TEN-34: The Information Superhighway for European researchers
TEN-34 (Trans-European Network Interconnect at 34 Mbp/s) is a major breakthrough in European research networking. The project, which is jointly funded by the "Telematics for Research" sector of the Telematics Applications programme and the ESPRIT (Information Technology) programme, is providing the European research community with its own Europe-wide high-speed data infrastructure. Today, nearly every Western European country has a national high-speed research network. Most have a capacity of 34 Mbp/s. Some, such as Britain's SuperJANET or Germany's B-WIN, offer throughput of up to 155 Mbp/s. The TEN-34 backbone network is upgrading the 2 Mbit/s international links between these national networks to 34 Mbit/s. Most European countries are now linked through TEN-34, and the remaining connections are progressively being completed. In the past, it was often cheaper for a European user to connect to the United States than to another European country. Thanks to TEN-34, this is no longer the case. The new inter-network links created mean that researchers from across Europe can exchange information and share ideas through a new "virtual European research laboratory". The TEN-34 project is coordinated by DANTE, a not-for-profit company owned and set up by a number of European National Research networks to organize and manage advanced network services for the research community at a European level. The consortium has partners in all EU Member States, as well as in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Norway, Slovenia and Switzerland.