SuperJANET 5 is here!

Staff and students in the North West’s Academic and Research Institutions (which are connected to Net North West) are amongst the very first in the UK who are now connected to SuperJANET 5.

Universities, Colleges, Research Institutions and many more sites connected to NNW upgraded to SuperJANET5, the latest version of JANET (the Joint Academic Network) on the 31st October 2006. JANET connects around 18 million staff and students in academia and research across the whole of the UK; providing them with their high speed internet access and allowing them to send huge amounts of data at great speeds. The 3 billion characters that make up one well known online encyclopaedia site could be transferred over SJ5 in approximately 2.2 seconds!

All Regional Networks across the country will eventually upgrade to SJ5, but Net North West is amongst the first two; bringing the newest JANET technology to users in the North West. This upgrade is the first step in a six year programme which will lead to increased speeds and reliability for all users of JANET, and will create new opportunities for e-research and e-science across the UK.

Net North West has been working to support this JANET upgrade by ensuring that its own network provides excellent reliability and can support the increases in speeds. New links have been installed between sites to ensure that if any of them fail, there is always another route by which data can travel to reach its destination, almost like a diversion on the road. Tim Robinson, Technical Director of Net North West said, “In developing SJ5, UKERNA and NNW set out to provide a highly reliable network service that is underpinned by a resilient infrastructure. All the indications are that the latest version of JANET will fully meet our users’ expectations.”