Collaboration between Russian researchers and their European counterparts has taken a major step forward with the completion of a new high speed network connection. Created by the joint efforts of DANTE, the organisation that on behalf of Europe's NRENs has built and operates the GÉANT pan-European network, and the e-ARENA Association, Russia's National Research and Education Network (NREN) jointly with JSCC of RAS, the links and new Point of Presence (PoP) in Moscow will drive closer collaboration in areas as diverse as particle physics and astronomy.
 

Whilst Russia is already connected to GÉANT, the new PoP and upgraded links will enable faster connections between Russia and other European countries and the launch of new, user-focused services such as GÉANT Plus. This makes it simple to create point-to-point circuits or Virtual LANs (VLANs) between international projects that need to share vast amounts of data, such as CERN's Large Hadron Collider and the work of the Russian Institute of Astronomy, INASAN.
 

"The power of our new connections will transform research collaboration with our European partners," said Marat Biktimirov, Director-General, e-ARENA Association. "It opens up new opportunities to our researchers and scientists and will lead to advances in projects across all academic disciplines. This link is part of the ongoing development of Russian research networking with e-ARENA providing the umbrella to bring all of our research networks together both technically and organisationally."
 

Operating at speeds of up to 10 Gbps, the new connections link Moscow to Frankfurt and Copenhagen, allowing users of GÉANT and their counterparts on Russia's three research networks RASNet (JSCC), RUNNet (INFORMIKA) and RBNet (RIPN) to share information quickly and seamlessly.
 

"Russia is a significant part of the international research community, and this substantial network upgrade will deliver major benefits in collaboration between users," said Matthew Scott, General Manager of DANTE. "Creating this link has been a complex technical process, but through close partnership with e-ARENA and our network providers users now have access to high speed connectivity and services that make international collaboration seamless and straightforward."


About GÉANT

GÉANT is the high speed European communication network dedicated to research and education. In combination with its NREN partners, GÉANT creates a secure, high speed research infrastructure that serves 40 million researchers in over 8,000 institutions across 40 European countries. Operating at speeds of up to 40 Gbps, GÉANT is the world's largest and most advanced multi-gigabit network dedicated to research and education. Building on the success of its predecessors, GÉANT has been created around the needs of users, providing flexible, end to end services that transform the way that researchers collaborate. GÉANT is at the heart of global research networking through wide ranging connections with other world regions, underpinning vital projects that bridge the digital divide and benefit society as a whole.
 

Co-funded by the European Commission under the EU's 7th Research and Development Framework Programme, GÉANT is the e-Infrastructure at the heart of the EU's European

Research Area and contributes to the development of emerging internet technologies. The project partners are 32 European National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), TERENA and DANTE. GÉANT is operated by DANTE on behalf of Europe's NRENs. For more information, visit http://www.geant.net
 

About e-ARENA

National association of research and educational ?-Infrastructures "e-ARENA" was established as a non-profit organisation for coordinating efforts of different organizations in Russian Federation for creating and developing the e-infrastructures for science and higher education. One of the basic objectives was formation of Association as a Russian NREN. e-ARENA Association was organized by three major IT-Centres for science and higher education in Russia (JSCC, INFORMIKA and RIPN). In particular, JSCC represent academic area and all Russian science and education community in GÉANT project as a partner. RIPN represent research sphere, participate in many international networking projects and has long term collaboration with SURFNet and DANTE. INFORMIKA represent university area and has long term collaboration with TERENA and NORDUNet.
 

Furthermore the "e-ARENA" Association was appointed ICT National Contact Point of FP-7 (ICT-NCP) by Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation. www.e-arena.ru

 

About DANTE

DANTE is a non-profit organisation, coordinator of large-scale projects co-funded by the European Commission, and working in partnership with European National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) to plan, build and operate advanced networks for research and education. Established in 1993, DANTE has been fundamental to the success of pan-European research and education networking. DANTE has built and operates GÉANT, which provides the data communications infrastructure essential to the success of many research projects in Europe. DANTE is involved in worldwide initiatives to interconnect countries in the other regions to one another and to GÉANT. DANTE currently manages projects focussed on the Mediterranean, Asia-Pacific and central Asia regions through the EUMEDCONNECT, TEIN and CAREN projects respectively. For more information, visit www.dante.net