AARNet peers with Amazon Web Services

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blog Work for one of Australia’s universities and use Amazon Web Services? Your life just got a little better. Today AARNet, the telecommunications network serving Australia’s university sector, announced it would peer with AWS for fun and profit. Sure, this isn’t as good as an AWS datacentre located in Australia. But it’s not bad either. AARNet’s statement:

AARNet, Australia’s Academic and Research Network, has today announced it is peering with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in Seattle, USA, in a move that will benefit AARNet members and customers in Australia’s Research and Education community.

Connectivity is across the AARNet/Southern Cross Cable Networks’ SXTransPORT link to the USA, providing AARNet members and customers with high-speed (10 gigabits per second) uncongested access to AWS’s suite of on-demand cloud computing, data storage and other infrastructure services.

“We’re always looking for opportunities that maximise the network’s capabilities and peering with Amazon delivers multiple benefits,” said AARNet’s Chief Operating Officer, Don Robertson. “For data intensive projects and global collaborations, Amazon provides Australian researchers and educators with a choice of high-performance, scalable and cost-effective computing and storage options as and when needed,” Robertson said.

This new peering agreement also offers AARNet members and customers the added cost advantage of international unmetered charging for all data transfers to and from Amazon’s US-WEST-2 (Oregon) Region. “AARNET peering with Amazon Web Services lights a path to leverage the most scalable compute and storage platform on the planet by disrupting the bandwidth barrier,” explained Macquarie University’s Chief Information Officer Marc Bailey.

“Macquarie University is one of the leaders in the Australasian higher education sector in embracing cloud computing. This will empower our people to break new ground and cloudsource everyday research, teaching and learning activities. AARNET makes cloud uniquely possible in our context,” Bailey said.

Image credit: Amazon

5 COMMENTS

  1. Peering across the Pacific is nice and all. But it hardly makes up for the massive latency issue that can be a problem when using AWS as the backend for a local system. This is only a clear major plus for users who put entire web based app over in the USA. Local desktop apps or on site web services connecting to AWS powered backend systems wont see much benefit.

    Peering to the Singapore region or the Japan region would have been better for Australian AWS users and AARNet customers.

  2. That’s what’s being announced tomorrow at their Customer Appreciation Day, supposedly.

    CRN and iTNews are the only two actually talking about it as def happening though.

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