GÉANT Strategy and services
Vincenzo Capone
Senior Technical Business Development
Officer
ADVNET2017 – 13/10/17 (Tokyo)

www.geant.org

To support collaboration and development amongst researchers, the disseminationof information & knowledge, and provide access to a portfolio of services andinfrastructure resources:
Runs a membership association for Europe's National Research & Education Networks (NRENs)
GÉANT Association
Coordinates and participates in EC-funded projects
Under Horizon 2020 the financial instrument for implementing the Innovation Union, aEurope 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitivenessOperates a pan-European e-infrastructure
GÉANT network
Manages a portfolio of services for research & education
EduX

Organises and runs community events & working groups
TNC, task forces & special interest groups

Membership Association
GÉANT Association supports and represents over 40 NRENs across Europe.
Together they support over 10,000 institutions and 50 million academic users.

Revenue €50m
Consortium
subscriptions
Bulk of Income (55%) from European NRENs subscriptions
Consortium subscriptions 43% funded by EC

EuropeanCommission

Services
Direct income from EC
Project coordination and participation in EC projects
Membership fees to GÉANT Association
NRENs & commercial partners
Revenue from providing bespoke services to R&E community• Consortium subscriptions based on complex cost-share model toensure digital divide issues are catered for• Traffic doubling every 12 months - but subscription income
declining 3% annually

MembershipfeesGovernance

GÉANT
interests

Customers

NRENs

National
interests

Members

All European NRENs

Members

Subset (9) of European NRENs

GÉANT Board
Cost
Sharingcommittee

Audit
committee

Remunerationcommittee

GÉANT
Programme
Planning
committee

GÉANT
SGA2
Oversight
committee

Subset of board + CEOCEOGÉANT Executive

GÉANT organisation
management teamProvidersProjects​GÉANT is a trusted European Commission (EC) partner in many global collaboration
projects and initiatives through our special relationship with the European Union.

Europeane-infrastructure
projects

Trust & identity
projects

Network
projects

Collaborative
projects

Network
The GÉANT network interconnects research, education and innovation communities worldwide,with secure, high-capacity networks.
We design, plan, build and operate the large-scale, high-performance GÉANT network that connects
European NRENs to each other and the rest of the world for sharing, accessing and processing the highdata volumes generated by research and education communities and for testing innovative technologies
and concepts.

Interconnecting Europe’s NRENs
over a 500Gb highly-resilient
pan-European backbone.
NRENs serve 50 million users
at 10,000 institutions acrossEurope.
Network services: IP, Point-toPoint Services, VPN, Testbeds,
performance monitoringNetwork
A separate ultra-high-speed internet, only for research & educationRo​bustness
Over 1,000 terabytes o​​f data are transferred every day via the GÉANT IP backbone. ​​Total ​reliability
100% average monthly access availability​.
​Flexibility
Services and infrastructure
can beto individual
requirements.​“Todayittailoredwould
not beuser
possibleto work without the​Capacity and rapid upscale
network that GÉANT and the NRENs have provided.”
100Gbps (gigabits per second) services​ are now available across the core network, with a network
CMS
Large
Hadr​
onthe
Collider(LHC)ahead of user
design that will support
up toexperiment,
8Tbps (terabits per
second),ensuring
network remains
demand and the data deluge.
​Efficient operations
The dedicated GÉANT Operations Centre ensures 99% of cases are reported within 15 minutes of any
outage being detected, leading to rapid resolution.​
Services
A wide range of services including IP and dedicated circuits, testbeds and virtualised resources,
authentication and roaming, monitoring and troubleshooting, advisory and support services.​Specialist Services
GÉANT develops the specialist services members need to support researchers, educatorsand innovators – at national, European and international levels.
GÉANT’s portfolio of advanced services covers:

Network centric
services

Trust identity
and security

Storageand clouds

Real-timecommunications

Professional
services

Network Services
GÉANT operates an advanced, high-performance network supporting Europe’s
NRENs with cost-effective, highly available, high-capacity services customised forand dedicated to research and education

