Since early December 2019, the national network infrastructure for research and education managed by the Restena Foundation has a connection speed of 100 Gigabits per second (Gbit/s). Seven years after reaching the capacity of 10 Gbit/s, the connection bandwidth is now 10 times faster. Such a connectivity offers new possibilities for research and education in Luxembourg, especially for stakeholders processing enormous amounts of data in areas as diverse as High Performance Computing (HPC), biotechnology or the transfer of satellite imagery. Through this investment, the Restena Foundation confirms its commitment to provide research and education organizations with an infrastructure supporting their ambitions.

Performance upgrade

The national network managed by the Restena Foundation provides access to the pan-European GÉANT research network that brings together research networks from around 35 countries and provides access to research networks in the United States, Latin America, Russia and Asia. This pan-European network now provides Luxembourg with the necessary infrastructure to connect its national network at the speed of 100Gbit/s. The research and education actors located in the ‘cité des sciences’ in the Belval district of Esch-sur-Alzette can already now use its full potential. “This is the first time that Luxembourg’s research sector has been connected at such high bandwidth to its European and international partners” confirms Claude Tompers, Network and System Engineer at the Restena Foundation.

Luxembourg’s upgraded research and education connectivity is catching up with that of major European countries. Engineers of the Restena Foundation achieved this by modernizing the existing infrastructure at the two connection points in Bettembourg and Luxembourg-City, where they replaced both the connections and the routers. Previously connected at 2x10 Gbit/s, Luxembourg now switches to 2x100 Gbit/s. The network backbone will be completed in the course of 2020 to increase redundancy as well as the availability of very high capacity access points.

Impacted institutions

Point-to-point connections up to 100 Gbit/s, dedicated to research projects, can thus be set up among research and education institutions for interconnecting their different locations. The proposed connectivity can meet the requirements of research projects generating, analyzing and / or transmitting very large amounts of data. From mid-2020, engineers from the Restena Foundation will be able to offer interested institutions, upgrades to their connection and guarantee high-performance network access both between their different locations and European research centres.