After years of negotiations and maintenance work, Cybera is pleased to announce that a high-speed networking point of presence (PoP) has been installed in Red Deer. Red Deer College and the Red Deer Public School District were the first institutions to connect to the new PoP, at a rate of up to 1 Gbps.
Utilizing this powerful connection, educators and researchers in Red Deer will be better able to carry out projects, such as data-intensive video and game production. The network system was made possible by funding support from CANARIE, who, together with Cybera and 11 other provincial / territorial partners, form Canada’s National Research and Education Network (NREN). Cybera manages the Alberta-portion of the NREN, also called CyberaNet.
“Networking points of presence are vitally important to the development of our education and research systems, as they allow schools, post-secondary institutions, and public organizations to receive very fast, almost unlimited bandwidth,” says Cybera’s Network Manager, Jean-Francois Amiot.
As well as receiving unlimited bandwidth, the newly-connected Red Deer institutions will also be able to achieve more efficient WiFi by selectively routing their IPv6 traffic over the NREN.
“By connecting to CyberaNet, Red Deer College students and faculty now have faster access to key online resources that support teaching and research,” says the College’s Chief Information Officer, Doug Doran. “It has been great working with the Cybera team — with the support of the City of Red Deer’s technical team — to make our connection to the PoP possible.”
Additional Network Upgrades to Stay Ahead of Growing Demands
Cybera’s network team has also kept busy in recent months upgrading connections and adding new capabilities to CyberaNet. In Lethbridge, a backup link to the NREN now adds redundancy to the region’s 10 Gbps connection.
In Edmonton, Cybera’s recent connection to the city’s Internet Exchange will help this local internet hub to grow. Cybera has also begun the process of connecting its network to the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (AMII).
Finally, network staff have upgraded Cybera’s routers in Calgary, Edmonton, and Lethbridge to increase the resiliency of CyberaNet and prepare it for future growth.
To find out more about Cybera and the research and education community it serves, visit our network information page.