VERN wins industry award
Wednesday 4th April 2007
The VERN network has won an award recognising its excellence in network infrastructure at an industry conference.
The national award acknowledged that the VERN is a 'dark fibre' network, with some 'active' infrastructure where needed to supplement the optic fibre. The award was for best "active network design".
It was announced in Sydney last week by Building Industry Consulting Services International, a telecommunications industry association. The BICSI evaluated the VERN as "a leading-edge communications platform, providing significant client benefits".
Accepting the award, VERNet Technical Manager, David Calello, told the audience of more than 150 people that the network's design was a key factor in the win. "The VERN began with a very strong foundation - an outstanding design. The real credit for this goes to VERN's members who invested so much time and expertise at the outset on design principles," he said. "VERNet would also like to thank the universities, CSIRO, DEST and other government supporters, as well as BICSI for recognising the value the project will provide to members," he said.
The major contributors to the original VERN design were Monash University's Neil Clarke, Graeme Knox and Alan McMeekin.
The award highlighted several innovative aspects of the 1700 km VERN network. These included extensive resilience created by the loop-based architecture, where fibre loop recur on several different scales: regional, local, and in some cases for individual buildings.
Other praise was for the security and autonomy to be experienced by users of the VERN, and the capacity for future changes and expansions with comparitively small incremental investments.
BISCI also acknowledged VERNet's role in overcoming challenges during the network build, such as completing a complex rollout with a fixed amount of capital expenditure, and relatively short timelines. David Calello emphasised the high level of problem solving and collaboration needed from VERNet staff to overcome these challenges. He also thanked the Commonwealth and Victorian Governments for their support for the project.
Speaking after the event, VERNet's CEO John Carruthers said the award was encouraging. "In physical terms, the VERN network is about two thirds deployed," he said. "The most important thing this year is for VERNet to complete that and then begin to provide our member institutions with the circuit capacity they want. Along the way, it's good to recieve an award like this - it's encouraging for the company and its members."
VERNet is building the network as closely as possible to the original design principles established by members, he said. "With those principles very much in mind, we are building the best possible network we can afford that will suit our member institutions' needs," he said.
BICSI is a global non-profit association, supporting the design and installation of information transport systems.
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