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Complementing GÉANT2 are four DANTE-managed projects, namely ORIENT, TEIN2,

EUMEDCONNECT and ALICE.

The ORIENT project connects the Chinese NRENs CERNET and CSTNET to Europe via a trans-

Siberian 2.5Gbps circuit. Main applications running over the ORIENT link to Europe are the

EUChinaGrid (Grid computing), IN2P3-iHEP (LHC collaborations) and EXPReS (Radio

Astronomy).

TEIN2 interconnects the NRENs of 9 Asian countries and Australia to the European GÉANT2

network. By that TEIN2 serves approximately 30 million users in more than 3,800 institutions.

Major uses of the TEIN2 and GÉANT2 connection include telemedicine and e-learning

programs. The TEIN2 project was recently extended to September 2008. Under the project name

of TEIN3 the EC has approved further funding to 2011. The TEIN 3 project plans to extend

coverage to South Asia and to stimulate further the applications development. In addition it is

envisaged that within the lifetime of TEIN3 project management responsibilities will be

transferred to an Asian-lead organization.

Since 2004, the Eumedconnect project interconnects 11 NRENs in the Southern Mediterranean

and Northern African regions to GÉANT2. Eumedconnect serves approximately 1.4 million users

in more than 400 connected institutions in the Mediterranean region. Major users include

EUMEDGRID and MedGeNet (telemedicine). The Mediterranean countries are in the process of

forming the CAMREN regional organization.

The ALICE project has led to the creation of RedCLARA and the CLARA organization in Latin

America. RedCLARA interconnects more than 750 institutions in 12 Latin American countries to

GÉANT2 at 622Mbps. In addition to direct connectivity to Europe, RedCLARA also

interconnects with the Internet2 and APAN. Main users of the RedCLARA network are the

EELA project (GRIDs), RingGRID (remote instrumentation), ExPRES (Radio Astronomy) and

also various projects in the areas of telemedicine and e-learning.

Looking Ahead:

The EC will issue a call for proposal for the next generation of European research networking

during May 2008. The European research networking community is currently preparing for this

call for proposal.

Building on the experience and success of GÉANT2 and learning from its weaknesses, the next

generation project will be service driven and innovative. The new project will concentrate on the

further development of multi-domain services. On the circuit side, resilience and operational

flexibility in provisioning circuits across multiple domains will be a priority. This will include the

development of common operational concepts and procedures among the NREN network

management domains.

The development of optical private networks including a managed and monitored IP layer on top

will become an interesting service option for specific scientific disciplines, among them

distributed instrumentation.

The federated roaming infrastructure (eduROAM) and the federated authentication and

authorization infrastructure (eduGAIN) are considered key services enabling the innovative use

of networked resources and will form the basis for the creation of new services to support the

European research and education communities.

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