GÉANT network expands

GÉANT, Europe's multi-gigabit computer network, is to be connected via high-speed links to regional research network infrastructures all over the world, the European Commission has announced. The aim of this latest expansion is to create a single global research network. GÉAN...

GÉANT, Europe's multi-gigabit computer network, is to be connected via high-speed links to regional research network infrastructures all over the world, the European Commission has announced. The aim of this latest expansion is to create a single global research network.

GÉANT was launched in 2000. Since then, as the world's largest computer network dedicated to research and education, it has built connections between researchers from Reykjavik, Iceland, to Vladivostok, Russia. It currently serves about 30 million users in more than 3,500 universities and research centres and connects 34 national research networks.

GÉANT's latest expansion will link it to emerging research network infrastructures in the Balkans, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean regions as well as Asia, Southern Africa and Latin America.

'With GÉANT's massive data processing capacity, Europe can now bring together the best minds in the world to tackle the challenges that we all face,' said EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding. 'Europe's financial investment in a high speed backbone network for research - around €23 million per year - benefits Europe's competitiveness, but is also boosting collaboration between researchers on a global scale.'

'By investing a further €90 million up to 2012 in the 3rd generation GÉANT, the EU is committed to staying at the forefront of the Internet's evolution, and to making scientific collaboration seamless and straightforward,' Commissioner Reding added.

The GÉANT network in its current form is partly funded by the European Commission under its Sixth Framework Programme (FP6), receiving a total of €93 million over a period of nearly five years. Further financial support is provided by participating countries.

As the advanced pan-European backbone network connecting National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) across Europe, GÉANT has contributed to various scientific projects. For instance, in the framework of the EU radio astronomy project EXPReS, it provides the bandwidth needed for transferring massive amounts of data between the world's largest radio telescopes in China, Europe, South Africa and Chile and a supercomputer in the Netherlands.

GÉANT will also be involved in the global communications support for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which is said to be the largest scientific experiment ever undertaken. When the LHC goes online later this year, it will depend on the transmission of unprecedented quantities of data amounting to 15 million gigabytes per year to 5,000 scientists around the globe.