Canarie - About Us

Download CANARIE 101: Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network

CANARIE designs, delivers, and drives the adoption of digital infrastructure for Canada’s research and education communities. CANARIE keeps Canada at the forefront of digital research and innovation, fundamental to a vibrant digital economy.

CANARIE’s roots are in advanced networking, and CANARIE continues to evolve the national ultra-high-speed backbone network that enables data-intensive, leading-edge research and big science across Canada and around the world. One million researchers, scientists and students at over 1,100 Canadian institutions, including universities, colleges, research institutes, hospitals, and government laboratories have access to the CANARIE Network.

CANARIE also leads the development of research software tools that enable researchers to more quickly and easily access research data, tools, and peers. In support of Canada’s high-tech entrepreneurs, CANARIE offers cloud-computing services to help them accelerate product development and gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

CANARIE, together with twelve provincial and territorial network partners, forms Canada's advanced network alliance. This powerful digital infrastructure connects Canada's researchers and innovators provincially, nationally, and globally to the data, tools, colleagues, and classrooms that are at the heart of prosperity in the digital economy.

Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with the major investment in its programs and activities provided by the Government of Canada.

"CANARIE really is essential cyberinfrastructure these days. Research is much more data-intensive. Scientists record and analyze unprecedented amounts of raw data. They also require fast and reliable networks to collaborate with colleagues across the country and the globe. You absolutely need advanced networks and specialized applications to enable Canadians to lead and participate in the breakthroughs that push out our frontiers of knowledge and innovation."

Howard Alper, Chair, Science, Technology and Innovation Council

The network unites minds across the country and around the world, offering unconstrained bandwidth for research and innovation. Check out our map on the right to see which institutions in your community are benefiting from the high-speed, high-capacity CANARIE Network.

This dedicated, high-speed, fibre optic network is a critical tool for researchers, educators and innovators in universities, colleges, hospitals, private and public sector research labs, and schools across the country. In total, more than one million scientists, researchers and educators at over 1,100 institutions across Canada use CANARIE to improve our health, our environment, our economy and our future.

So how does CANARIE affect you? With Canadian scientists and researchers able to collaborate with peers, access data sets and tools, and share analyses, Canadians and their communities benefit from:

• A better understanding of our natural resources and how to ensure effective resource management practices, through access to data collected from a range of environmental sensors and instruments across the country;
• Enhanced weather modeling systems that provide meteorologists with accurate data on potentially dangerous weather events; and
• The development of intelligent transportation systems that make better use of existing transportation sensors, signal networks and video data to ease traffic congestion and improve incident response capabilities.

These are just a few examples of the thousands of research initiatives enabled by CANARIE. The advanced networking capability, and the development of new tools and software funded by CANARIE, means researchers can analyze and share very large amounts of data, collaborate more effectively, and apply research results in innovative ways. CANARIE works with researchers and developers in many scientific disciplines, across 12 regional networks in Canada, and with 100 international peer networks in more than 80 countries. These collaborations stimulate research, innovation and growth, which deliver economic, social, and cultural benefits to Canadians.

CANARIE is a non-profit corporation supported by membership fees, with major funding of its programs and activities provided by the Government of Canada.