Current status

GÉANTGÉANT https://www.geant.org/ manages the pan-European research and education network which links together and offers transnational access to RIs and research resources by providing interconnectivity between National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) across 43 European countries. The NRENs connect universities, research institutes, and sometimes other public institutions in each country. The access to NREN resources is managed nationally and the policy differs slightly from country to country. In addition to pan-European connectivity, the GÉANT network has international connections to a large set of partner networks worldwide, enabling international collaboration on research and education. Most large-scale Research Infrastructures can connect to the local NREN and thus access GÉANT enabling worldwide communications. Projects can also work with their NREN and GÉANT for international point to point links to connect parts of the Research Infrastructures that are distributed over Europe or beyond. If the project or infrastructure is distributed across national boundaries, GÉANT can help coordinate with the relevant local NRENs and advise on appropriate technical solutions. GÉANT also provides important services for researchers, such as innovation test beds.

GÉANT delivers a range of networking services at the international level. Most of these services match those offered at national level by the NRENs. The GÉANT NREN CompendiumGÉANT NREN Compendium https://compendium.geant.org/#!/ gives an overview of all NRENs, their services and the contact information. The connectivity delivered by GÉANT is supported by a comprehensive range of network monitoring and management services for e.g. optimizing network performance and continuous monitoring. Users can also benefit from the range of GÉANT network monitoring, security and support services employed by NRENs to assure optimum performance for projects and institutions.

Leading research is today often conducted in a highly distributed and mobile environment where researchers freely collaborate across boundaries. The research communities need to manage access to their services from participants in many organisations and individual researchers need to easily and securely access multiple tools, services and datasets. Trust and identity therefore take up a pivotal position in the e-Infrastructure ecosystem. Here, federated authorization and authentication services simplify access to inter-organisational resources, allowing controlled and secure access. By forming a layer connecting the power of the network with computing, data and cloud infrastruc­tures, such services enable safe and secure research throughout Europe and beyond. In this context, a number of services for the research community are provided to the research community by GÉANT. These services include eduroam that facilitates access to wireless networks in campuses around the world and eduGAIN that provides a framework for interoperation between digital identity federations.

Figure 1. This map has been downloaded from the GÉANT website. Last update: January 2018 https://www.geant.org/Resources/Documents/G%C3%89ANT_Topology_Map_January_2018.pdf