Geant Network

Improving global connectivity has been a continuous effort and GEANT now has 12Gbps connectivity to North America, and 2.5Gbps to Japan. Additional connections to GEANT have been established to the Southern Mediterranean through the EUMEDCONNECT project. The first interconnection circuit to GEANT from ALICE (America Latina Interconectada con Europa), the Latin American research network, was established on 1 September 2004. Connection to South Africa was also established, on 26 October 2004. Work is also underway to establish additional connections to GEANT for NRENs from the Asia-Pacific region (through TEIN2).

The GEANT IPv6 service came into full production during October 2003. The majority of GEANT NRENs have an IPv6 connection to GEANT whilst basic IPv6 monitoring is in place and operational procedures are available. The full implementation of IPv6 on the GEANT backbone was completed in July 2003. A number of other networks such as 6NET, CERN, ABILENE and CANARIE also connect via IPv6. In addition, two commercial IPv6 peerings with Telia and Global Crossing were established. In addition, two gateways between GEANT and 6NET were implemented in Amsterdam and in Frankfurt via STM-1 connections, in June 2003. The main goal of these gateways was to provide a redundant connection that would allow NRENs only connected to 6NET to communicate with NRENs only connected to GEANT. The two connections were discontinued in October 2004 as they became redundant after the respective connections were integrated into GEANT.

GEANT provides state-of-the-art European international data connectivity for the research and education community. Table below compares the development of individual international (trunk) circuits at the beginning and end of the project. A significant increase in bandwidth over the course of four and a half years is demonstrated clearly, both in terms of total bandwidth available (over 50%) and of average bandwidth (around 70%). FROM-TO: Year 1 (Mbps)-Year 5 (Mbps) AUSTRIA-SWITZERLAND 10000-10000 AUSTRIA-GERMANY 2500-10000 AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 2500-10000 AUSTRIA-SLOVENIA 622-2500 BELGIUM-FRANCE 2500-2500 BELGIUM-LUXEMBOURG 155-155 BELGIUM-HOLLAN 2500-2500 SWITZERLAND-FRANCE 10000-10000 SWITZERLAND-ITALY 10000-10000 CZECH-GERMANY 10000-10000 CZECH-POLAND 2500-2500 CZECH-SLOVAKIA 2500-2500 GERMANY-FRANCE 10000-10000 GERMANY-GREECE 622-2500 GERMANY-IRELAND 155-2500 GERMANY-ITALY 10000-10000 GERMANY-HOLLAND 2500-10000 GERMANY-SWEDEN 10000-10000 SPAIN-FRANCE 2500-10000 SPAIN-ITALY 2500-10000 FRANCE-LU 155-155 FRANCE-UK 10000-10000 GREECE-ITALY N/A-2500 CROATIA-HU N/A-2500 CROATIA-SI N/A-2500 CROATIA-AUSTRIA 34-N/A HUNGARY-SLOVAKIA 2500-2500 IRELAND-UK 155-2500 ISRAEL-ITALY N/A-155 ISRAEL-NL N/A-155 ISRAEL-UK 45-N/A HOLLAND-UK 2500-10000 POLAND-SE 2500-10000 PORTUGAL-SPAIN 622-2500 PORTUGAL-UK N/A-2500 SWEDEN-UK 10000-10000 TOTAL 122,565-195,620 AVERAGE 7,907-11,178 The total number of circuits at 10Gbps is sixteen.

Work on the definition and validation of Premium IP and QoS took place in Year 2, whilst the actual implementation on GEANT routers occurred between November 2002 and February 2003. Great majority of GEANT nodes are configured to support Premium IP and LBE. After successful implementation of the Premium IP service there was a need to automate the service's operational management procedure. A study of the manual provisioning model was conducted and a flexible automated provisioning system was designed and developed using state-of-the-art web-based technologies. The Premium IP management system successfully completed its testing phase. In January 2004, the system was tested internally by DANTE. Subsequently, the system was made available for acceptance testing to its primary users, namely all the GEANT APMs. The system was implemented in production in March 2004. In the same month, the DHX-Project successfully used the system to make a 2Mbps Premium IP reservation between DFN and GRNet - the first ever production reservation made via the new reservation system. Other projects are now expected to follow, not least the upcoming DEISA project (see WP11). The typical procedure is that a user (having confirmed with their NREN) supplies the technical and administrative details of the required Premium IP reservation on a web interface. The system checks the path, resource availability and gives an instantaneous confirmation to the user. It also instructs the GEANT NOC to perform the required router configuration. The system is fully operational within the GEANT backbone.

