Latvia’s LMT and MikroTik launch high speed research data network

Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) and Latvia-based wireless internet router and transmission equipment maker MIkroTik have built a high-speed, high capacity data network linking several medical and bioscience research institutions in the Latvian capital Riga.

The network, linking four research centers on a 10 gigabit per second (Gbps) network, will sharply cut the time needed to move massive data files related to gene sequencing and cancer research from days to minutes, LMT President Juris Binde told journalists.

LMT president Juris Binde presents the high speed research data network linking institutes in Riga, the Latvian capital (Photo-LMT)

MikroTik co-founder John Tully, an American entrepreneur who has lived in Latvia since the mid-1990s, sent a 103 gigabyte (Gb) file across the network in 94 seconds. Binde said the technology was a combination of fixed optical resources and dedicated high speed microwave links. The network doesn’t use 5G technology, which has been deployed in Latvia in a few location. The network was built for the research centers as a gift, LMT and MikroTik said in a press release.

The network in its current prototype stage connects the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre (BMC), the Children’s’ Clinical University Hospital, the gene sequencing company Latvia MGI Tech and the Riga Technical University High Performance Computing Center (RTU HPC), which can do data analysis with speeds…