GEANT2

What is GEANT2?

• 7th generation of pan-European research network infrastructure – continuation of a success story
• Project partners include 30 of Europe’s national research and education networks (NRENs), DANTE (coordinator) and TERENA
• Connects 34 European countries and serves over 3500 research and education establishments across Europe
• Over 30 million users
• Provides extensive international connectivity to other world regions
• Funded jointly by NRENs and European Commission
• Project timescale September 2004 – mid 2009
• Planning underway for GÉANT3; GEANT3 planned from Q3 2009 to Q2 2013
• Features: Hybrid network, 34 European Countries, International Connections

GEANT2 Objectives

• Provide a gigabit-speeds infrastructure to support European research and education
• Deploy the first international hybrid network: routed IP traffic combined with switched point-to-point circuits
• Implement e2e QoS provision
• Provide a research infrastructure for network technology developments
• Develop a wider range of network services: performance monitoring, security, bandwidth on demand, testbed facility, mobility and roaming
• Benchmark and support development of NRENs --> Compendium of NRENs
• Extend geographic reach of the network
• Conduct strategic studies into the future of European research networking (eg. SERENATE, EARNEST)
• Disseminate benefits and achievements of the network

EC has also funded/co-funded some regional RENs connected to GEANT, forming a worldwide REN collaboration. These include RedCLARA (Latin America), EUMEDCONNECT (Mediteran), TEIN (Asia), ORIENT (China) and SEEREN (Africa).

GEANT2 Intra and Inter-Network Connectivity (Courtesy of GEANT2/DANTE)

GÉANT2 Applications

GÉANT2 has a userbaseof 30 million+ researchers spread across 34 countries in Europa and many more in other world regions; they range from primary school children to nuclear physicists, from weather forecasters to cancer specialists; their requirements range from a few Kbps to many Gbps, from email to dedicated circuits

Information transmitted

Traditionally:

• Capacity of traffic: kbps
• Amount of users at the institution: Many
• Applications that are not very sensitive to underlying network (ie. e-mails, FTP, etc.)

Specialised:

• Capacity of traffic: More than 1Gbps
• Amount of users at the institution: dozens
• Applications between very specific points and very sensitive to throughput (ie. eVLBI, CERN LHC or DEISA)

Specialised Applications

High Energy Particle Physics (HEP)

• LHC (@ CERN) operational since 2007
• Needs multiple 10G links between the different nodes for the data processing
• Real time data processing

Radio Astronomy (eVLBI)

• Very Long Baseline Interferometry
• Flows of 1Gbps in real time (http://www.evlbi.org)

Supercomputing Centres

• e.gDEISA project (http://www.deisa.org)

GRIDS

• Like EGEE (http://www.eu-egee.org)

Services and Joint Research Activities

• End to End QoS
• Performance Monitoring
• Security
• Bandwidth on Demand
• Testbed, Cross Border Fiber
• Roaming, AAI

Credits : DANTE / cathrin-at-dante.org.uk