Throughout the duration of the project presentations were given on the progress of GEANT, from initial implementation to completion. These have been to a variety of audiences including international conferences, national NREN conferences as well as commercial conferences and events. Throughout the duration of the project, a great number of articles were written relating to GEANT. In addition, co-operation with suppliers in the issuing of joint press releases and follow up in terms of press leads has been a feature of dissemination. Joint press releases were made with all of the major suppliers to GEANT including the GEANT NOC, CS Communications et Systemes. The importance of GEANT publicity was recognised and activity was stepped up in Year 2. A two-day GEANT launch event and conference was held and a major User Survey was started. A full-time Public Relations Manager joined DANTE in late May 2002, providing a senior-level focal point for communications, awareness, usage and user support activities within DANTE and also helping to inject a marketing approach into the ongoing activities of GEANT and develop a more customer-focused organisation. In Year 2, the NREN Policy Committee (NREN PC) established a Publicity Working Group (PWG), tasked with producing a publicity strategy for proposal to the PC. For Year 3 of the project, the PWG drafted a publicity strategy and action plan for GEANT, which provided the strategic framework and priorities for publicity activity. Of the thirteen actions in the Publicity Action Plan, eleven were successfully completed during year 3. The remaining two - a newsletter and the GEANT User Workshop were both completed in Years 4 and 5. The Works of DANTE newsletter was re-launched in September 2004, whilst the GEANT User Workshop was held in February 2005. A brief survey of Publicity activities and requirements was performed amongst the NRENs in November 2003 and the GEANT PR network, consisting of PR representatives of the NREN partners in the GEANT project and the DANTE PR department, was launched in December of the same year. The increase in the level of dissemination about GEANT, as measured by the quantities of literature and posters distributed, continued throughout the project lifespan. GEANT had a formal PR presence at increasing numbers of events in each successive year, in addition to frequent presentations being made about GEANT by DANTE and NREN staff at conferences and workshops. The new GEANT web site was launched and now presents much more information, and in a more accessible format, than previously. The GEANT logo is now routinely presented with its URL and also an explanatory tagline. The new GEANT web site uses a consistent page template to present content. Network monitoring tools are also being updated making use of a map template similar to that used for the GEANT posters.

GEANT is a pan-European multi-gigabit data communications network, reserved specifically for research and education use. It is creating the biggest interconnected community of scientists and academics in the world today, enabling them to share and distribute research data faster than ever before. It delivers exciting benefits to its users and will play an important role in shaping the future of European science. GEANT is the latest generation of pan-European research network infrastructure and is one of the most advanced and reliable networks in the world. It provides the highest capacity, and offers the greatest geographic coverage, of any network of its kind in the world. GEANT serves over 3,500 research and education institutions in 33 countries through 29 national and regional research and education networks. GEANT supports researchers by allowing them to: Rapidly transfer large quantities of data at up to 10Gbps Make use of advanced network applications such as grid computing Collaborate on research projects in real-time Perform previously unimaginable cutting-edge research Many types of research activity are facilitated by the GEANT network. Some examples are: DNA sequencing, where the network is used to transfer the huge amounts of data generated by gene sequencing, helping to speed up the notoriously slow process of developing new drugs and therapies.Distributed (or 'GRID') Computing, in which GEANT plays a significant role. GEANT also provides a platform for research into networking itself. It facilitates, and in some cases makes possible, many of the other activities carried out by the GEANT project.

Large international collaborations of scientific institutions and organisations, with advanced high-bandwidth network requirements (such as 6NET, DataTag, DataGrid, DEISA, EGEE, EVN-NREN (also known as JIVE), ATRIUM, LONG and several others were all supported during the reported period with a number of GEANT services.

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