Computing power and disk storage across the world

For a world-renowned laboratory like CERN with collaborating institutes around the world, cross-border collaboration is of vital importance. In a conversation with SWITCH, Tony Cass highlights some of the benefits for international research.

Published on 20.06.2019

Tony Cass, as the leader of the IT communication systems group IT-CS, you are responsible for a vast range of infrastructural services at CERN. What exactly are they?

Firstly, there’s internal networking any institution would have: campus wide Wi-Fi and cabled networks reaching out to every building on the CERN sites. Then we have a high throughput data centre network with links to the pan-European GÉANT network, ESnet and our partners worldwide. We also have a dedicated network for critical equipment associated with the accelerators. Then there are the fixed and mobile telephony service and a TETRA digital radio service for our Fire and Rescue Service.