GÉANT

GÉANT is the pan-European data network for the research and education community. It links national research and education networks (NRENs) across Europe, enabling faster collaboration on projects ranging from particle physics to medical research and the arts.

The project combines a high-bandwidth, high-capacity 50,000 km network with a growing range of services for users. These aim to make it simple and seamless for researchers to use GÉANT to work together, wherever they are located. Services include multi-domain monitoring (perfSONAR MDM), dynamic circuits (Bandwidth on Demand) and roaming (eduroam).

Plans were announced in May 2012 to extend capacity within the network to support up to 2 Tbps (terabits per second) capacity across the 50,000 km backbone network. This will allow users to transfer data at speeds of up to 100 Gbps.

Together with European NRENs, GÉANT securely connects 40 million users in over 8,000 institutions in 40 countries. Through links to research networks in other regions (such as Internet2 and ESnet in the USA, TEIN in Asia-Pacific and RedCLARA in Latin America), GÉANT allows collaboration between researchers on a global scale, reaching over 60 NRENs outside of Europe.

Co-funded by the European Union and Europe’s NRENs, the GÉANT network has been built and is operated by DANTE, on behalf of the European NRENs.

The project partners are 32 European NRENs, DANTE and TERENA; plus an additional four Associate NRENs.