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INNOVATION
& DESIGN Home Page Architecture Brand Equity Auto Design Game Room SMALLBIZ Smart Answers Success Stories Today's Tip INVESTING Investing: Europe Annual Reports BW 50 S&P Picks & Pans Stock Screeners Free S&P Stock Report SCOREBOARDS Hot Growth 100 Mutual Funds Info Tech 100 S&P 500 B-SCHOOLS Undergrad Programs MBA Blogs MBA Profiles MBA Rankings Who's Hiring Grads | | DECEMBER 12, 2000 FROM LE MONDE INTERACTIF A Giant Step toward an Ultrafast Net Unprecedented speed and reliability are the promise of a new agreement that promises to revolutionize European education and research
An agreement signed on Nov. 6 in Nice, France, between the European Commission and the Dante Consortium, which represents European research networks, has given birth to the Gigabit European Academic Network (GEANT), which will radically speed up Internet connections. Financing has come in part from the commission, which contributed $67 million on top of $134 million provided by member states. GEANT is intended for educational and research purposes. But the infrastructure it provides will eventually benefit all of Europe by linking to existing national networks. In France, for example, the Renater network used today, which already links national research centers and universities, will be coupled with GEANT to reach as far as Romania, Lithuania, and Slovakia. Connections will zip at 2.5 gigabits per second by the beginning of next year and leap to roughly 100 gigabits per second by 2004. ESSENTIAL TOOL. When it comes to sectors such as research, speed is vital -- particularly in fields like the experimental computer simulations involved in particle physics and genome research. The only way to share such dense information packages with computers in different laboratories throughout Europe is to set up high-speed connections like GEANT. Using this network to link universities also will improve and expand online teaching opportunities. The GEANT network is considered to be in the technological vanguard. GEANT will be using Internet Protocol (IP) technology, which dispatches information in individual packets. The advantage? Even if one of the transportation routes breaks down, the packets of information can use alternative paths, thereby preventing any interruption of a message. When it comes to routing information, GEANT also will be at the forefront. In fact, the router is an essential element, since it controls the flow of enormous information packages. The Multi Protocol Layer Switching (MPLS) that GEANT will be using labels each package of information in terms of priority and destination so that other routers know immediately where to send them. As it stands today, the Dante Consortium, which has been in charge of putting the GEANT project together, has yet to decide which Internet service providers will create the structure of the future network. That decision shouldn't be long coming, however, as the system is intended to be operational early in the new year. Connection speeds will increase and the network will update to Version 6 of IP technology. Once Europeans outside the research and educational community gain access to this new network, there's no telling how far -- and fast -- things will move.  By Jean-Philippe Pichevin Translated by Inka Resch  | | |
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