Europe's essential terabit-ready network is the most advanced and well-connected research and education network in the world.
The GÉANT network continues to set the standard for speed, service availability, security and reach, delivering the high performance that more than 50 million users rely on.
GÉANT interconnects Europe's national research and education networking (NREN) organisations with an award-winning high bandwidth, high speed and highly resilient pan-European backbone – connecting Europe's researchers, academics and students to each other, and linking them to over half the countries in the world.
Critical to open science
The network is essential to Europe's e-infrastructure strategy, supporting open science with an exascale ready e-infrastructure and advanced networking services for trusted access. It offers the highest levels of capacity and security users need, where and when they need it.
GÉANT's role in Europe is unique: by interconnecting Europe's NRENs, we bring Europe's brightest minds together to collaborate virtually and accelerate research, drive innovation and enrich education.
GÉANT topology map
The first GÉANT network was launched in 2000 and has stayed well ahead of user needs ever since. Funded through the different phases of the GÉANT Project, it remains the most advanced and best connected research and education network in the world. The map below highlights the truly pan-European nature of the network, and shows topology at the time of publishing.
The GÉANT network technology
As one of the largest and most complex research and education networks in the world, the GÉANT network needs to support a diverse range of users and services from standard IP transit services to ultra-high capacity data centre interconnects. GÉANT has built a dual layer network able to integrate these service demands across a single core structure. The two layers are: transmission and packet.
Transmission layer
This is built on the dark fibre core of the network, either on GÉANT points of presence (PoPs) or on leased wavelengths from commercial providers or national research and education networking (NREN) organisations. GÉANT uses industry-leading Infinera DTN-X equipment to light this fibre, a cutting-edge optical transmission equipment that integrates hundreds of optical components on a single chip to deliver 500G super-channels. GÉANT employs Infinera DTN-X boxes and optical amplifiers to drive the fibre backbone. The DTN-X also includes an integrated OTN switching layer with a GMPLS control plane which allows rapid provision of bandwidth and fast capacity restoration in the case of fibre cuts. The Infinera equipment is used to deliver GÉANT Lambda services and IP trunks between the GÉANT routers.
Packet layer
The packet layer is a converged layer that supports both Layer2 and Layer3 services. This means that we offer both Ethernet connections (GÉANT Plus) and IP services on this layer. GÉANT implements the packet layer with Juniper MX equipment. MX is a carrier grade router which supports labels switching (MPLS), router virtualisation and more. The GÉANT Plus service is delivered using MPLS technology in the MXs. IP services include: GÉANT IP, Layer 3 VPN, GÉANT World Service, peering service.
What sets the GÉANT network apart?
GÉANT prides itself on providing what commercial operators cannot: a high-speed network that pushes the boundaries of networking technology whilst delivering a cost-effective, pan-European infrastructure. Large research projects rely on GÉANT for outstanding service availability and service quality.
A separate ultra-high-speed internet, just for research and education
Robustness
Over 4,000 terabytes of data are transferred every day via the GÉANT IP backbone.
Total reliability
100% average monthly access availability.
Flexibility
Services and infrastructure can be tailored to individual user requirements.
Capacity and rapid upscale
100Gbps (gigabits per second) services are now available across the core network, with a network design that will support up to 8Tbps (terabits per second), ensuring the network remains ahead of user demand and the data deluge.
Efficient operations
The dedicated GÉANT Operations Centre ensures 99% of cases are reported within 15 minutes of any outage being detected, leading to rapid resolution.
Services
A wide range of services including IP and dedicated circuits, testbeds and virtualised resources, authentication and roaming, monitoring and troubleshooting, advisory and support services.
GÉANT continues to innovate and evolve to define the state-of-the-art and stay ahead of exponentially growing data needs for the benefit of research and education worldwide.