Janet is to use the 6500 packet-optical platform from Ciena, which is equipped with the firm's WaveLogic Coherent Optical Processors. The kit will be used for Janet6, the next generation of the Janet offering to colleges, universities and schools, that will go live by October 2013.
The new "highly flexible, scalable and cost-effective" network, said Janet, will "help drive the UK's knowledge economy by connecting and supporting the unique requirements of the research and education community".
Ciena will deliver 100 Gigabit per second capacity to support largescale e-science, distributed computing and cloud projects, and will "cost-effectively" scale to 400G and beyond as requirements change, said Janet.
The capacity will support Janet's participation in the Higgs Boson project at CERN and the European VLBI Network (EVN) of telescopes.
Ciena and Janet are working together to enable a straightforward migration from the existing SuperJANET5 network. The agreement includes network design, installation, technical and operational support, as well as network maintenance for a five-year period.
Jeremy Sharp, head of strategic technologies at Janet, said, "Janet's users will have access to a highly reliable and flexible 100G network that will reach the 400G milestone as requirements evolve."
Janet recently named the suppliers for its £50 million cloud infrastructure framework contract. Verizon, Capita, Dell, Eduserv, Fujitsu, HP, Liberata and Logicalis are among the suppliers.