Multi-Gigabit European Academic Network – GN2

Acronym: 
GN 2
Program: 
Network of Excellence
Funding: 
European Union
Delegate Organization: 
Project period: 
Wednesday, September 1, 2004 to Sunday, August 31, 2008
Description: 

The GN2 project sets out a programme of work to further extend the GN1 project which has created the GEANT pan-European network. The project will improve the current network with emphasis on developing an “end-to-end” approach to the provision of service across multiple interconnected networks. Gaining an improved understanding of user needs, as well as measures to provide direct support to deal with performance issues, are major elements of the project. In parallel with the development of the network, carried out via Service Activities (SAs), a comprehensive set of Joint Research Activities (JRAs) are defined, which are designed to provide future network enhancements. These JRAs will involve technical experts from the NRENs community, DANTE and TERENA. The project will be carried out by the consortium of European National Research and Educational Networks (NRENs), together with TERENA, and with DANTE as the coordinating partner. CTI will participate as third party contractor to GRNET (Greek NREN). CTI’s involvement is focused in GN2-JRA3 that deals with the investigation and development of a mainly connection-oriented, end-to-end (therefore multi-domain) “Bandwidth Allocation and Reservation Service” – in other words a “Bandwidth on Demand” (BoD) service. The service’s scope includes technologies such as MPLS LSPs (preferably augmented with some sort of packet-based QoS - although this may only come later in many cases), native (and emulated) layer-2 channels (particularly Ethernet), TDM channels (based on SONET/SDH), native layer one wavelengths on fibre (\lambdas\) and even dedicated dark fibre.