NETGEAR integrates NARL with M4500-CSM4532 fully managed switches, ensuring a clean, modern, and fully redundant architecture and keeping its research operations running seamlessly
Published on 20th April 2026
NARL, one of the leading atmospheric research institutes in India, required a high-performance, always-on network to handle massive volumes of scientific data. Recognising the project’s complexity, NETGEAR delivered an MLAG-based solution with true Active-Active connectivity and 200 Gbps throughput per node, eliminating downtime and multicast issues. The result is a fully resilient, future-ready network supporting uninterrupted 24/7 research.
The Challenges
As NARL’s scientific ambitions grew, so did the strain on its network infrastructure. Every day, petabytes of atmospheric and radar data need to be captured, transferred, and stored with absolute precision. The research teams depended on constant, high-speed access to this data. Any disruption, no matter how brief, could compromise ongoing experiments and delay critical observations. The existing design struggled to keep up with this demand, and it became clear that NARL required an entirely new foundation built for non-stop scientific operations.
NARL needed true Active-Active connectivity, a system where every storage path remained live, resilient, and load-balanced at all times. Complicating matters further, the team had previously encountered performance issues due to L2 multicast flooding, which created unpredictable traffic behaviour across the network.
To support their high-performance storage systems, the new design had to deliver dual 100G uplinks, providing a full 200 Gbps of throughput to every storage node. This level of bandwidth was critical for handling concurrent writes, massive dataset transfers, and the continuous flow of sensor data.
Redundancy was equally vital. The network could not afford a single point of failure anywhere in the chain. Yet NARL’s technical leadership quickly ruled out traditional stacking solutions. Stacking created a dependency on a single control plane and could not deliver the true Active-Active behaviour they required. Any failure in the stack master would have risked bringing down the entire storage fabric, an unacceptable scenario for a 24/7 research organisation.
The Solution
To meet NARL’s demanding performance and availability needs, NETGEAR designed a resilient network built on Multi-Chassis Link Aggregation (MLAG). This architecture gave NARL the true Active-Active storage connectivity they required, something traditional stacking could never reliably provide.
Each storage system was connected with dual 100G uplinks into two independent M4500-CSM4532 fully managed switches, delivering a combined 200 Gbps of uninterrupted throughput. At the centre of the design, the M4300-96X full managed switches formed a highly available core, ensuring no single point of failure existed anywhere in the network.
The MLAG framework eliminated the multicast flooding challenges NARL had previously faced, bringing stable and predictable traffic behaviour to their radar, sensor, and compute-intensive workflows. Surrounding this core, a robust mix of fully managed switches - GSM4328S and GSM4352S, WAX610 access points, and GS110TP smart switches completed the end-to-end solution.
The Outcome
With NETGEAR’s MLAG-based solution in place, NARL successfully transformed its network into a highly available, high-throughput backbone built for scientific excellence. The new design delivered true Active-Active connectivity across the storage fabric, ensuring that data flowed continuously without interruption. Dual 100G links provided an impressive 200 Gbps of bandwidth to each storage system, allowing massive datasets from atmospheric sensors and radars to move effortlessly through the network.
One of the most significant improvements came from the complete elimination of multicast flooding. Traffic behaviour became stable and predictable, enabling researchers to work with confidence even during peak scientific workloads. Just as importantly, the architecture removed every single point of failure, giving NARL a level of resilience that traditional stacking solutions simply could not match.
The network is now future-ready, capable of scaling alongside the growing demands of atmospheric research. With NETGEAR, NARL has gained a robust, modern infrastructure that supports continuous discovery, day and night, without compromise.