INITIATE boasts its low latency 10Gbps Layer-2 network connectivity between the connected sites enabling researchers and SMEs to utilize one of its kind feature-rich test-network in the UK. Currently, 5 major (academic and industrial) testbeds are part of the network. The measured average network latency between connected testbeds are listed below.
| Site-1 | Site-2 | Network Latency(RTT) |
| University of Bristol | King’s College London | 5.5ms |
| University of Bristol | Digital Catapult | 5.5ms |
| University of Bristol | University of Lancaster | 11ms |
| University of Bristol | University of Edinburgh | 12.5ms |
| King’s College London | Digital Catapult | 4.5ms |
The interconnection is provided by the Jisc’s JANET network with the endpoints terminating at the Virtus datacentre at Slough, U.K. The interconnection is managed by the Corsa DP2400 SDN enabled switch providing dynamic network connectivity across the testbeds. On top of the infrastructure is the Exchange software designed and developed by the INITIATE consortium enabling easy testbed integration and use-case and network service deployments over the test network. SMEs and researchers can either opt to use the virtualized network services and deploy them using the ETSI based Open Source MANO enabled INITIATE exchange or directly by providing the VM images. Currently, the interested experimenters/SMEs can contact us using this website with their requirements. The following figure shows the connected testbeds with the highlighted features and average network latency between each connected site and the datacentre at Slough. Further details of the testbeds are listed on our testbeds page.