GÉANT network services
GÉANT IP – Ultra-high performance uncontended IP
connectivity at up to 2x100Gbit/s
GÉANT VPN – Layer 3 VPN services for NRENs and institutions
supporting private networking needs
GÉANT Point-to-Point – High performance dedicatedconnectivity up to 100Gbit/s for the most demanding
applications
GÉANT Open – Allows NRENs and approved commercialorganisations to exchange connectivity in a highly efficientand flexible manner
eduroam – Seamless WiFi access around the world

Availability Targets
99.999% - 27 seconds downtime/month
99.99% - 4.5 minutes/month
99.4%* - 4 hours/monthGÉANT VPN Services
MD-V​​PN​
The GÉANT Multi-Domain Virtual Private Network (MD-VPN) provides an end-to-end international
network service that enables scientists all over Europe to collaborate via a common private
network infrastructure.

MD-VPN can be used for connectivity between clusters, grids, clouds and HPC (high-performancecomputing) centres, allowing them to form v​​irtual distributed resources for third-party research
projects.
MD-VPN offers fast delivery of VPNs to end users and so can be used in a variety of ways, from along-term infrastructure with a high demand for intensive network usage to quick point-to-pointconnections for a con​ference demonstration.​

L3 VPNThe GÉANT L3-VPN service provides NRENs with the backbone
infrastructure to enable custom VPN services for their users
across the GÉANT backbone.

GÉANT Point-to-Point Services
GÉA​​NT Plus​GÉANT Plus allows national research and education networking (NREN) organisations to request
point-to-point Ethernet circuits between end-points at GÉANT PoPs (p​oints of presence). Circuits canbe established​ to any European NREN.​​GÉA​​N​T​ Lamb​​d​a​
GÉANT Lambda provides full wavelengths at up to 100Gbps to support NREN users with particularly
demanding network requirements. The service provides transparent 10Gbps, or 100Gbps
wavelengths between GÉANT PoPs.

GÉANT Bandwidth on Demand
GÉANT Bandwidth on Demand (BoD) is a flexible network option for situations where users need toreliably transfer large data sets for short periods of time between two end points, with guaranteedbandwidth. The service is offered collaboratively by GÉANT and participating European NRENs,
delivering a seamless user experience from order to delivery.

GÉANT OpenFacilitating open collaboration across the globe​Protocol
GÉANT Open is protocol neutral at the network layer and allows each participant to connect to theexchange at between 1Gbps and 100Gbps​VL​​AN connectivity
Connections can be logically subdivided into separate VLANs allowing the participant to simultaneously
connect with many other members of the exchange
GÉAN​​T network interconnectivity
Participants can also apply to make connections from GÉANT Open through the GÉANT network
allowing onward connectivity to organisations that are unable to connect directly to GÉANT OpenInter​​national connectivity​​
GÉANT Open is able to support both European and worldwide interconnects

Network Performance and Management
Supporting High Performance Networking• Network performance monitoring• Joint venture with Internet2, ESnet and Indiana University• Over 1650 measurement points deployed globally• Helping measure and diagnose performance issues for
the R&E community• A world-wide Open Community for Performance
Enhancement Response Teams,• A virtual community covering performance issues
for R&E networks

GÉANT CERT
Pan-European Computer Security Incidence Response Team
coordination and a suite of network security tools(Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS)
attack mitigation tools etc.)

Trust, Identity & Security
Supporting users and enabling secure access to services
eduroam - secure global roaming access service 250+ million authentications permonth in 89 territories
eduGAIN - interconnects identity federations around the world, simplifying access tocontent, services and resources ~ 3500 identity providers accessing services
AARC project – collaborating with e-infrastructures, research collaborations,libraries & federations to share policies, architectures, training materials & pilots thatavoid re-inventing the authentication & authorisation wheel
REFEDs – supporting identity federations worldwide
Trusted Introducer – services for security and incident response teams
Certificate Service – delivering cost-effective digital certificates.
In partnership with

eduroam
Linking students to the global community

Free secure Wifi provided by NRENs between campuses.
A global network of users across 80 territories.
More than 2 billion international authentications
and counting
A worldwide success story
From its early beginnings as a joint venture between afew European universities to today – with millions
of users in more than 80 territories worldwide,
eduroam has
been an amazing success story and an
example of research and education collaboration.
www.eduroam.org

eduGAIN
Enabling secure Single Sign On services to global research and educational resources
Federated identities enable users to access a wide range of services using a single accountsign-on managed by their 'home' institution• Improves access• Improves security• Reduces management overhead and costs.

eduGAIN
Voting only
Candidate
Developing

April 2017:43 Federations active
5 Federations with voting
rights in process of joining
3244 entities (50% growth)

AARC: Authentication & Authorisation for
Research & Collaboration
Avoids re-inventing the AAI wheel, so
researchers can focus on research.

