Bioinformatics resources can contain several petabytes (1015 bytes) of data, and downloading these for analysis behind a firewall is often necessary. But the task of transferring them is subject to the vagaries of web traffic, which can be slow and unpredictable.
Europe’s Research and Education Networks, including JANET and GEANT, have upgraded the physical infrastructure to allow for dedicated, secure and private transfer of data between institutes. Capitalising on this development, the Finnish Node of ELIXIR and EMBL-EBI built a new dedicated lightpath to allow for the transfer of major European Genome-phenome Archive (EGA) datasets between the UK and Finland. Once fully scaled up, these tools will enable the transfer of massive datasets between European institutes over allocated lines in a timely and predictable manner.
This ELIXIR Pilot Action won an Enlighten Your Research Global award in November 2013.