Link between GÉANT and new Russian Point of Presence brings together millions of researchers

Cambridge, UK and Moscow, Russia May 18th 2011 – 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.
DANTE logo
DANTE logo

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.”