The European Research and Education Networks - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 145

THE PAN-EUROPEAN
GÉANT NETWORK

GÉANT is commonly referred to as the “net-
work of networks” since it provides high speed
backbone network that presently interconnects 36
European NRENs (refer to Table 1 in section 3).
Furthermore, GÉANT directly connects to other
non-European networks with links to, for example,
North America ( ESnet , <http://www.es.net/>; In-
ternet2 , <http://www.internet2.edu/>), the Medi-
terranean ( EUMEDCONNECT2 , < http://www.
eumedconnect2.net/>), Latin America ( ALICE2 ,
< http://alice2.redclara.net/>), the Asia-Pacific
( TEIN3 , <http://www.tein3.net/>), India ( ER-
NET , < http://www.ernet.in/ >), China ( ORIENT ,
< www.dante.net/orient>), Central Asia ( CAREN ,
< http://caren.dante.net/>), and Southern and
Eastern Africa ( UbuntuNet Alliance , < http://www.
ubuntunet.net/>) (GÉANT, 2009b). This enables
European scientists to undertake e-Research with
their counterparts across the world.
GÉANT is utilised for a wide range of col-
laborative research projects ranging from as-
tronomy, biotechnology, particle physics, seismol-
ogy to archaeology, medicine and climate change.
A few of these projects are discussed in section
4. The next section provides an overview of the
organisation of NRENs in Europe.

GÉANT, launched in the year 2000 with a funding
€200 million and with the objective of upgrad-
ing Europe's research and education networking
infrastructure, is the world's largest multi-gigabit
pan-European computer network dedicated to
research and education (EC Press Release, 2008).
GÉANT is presently in its third phase and is a
successor to GÉANT2. The Delivery of Advanced
Network Technology to Europe (DANTE, <http://
www.dante.net/>) is responsible for planning,
building and managing the GÉANT network.
The Trans-European Research and Education
Networking Association (TEREN, < http://www.
terena.org/>) is responsible for managing GÉANT
outreach activities and supports the co-ordination
of the research and development effort amongst
the 36 GÉANT project partners.
GÉANT provides advanced interconnectivity
between Europe's NRENs and operates at data
transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps across approxi-
mately 50,000 kilometres of network infrastruc-
ture, thereby enabling nearly 40 million research
and education users in over 8,000 institutions
across 40 countries to collaborate across multiple
disciplines throughout Europe and the rest of the
world (GÉANT Press Release, 2009). The GÉANT
project seeks to develop all aspects of European
research and education networking, including,
shaping the Internet of the future through the
network and a portfolio of advanced services for
the user community; tackling the digital divide of
research and education networking across Europe;
fostering technological research to assure Europe's
role at the forefront of networking and e-Science.
The portfolio of services offered includes con-
nectivity, virtual private networks with reserved
bandwidth capacity for specific project require-
ments, network performance monitoring tools
and secure roaming and authorisation services
(GÉANT Press Release, 2009).

NATIONAL RESEARCH AND
EDUCATION NETWORKS

Most of the countries in Europe have publicly-
funded national initiatives that provide network-
ing services geared towards their research and
educational institutes. These national networking
initiatives are called National Research and Educa-
tion Networks, or NRENs for short. NRENs are
responsible for delivering networking services
to Universities, institutes engaged in further and
higher education and government funded research
institutes. For example, JANET is UK's NREN
and it manages the network on behalf of Joint In-
formation Systems Committee (JISC) for the UK
Further and Higher Education Funding Councils.