Newly deployed high-performance network link from Montreal to New York will enable delivery of big data streams to support academic and scientific research

Ciena® Corporation (NASDAQ: CIEN), the network specialist, today announced that CANARIE, Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network, has deployed Ciena’s 6500 Packet-Optical Platform equipped with third generation WaveLogic Coherent Optical Processors to support the 100G (100 Gigabits per second) upgrade and network expansion of a route connecting Montreal and New York. The new ultra-high-speed network link will sustain the “big data” streams used in today’s advanced academic and scientific research. For example, the 100G link can allow a full two hour HD movie to download in 4/10ths of a second.

Given today’s increasingly data-intensive and global environment, it is vitally important that CANARIE work with cutting-edge equipment, such as that provided by Ciena, to support their bandwidth requirements.

Key Facts:

  • Last      year, CANARIE experienced 83 percent growth in data traffic, going from 46,149      Terabytes to 84,630 Terabytes in just twelve months. Much of this data      comes from “big data” projects like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at      CERN in Europe, where they recently discovered proof for the existence of      the Higgs’ boson particle. Canada’s TRIUMF facility in Vancouver is a      Tier-1 data site for the LHC computing grid and uses the CANARIE network      to transfer data to and from the other sites.
  • Spanning across Canada – from      Victoria, BC to St John’s, NL - CANARIE’s network connects more than 89      universities, 101 colleges, 47 CEGEPS,      127 provincial and federal government labs and research parks, 62 hospitals      and health networks, 24 cultural institutions, thousands of K-12 schools,      12 provincial and territorial optical network partners, and more than 100      international peer networks in 80 countries. Its unparalleled footprint      and diverse user base enabled the transmission of 84,630 Terabytes      of data last year.
  • The upgraded Montreal to New York link will provide high-performance optical transport to enable the delivery of big data streams and foster greater scientific collaboration – both in-region and internationally – for key Canadian research and education centers that are working on projects including everything from particle physics to genomics and neuroscience.

Executive Comments:

  • “With      Ciena’s 100G technology, we are able to expand and upgrade the Montreal to      New York route of our vast R&E network, while at the same time      significantly reducing our operating costs and increasing performance over      this busy link. This is a first step in doing the same at other segments      of our network. Ciena has been a critical research and technology partner to      CANARIE for more than two decades. CANARIE’s fibre optic networks and      Ciena’s optical technologies are invisible to end users, but this      infrastructure is absolutely critical to enabling academics, scientists      and researchers to leverage global big data resources to create new      knowledge and new opportunities for innovation.”
    - Jim Roche, president and CEO of CANARIE
  • “The research and education community relies on      cutting-edge communications technology for global collaboration to achieve      scientific advancements, which our OPn architecture supports by enabling the economical and exponential scale      required to support high-bandwidth and collaborative research projects. Ciena      is proud to work with CANARIE on the evolution of its network, helping it to      deliver innovative new services and advanced research projects that support      tomorrow’s discoveries.”
    - Rod Wilson, senior director of external research at Ciena
  • “The TRIUMF Tier-1 LHC site is a leader in the field      by being consistently at the top in terms of availability, reliability,      and efficiency when compared to other sites in the world. There are      several factors that are reflected in our success and the network      infrastructure provided by CANARIE through providers like Ciena is      certainly one of them.”
    - Dr. Reda Tafirout, research scientist at TRIUMF

Recent Joint Demonstrations:

  • Ciena      and CANARIE have been showcasing emerging technologies and advanced      applications for science, research and education over high-speed, high      capacity research networks at several recent events, including at the TERENA Networking Conference (TNC2013),      and this week at an exclusive customer event at Ciena’s research and      development lab in Ottawa, Canada.
  • At      the TNC2013 demonstration, participants were able to control a robot arm      with haptic feedback while simultaneously controlling an identical remote      robot arm located miles away at another global location. To provide      participants with the needed three-dimensional visual depth feedback on      their movements at the remote location, the demonstration delivered ultra      high-definition video streams at extremely low latency to the event venues.      Multiple 3G-SDI uncompressed video streams were transmitted and kept in      sync with Ciena’s Native      Video Transport technology.
  • In      its Ottawa R&D lab, Ciena showcased its software defined networking capabilities in a demonstration that showed 4K video      delivery at 5 Gb/s over the CANARIE network using Ciena packet networking      technology featuring OpenFlow 1.3. As part of the demonstration, a video      was sent from a StarLight-Ciena connected network in Chicago over the      CANARIE network to Ciena’s lab in Ottawa.

Supporting Resources:

About CANARIE:

CANARIE designs, delivers, and drives the adoption of digital infrastructure for Canada’s research and education communities. CANARIE keeps Canada at the forefront of digital research and innovation, fundamental to a vibrant digital economy.

CANARIE’s roots are in advanced networking, and CANARIE continues to evolve the national ultra-high-speed backbone network that enables data-intensive, leading-edge research and big science across Canada and around the world. One million researchers, scientists and students at over 1,100 Canadian institutions, including universities, colleges, research institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories have access to the CANARIE Network.

CANARIE also leads the development of research software tools that enable researchers to more quickly and easily access research data, tools, and peers. In support of Canada’s high-tech entrepreneurs, CANARIE offers cloud-computing services to help them accelerate product development and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

CANARIE, together with twelve provincial and territorial network partners, forms Canada's advanced network alliance. This powerful digital infrastructure connects Canada's researchers and innovators provincially, nationally, and globally to the data, tools, colleagues, and classrooms that are at the heart of prosperity in the digital economy.

Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with the major investment in its programs and activities provided by the Government of Canada.

About Ciena
Ciena is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with OPn, its approach for building open next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. Investors are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website at www.ciena.com/investors, where we routinely post press releases, SEC filings, recent news, financial results, other announcements and, from time to time, exclusively post material information as with the other disclosure channels that we use.

Note to Ciena Investors
Forward-looking statements. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business, which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-Q, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission June 12, 2013. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Ciena's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.