Operations Centre and Support

Operational Network Management

The GÉANT network is an extremely large and complex international service supporting a wide range of users and project across Europe and the rest of the world. Many of the technologies used by these projects are at the leading edge of high performance networking. The support team work closely with the technology providers to develop support and management systems to operate this network and the services on it.

The operations department handles the coordination and execution of GÉANT's operational service provision. The department consists of three Specialist Teams, and the Operations Centre.

The Operations Centre (OC)

Day-to-day management of the GÉANT network is handled by the Operations Centre (GÉANT OC). The GÉANT OC is provided by the DANTE Operations Centre.

The GÉANT OC acts as a first point of contact for its subscribers and other NOCs. It:

  • Receives reports of service problems
  • Diagnoses network problems
  • Oversees repairs and corrective maintenance
  • Resolves issues pertaining to the network and supported services and assists where required
  • Monitors network health
  • Creates tickets for network incidents and planned maintenance

The GÉANT Operations Centre is active 24x7x365 (366 in a leap year!) days per year. The GÉANT OC has a particular responsibility for the support of GÉANT Multi-Domain Services i.e. those services which span several NRENs and GÉANT. In its capacity as the Multi-Domain Service Desk (MDSD) the GÉANT OC ensures the reliable and ongoing operation of those central systems and processes which underpin the multi-domain services.

Contact Details

You can call the GÉANT Operations Centre on +44 1223 733033. Please call the Operations Centre if you need to send an email but do not already have the address.

​Asif Noor
Asif has a strong background in IT and previously worked within the banking sector covering a variety of aspects of IT and IT project management, before deciding to bring his family to Cambridge. Asif has an Engineering Degree from the University of Karachi.

Luca Rinaldi
Luca is in his second stint working for DANTE having previously worked in the Operations team up until 2011. He brings a wide breadth of experience, strong optical and transmission knowledge and a solid operational and troubleshooting mindset to the team. Luca has spent the last three years working in the UAE supporting oil field communications systems. He hails from Italy originally but is fluent in several languages. Luca’s degree is in Electronic Engineering from Rome University and he spends some of his spare time keeping up to date on quantum physics.

Darren Clarke
Darren recently took time out of his career to return to Academia to complete a Computer Science Degree. Prior to that Darren held team manager roles in various organisations in the Cambridge area of England. He brings his broad skills and maturity to the team.​

​Josep Rovira
Josep has a varied background and came to IT and telecommunications later in his career. Before coming to research he combined a part time Computer Science Degree with his previous Technical role. Josep is from Spain and is a great assistance when dealing with Spanish or French speaking colleagues.

​Temoor Khan
Temoor began his career in the ISP industry and latterly worked in voice and transmission. As such Temoor is equally at home with all levels of the OSI stack. Temoor has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from UET Lahore.

Tony Barber
Tony has worked in the engineering industry for 28 years. Starting with OSS support in the UK Ministry Of Defence, Network Admin at the University of Oxford and then through the early days of the European Internet designing and building ISP backbones for the largest UK, European and Global ISPs of their day. He then left the enterprise world to start an engineering business which grew successfully for nearly 10 years before deciding on a change of direction. Following a career break and a brief spell of commercial flying he ended up working back in the Academic world with the GÉANT project. He has a degree in Information Technology and Telecommunications. ​

 

Related Information and Links

  1. Ticket city codes table 
  2. GÉANT Ticket System Customer Portal
  3. GÉANT tools portal
  4. Visiting the GÉANT Operations Centre
  5. GÉANT Support Communication Details
  6. GÉANT Operations Centre Key Performance Indicators – Response Times
  7. GÉANT Multi Domain maintenance calendar

    

​ Contact details

​Contact the GÉANT Operations Centre on +44 1223 733033.

The Centre is active 24x7x365 days per year.