Deutsche Telekom International Carrier Sales & Solutions has been appointed to provide a high-speed data connection between the CERN data centre in Geneva and a new remote data centre in Budapest.

In Geneva, CERN operates the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This facility allows scientists to explore the structure of matter and the fundamental interactions between elementary particles. The experiments generate huge volumes of data. To process them, CERN and partner institutes have developed a distributed computing system, the so-called Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). More than 10,000 researchers around the world use CERN's computing infrastructure for their experiments.

With the Wigner Data Centre, CERN aims to create additional IT capacity for research activities. Computer systems will be able to transmit enormous volumes of data via the high-speed Deutsche Telekom ICSS connection between the Geneva and Budapest sites. In addition to huge data rates, CERN requires high data transmission reliability and connection availability. The research organization sought a telecommunications service provider able to meet these extremely demanding gigabit Ethernet requirements.

T-Systems Switzerland worked in close cooperation with ICSS to meet CERN's needs. "We believe our deep technical expertise and network quality were key," said Holger Magnussen, Senior Vice President, International Carrier Sales & Solutions, at Deutsche Telekom. "We were able to make a tailored offer within a relatively short time through the close collaboration of experts from T-Systems Switzerland and the International Carrier Sales & Solutions and Global Network units."

"The state-of-the-art Deutsche Telekom 100 gigabits per second circuit between CERN and the Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Budapest will not only expand our physics processing capabilities, but will also allow us to refine our Business Continuity strategy. This new contract strengthens our existing relationship, since Deutsche Telekom has been a long-standing member of the CERN Internet Exchange Point (CIXP) and one of the regular providers of CERN's connectivity to the commodity Internet," said David Foster, Deputy Head of the CERN IT Department.