Cisco Systems, Inc. has announced that the University of Granada (Spain) has renovated its network infrastructure with the Cisco Catalyst(R) 6500 Series Switches. The upgrade incorporates higher-capacity processors and 40 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet connectivity cards in order to establish aggregated links and obtain a connection to the 160 Gbps nucleus of the network backbone. Offering new services with high bandwidth consumption but minimum latency, the network has been designed to take into account the requirements of high availability, fault tolerance and highly secure access to data, greatly optimizing reaction to contingencies.

Key Highlights: The new-generation network -- known as RedUGRNova -- consists of Cisco(R) routing, switching and safety solutions, including: Catalyst 6500 Series Switches that were updated with Catalyst 6904 40 GE cards; Cisco Nexus(R) 5500 Series Switches to interconnect the two main university data centres and to unify the LAN and storage networks, including transport via Fibre Channel on Ethernet (FCoE); Cisco ASA firewalls; and the unified Cisco Prime(TM) Infrastructure management console. The Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches also incorporate the Supervisor Engine 2T, that can increase the Cisco Catalyst 6500 advanced service modules which add capacities for balancing load and monitoring traffic capability from 720 Gbps to 2 Tbps, quadrupling the number of devices or users that can connect to a network up to 10,000. These solutions allow the university to simplify control and resource monitoring at the same time as it provides internal support for the exponential growth in the number of users and high-output applications (HPC, or high-performance computing) requiring greater network capacity.

Such HPC applications include cloud services, IP voiceover, high-definition videoconferencing, instant messaging, e-learning, digital library, Internet television (UGR Media) and storage on SAN networks.