What is AARC? - 2 min video• 20+ project partners• Address needs of e- and researchinfrastructures• Engage through• Community Engagement Forum• Bridge Group• Defined Blueprint Architecture• 18+ technical Pilots• Recommendations, best practices &Policies including:• Sirtfi• Snctfi• Toolkits of materials (training, leaflets,
FAQs, technical information etc.) for• Infrastructures• Libraries• More to come...

AARC and eduGAIN
eduGAIN has helped many collaboration
communities
to interconnect and access / share resources
but many collaborations don’t have an AAI solution,or theirs can't interconnect through eduGAIN
AARC is creating a common AAI framework forresearch and collaboration communities thatshould work for everyone:• One blueprint architecture• One set of policies• One set of training resources• Working with research collaborations
to pilot and improve technical andpolicy aspects

Relationship between the AARC
blueprint architecture,
eduGAIN and the GÉANT network.

Cloud Services
Cloud services can improve the service NRENs and Institutions offer their users
Increased range
Reduced costs (changing from CapEx to RevEx)

Increased flexibility and scalability

The area has huge opportunities but some risks
Supplier lock-in
Data security
Unplanned costs
https://clouds.geant.org/

GÉANT uses its skill and experience to help NRENs understand and navigate this new territory

GÉANT Cloud Catalogue

https://catalogue.clouds.geant.net

A growing resource for the research and education community, with a structured listing of service
providers and cloud services. It provides a quick and easy guide to clarify the capabilities of providers
and helps in the procurement of cloud services

28 services from 16 providers

Users we work withSocial Sciences,
Arts andHumanities

Life
Sciences

High-Energy
Physics andAstronomy

Earth
Sciences andObservations

FutureInternet
Projects

E-Infrastructures

Scientific user groups we liaise with
Physics sciences
High-energy physics (LHC, BELLE II, CERN, etc.)
Neutrino observation (KM3NET)

Astronomy and Earth observation
Earth observation (EUMETSAT, COPERNICUS)Radio-astronomy (eVLBI, SKA, etc.)
Satellite operations (ESOC)

E-Infrastructures (EGI, EUDAT,PRACE, HelixNebula)
Future Internet projects (XiFi,
Confine, SmartFire, etc.)
Life sciences
Genomics (Elixir, EBI, EMBL)
BioImaging

TNC• The GÉANT community's flagship conference• regular attendance of over 650 participants from all
across the world• bringing together decision makers, networking andcollaboration specialists, and identity and accessmanagement experts from all major European
networking and research organisations, universities,
worldwide sister institutions, as well as industry
representatives• www.geant.org/TNC

International collaborations and partnerships

Eastern Mediterranean - EUMEDCONNECT
Scope
Regional network for the Mediterranean since 2004 – now in its third phase
Phase 3: 2011-2014, extended until end 2019

Partners••••

Managed by GÉANT
Regional partner ASREN(The Arab States Research and Education Network)
5 EU NRENs (CY, ES, FR, GR, IT)
Beneficiaries: Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine

Project update••••

Lebanon connected for first time in 2016 andrecently upgraded to 320Mbps, NREN being formed
Jordan link connects SESAME to CERN via ASREN
and GÉANT, NREN being re-connected
Palestine interested in re-connection
DG NEAR increased EC funding to 60%

www.eumedconnect3.net

Eastern Partnership - EaPConnect
Scope€13M (95%) EU funding from DG NEAR,
July 2015 to 2020
• Connectivity & equipment procurements• Service portfolio & competency growth• Knowledge transfer & outreach events

Partners••

Beneficiaries: IIAP NA RA (Armenia), IIT of
ANAS (Azerbaijan), UIIP NASB (Belarus),
GRENA (Georgia), RENAM (Moldova) & URAN
(Ukraine)
Associates: AARNet, BREN, DFN, ESnet, GARR,
LITNET, PSNC, RoEduNet, REANNZ

