The very special thread that holds SWITCHlan together
Put in simple terms, glass fibres are thin threads of quartz glass, which are extremely elastic and resistant to ageing. They form the backbone of the SWITCHlan scientific network and constitute an exceedingly sustainable investment in the future.
High-performance "data highway"
SWITCHlan comprises a "data highway" some 2000 kilometres in length, which is made up of high-grade glass fibres. There are several good reasons for SWITCH opting for glass fibre technology: Glass fibres offer an exceedingly high performance, rarely suffer failure, are virtually 100% interception-proof and are hardly affected by temperature fluctuations. As so-called optical waveguides, they are capable of transporting light – including over long distances. It is not electric current that flows through the inside of the glass fibre, as is the case with copper cables, but laser light in the form of electromagnetic waves.
Customers benefit from quality and speed
Today, glass fibre technology is used in all the different segments of SWITCHlan: whether in our intranet, in wide-area networks (WANs) within the university and research world, or in the LANs (Local Area Networks) at our customers' organisations. Thanks to glass fibre technology, research groups within Switzerland and abroad are able to exchange large quantities of data at tremendous speed and in a superb quality.
Even in the event of glass fibre fracture: 99.99% security
The fact that glass fibres can literally "fracture" is unavoidable – but it is certainly possible to avoid prolonged interruptions to data traffic as a result. We have taken precautions for a situation where a SWITCHlan glass fibre is damaged by construction work or rodents. SWITCHlan has been configured with redundancy, which means that incidents of this type have no impact on our customers. For Swiss universities, which have two independent accesses to SWITCHlan, this means a network availability in excess of 99.99 percent – and hence less than 50 minutes interruption to the service each year.