fiber optic upgrades
400 Gbps Network Backbone Upgrades
Networkmaine, partnering with the University of Maine, was recently awarded a National Science Foundation Campus Cyberinfrastructure Grant. The grant funds networking equipment to the first two geographically diverse 400 Gbps network wavelengths on the MaineREN backbone. These wavelengths will run from the University of Maine (Orono) to the Northern Crossroads GigaPoP (Cambridge, MA) and the Massachusetts Green High-Performance Computing Center (Holyoke, MA), a research data center of growing importance in the region. In addition, intermediate add/drop support in Keene, New Hampshire, and Portland, Maine will be created to interconnect other northern New England research partners in the future.
These 400 Gbps waves will build upon previous investments in MaineREN, provide more than 10 times the current capacity along these paths, and facilitate increasing Maine’s connectivity to the regional (NEREN) and national (Internet 2) Research and Educations Networks, to 2 x 100 Gbps. Implementation is expected to be completed in the summer 2024 timeframe.