GÉANT Global Connectivity

Collaboration in academic research is not just becoming more European, it is becoming more global. It is increasingly common for researchers in different continents to collaborate together within research projects, sharing research facilities and results. To do this, they need to be able to share data and applications, for which high capacity communications networks are essential. As research becomes increasingly international, GÉANT's connections to research networks in other world regions become increasingly important.

GÉANT provides international connectivity for the NRENs it connects, through a European Distributed Access, which provides a number of access points for connection with other world regions. The existence of the multi-gigabit core enables this connectivity to be efficiently and equitably shared among the connected countries. The multi-location approach facilitates the most cost-effective provision of connectivity.

Improving global connectivity has been a continuous effort and GÉANT now has a total of 12Gbps connectivity to North America, 2.5Gbps to Japan and 155Mbps to South Africa. These links provide connections between GÉANT and its equivalent networks in North America (Abilene, CANARIE and ESnet), Japan (SINET) and South AFrica (TENET).

In addition to the current connections to North America and Japan, other research networking projects have expanded GÉANT's connections to other world regions: the ALICE and EUMEDCONNECT initiatives both provide connectivity to GÉANT, for the Latin American and Mediterranean regions respectively. In future, connectivity to the Asia-Pacific region will be provided through the TEIN2 project.

The strong level of interest in GÉANT is a recognition of the success of European research networking and its world-leading achievements. The organisation of European research networking - its clear hierarchical model - is an important factor in its success: so much so, in fact, that this model is now being exported to other world regions in recognition of its efficiency for delivering research networking services successfully. This is the case currently for the ALICE initiative for the Latin American region. More information about the European organisational model is available from the link alongside.

A particular strength of the European research networking model is that it provides naturally for inter-regional interconnection as a logical next step: that is, the interconnection of different world regions in an organised and efficient manner. It may take a number of years for such coordination at global level to emerge fully, but steps in this direction are already being taken. Due to the success of European research networking, Europe plays an influential and leading role in the development of research networking worldwide.