, CTO of OARnet.
400G allows OARnet to deliver networking at scale, while preserving its capital investment and engineering and operations expertise in Juniper networking. OARnet outfitted its Juniper MX960 and MX240 Universal Routing Platforms with new Juniper MPC-10 line cards. Scaling up the statewide backbone allows OARnet to efficiently meet customer demand for 100-Gbps and 10-Gbps services.
“We can serve more high-density connections in the same physical space,” says Fullmer. “Maintaining a 400G infrastructure has less operational overhead than managing aggregated 100-GbE interfaces.”
The OARnet engineering team worked with a Juniper Resident Engineer on the transition. “It has been nice to have someone who can hit the ground running on a massive project,” says Fullmer. “The Juniper RE augmented our staff very well.”
Advancing research and narrowing the digital divide
“OARnet was on the vanguard of implementing 100-Gbps connectivity, and we’re an early adopter of 400G,” says Shah.
400G allows OARnet to meet its clients’ growing need for cloud computing, network services, and disaster recovery, as well as to support the transformation to the new hybrid environment for learning, remote work, and telehealth.
One example is The Ohio State University, a powerhouse in research making key advances in biological, biomedical, and agriculture sciences as well as cybersecurity. Researchers can collaborate and manipulate massive data sets with a 400G connection to Internet2 and around the world.
OARnet is working to increase broadband speeds at 41 of the state’s colleges and universities and double the number of Internet subscriptions at all 87 member institutions. “All of our higher education members will have at least 10-Gbps last-mile capacity by the end of 2022,” says Shah.
Plentiful capacity is key as OARnet partners with BroadbandOhio, a public-private initiative that seeks to put an end to the digital divide by bringing affordable, high-speed broadband to underserved communities. OARnet is also foundational to InnovateOhio, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s initiative to improve the quality of government services.
The Products
With a robust portfolio of SDN-enabled routers, the MX Series provides industry-leading system capacity, density, security, and performance with unparalleled longevity.
Juniper global services helps your organization align AI with people, process, and technology to accelerate the time to value for your modern infrastructure.
Published April 2022