Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Ireland, BU team up on network traffic R&D

By Patricia Resende, Correspondent

Researchers at Boston University’s Photonics Center have been tapped by Intune Networks, an early stage business in Dublin, Ireland, to be a testbed for the company’s new technology, Boston University, Intune Networks and Ireland’s Prime Minister Enda Kenny, announced recently.

Boston University hosted Prime Minister Kenny and Intune’s Vice President of Worldwide Sales Jim Lowrie to discuss Intune’s technology and announce the creation of a research and development partnership with the university and its Photonics Center.

The Boston University Research Switch and Transport Network (BURST), will look at Internet traffic and better ways to improve it based on Intune’s Optical Packet Switch and Transport (OPST) technology.

“They want to move their technology forward both to develop and to demonstrate its capabilities and that is the purpose of this testbed,” said BU Professor Alexander (Sasha) Sergienko.

The idea is to use the testbed to further develop the technology, which would improve data storage and telecommunication, and demonstrate it to all possible partners, according to Sergienko.

“That is the key to their new hardware and development,” he said. “Their way of moving signals around is completely different than traditional routing protocol for telecommunications systems. It’s much better suited for the cloud.”

“Our goal at the Photonics Center is to provide a public service to companies whether it be Google, Amazon.com or others,” Sergienko added. “The Irish government has funded a similar testbed in Dublin and would love to expand in the United States.”

 “Verizon is already interested in this and BBN Technologies Corp. is interested in getting involved,” Sergienko added. “(Verizon) is interested in linking our campus in Boston with their campus in Waltham.”

In 2005, BBN had a quantum network with nodes between it, BU and Harvard University. The network was sponsored by Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Fully operational since June 2004, the network runs under the streets of Cambridge, connecting the BBN’s campus with both Harvard and Boston universities. The DARPA funding dried up a few years ago, but the experiment did not according to Sergienko.

“It is a new technology and we believe it is a good way to do it,” Sergienko said. “This one has better speed and better handling of large volumes of communication between two points.”