Super net Europe's boffins get world-beating network

by Rob Gallagher

Europe rarely tops the US when it comes to the net, but when it does, it does it in style. Thanks to home-grown innovation, the European research community is enjoying one of the world's largest and fastest networks.

GEANT is the Consortium of European Research's sixth-generation network, connecting 3,000 universities and research centres across 32 countries. Working at a 10Gb capacity compared to the US research community's 2.5Gb network, GEANT is enabling projects never before possible.

'Historically, Europe has been a poor relation to North America. They were working in megabits when we were working in kilobits; when we were working in megabits they were working in gigabits,' explained Dai Davies general manager at DANTE, the organisation that builds and manages networks for the Consortium of European Research. '[GEANT] is about co-operation, but it's also about innovation.'

Europe's researchers are already reaping the benefits. 'There were a lot of applications where the lack of bandwidth was holding them back,' said Davies. Astronomers' studies, for example, were being delayed by the need to ship radio telescope data on magnetic tapes from research lab to research lab. Now the academics can transfer the data virtually using the GEANT network. In the future, researchers may even be able to operate the telescopes remotely from their own computers.

Grid computing is another area where GEANT will come in handy. By using the network to harness and combine the processing power of computers connected to GEANT, researchers will be able to create applications of unrivalled power and scope. CERN, the world's largest particle physics lab and, co-incidentally, where the web was first conceived, is likely to be among the first to benefit. Its new atom smasher will use GEANT and grid computing to perform incredibly complex calculations.

More down-to-earth applications may mean the impact of GEANT will filter down to everyday life. Being able to send X-rays to specialists via the network may result in dramatic cuts in diagnosis and treatment times, for example.

'The availability of up to 10Gb capacity will enable us to cut the time to make an accurate diagnosis of such conditions from as long as several weeks, while images are in transit or sat in filing trays, down to a matter of minutes,' explained Robin Rowland Hill, managing director of veterinary technology and training company, VetLogic, which has links with several UK universities. 'The implications, not just for convenience, but also for human and animal health, are also very significant, very positive.'

Getting to this point hasn't been easy, though. 'Part of our purpose is to build networks with the most advanced building blocks. This is the first time we have been able to achieve our goal,' said DANTE's Davies. For example, before the telecoms market was liberalised, such a project would cost 6,000 times as much -- that is, if any telecom could help you in the first place.
'The initial problem we faced was finding 10Gb routers that could actually do what they said,' remembered Davies. It wasn't that no one made them -- DANTE selected Juniper routers -- just that such high capacity is so rarely used in practice.

Generally, DANTE has been impressed with the service it has received from suppliers COLT, Telia and Deutsche Telekom. 'It's the first time we've built a network where everything has happened on time. It's probably because it's such a prestige project.

'More bandwidth will lead to more demand, with researchers being able to conduct truly innovative, ambitious and valuable projects that will directly add to the sum of human knowledge,' said Davies. 'It's a virtuous circle.'