Ensuring that the power of the network is available to all, through simple, easy to use services is at the heart of GÉANT today and moving forwards. Created from user feedback, these services include advanced, end-to-end network monitoring that allows identification of problems before their impact is felt, secure roaming that enables researchers to work from anywhere within the network and, of course, the ability for users to easily control the speed and capacity necessary for their needs.
To deliver these services, the GÉANT backbone and the European national networks combine to create the GÉANT Service Area (GSA), a vast multi-domain, service infrastructure that enables NRENs to provide network services and applications at a local level by standardising procedures, security and development practices.
“The combination of national research networks and the international reach of GÉANT underpin the collaboration that European researchers need. The GÉANT Service Area enables researchers to focus on their projects, rather than the underlying technology, wherever they are located. In effect, NRENs, via GÉANT, bring big science to the desktop via e-Science, helping to ease digital divides. High-end cross-country experiments and Research & Technological Development initiatives are empowered with advanced connectivity, bonding millions of researchers and distributed resources within an international digital village. Our networking infrastructures, supplemented with shared computing resources scattered in Europe and beyond, instantiate a cloud for science and education. In fact this ubiquitous cloud enables European researchers, both academic and industrial, with a platform for Future Internet experiments on testing advanced e-services over next generation network technologies.” Vasilis Maglaris, NREN Policy Committee Chair, National Technical University of Athens |
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In just ten years GÉANT has transformed European research, delivering the speed and services to enable greater collaboration and benefits for all. Already plans for the future are well-advanced, including a move to introduce 100Gbps connections to ensure that GÉANT remains the most advanced research network in the world.