Conference••

2nd Eastern Partnership E-infrastructures
Conference ( EaPEC 2017) in Minsk, 27-28
September 2017
2nd regional Enlighten Your Research call inprogress – record response with 30+ entries

Africa – AfricaConnect2
Scope
Connecting the R&E communities across Africa and interconnecting them with GÉANT.
€20M EU funding for 3.5 years (from June 2015)

Partners
•
•
•
•
•
•

UbuntuNet Alliance: Eastern & Southern Africa – Cluster 1
WACREN: West & Central Africa – Cluster 2
ASREN: North Africa – Cluster 3
GÉANT: Administrative (Clusters 1, 2) + Coordination
EU NRENs (CY, ES, FR, GR, IT, PT) also supporting
Beneficiaries: 30 African NRENs

Project update••••

Tendering underway for Clusters 2 and 3
Regional partners working with AfriGEOSS to support
Earth observation programmes across Africa
Regional partners participating in NSF-funded NEAAR
project to improve connectivity with North America
Planning started for project continuation beyond November 2018www.africaconnect2.net

Central Asia - CAREN
Scope
Regional network for Central Asia since 2010
2 previous phases 2010 - 2015
3rd phase (CAREN3) resumed in June 2016 up to 2019€10M EU funding up to 2019

Partners•••

Managed by GÉANT
Initial beneficiaries: Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan also
eligible, subject to financial agreements between
their governments and the EC

Project update•••

Ring of 1 Gbps circuits within the region connecting Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistanwith GÉANT operational since April 2017
CAREN Cooperation Center (CAREN CC) established
2nd CAREN Regional Conference (CRNC2017) held in Bishkek in April 2017https://caren.geant.org

Latin America
Connects 12 Latin American NRENs
10Gbps interconnection with GÉANT
Funded via NREN membership.
•

Previously co-funded by DG-DEVCO ALICE
and ALICE2 projects (2003-2013)

Efforts underway to procure & deploy:•Long-term high-capacity transatlantic
connectivity Europe and Latin America•

100Gbps RedCLARA backbone

www.redclara.net

Advanced North Atlantic Collaboration
ANA is a collaborative effort of GÉANT, Internet2, CANARIE, Indiana University, NORDUnet and
SURFnet to provide multiple, diverse links to support North America-European research.
Provides 400Gbps on diverse paths:•

100Gbps between Ney York and Paris, funded by GÉANT•

100Gbps between Amsterdam and Montreal, funded by NORDUnet and SURFnet•

100Gbs between Washington and London, funded by Internet2 and CANARIE•

100Gbps between London and New York, funded by the US NSF NEAAR project led byIndiana University

ESnet funds 340Gbps of capacity between Europe and North America (Boston-Amsterdam;
New York-London; Washington DC-Geneva. The links provides back-up for ANA collaboration
connectivity.

Asia Pacific
GEANT has also developed strong bilateral relations with the region’s major NRENs
CERNET and CSTNET• 10Gbps direct EU-China connectivity jointly provided by
GEANT (GN4) and CERNET• Working with CERNET and CSTNET to promote EU-China
collaborations (e.g radio-astronomy, meteorology,
genomics TNE etc)
NKN
• 10Gbps peering in Amsterdam• Seeking to strengthen EU/India user collaborations(e.g. high energy physics)

Asia Pacific – Asi@Connect
Scope
TEIN (Trans-Eurasia Information Network): R&E connectivity across Asia-Pacific and to Europe
3 EU-funded phases (TEIN2-4) from 2005 to 2016
New project phase: Asi@Connect (2016-2021; €20M EU-funding)Partners•••

GÉANT set up and ran until 2012 when handed
over to TEIN* Cooperation Centre (TEIN*CC)
based in Korea
TEIN*CC supported by GÉANT(ongoing consultancy agreement)
Beneficiaries: TEIN connects over 55 million
users in 20 countries and economies

Project update•

Major emphasis on applications support,
community building and public internet deployment in remote area•

Mechanism of Call for Proposals•

Developing closer links with the APAN community

www.tein.asia

Asia Pacific
NII/SINET
20Gbps peering in London, GEANT providing equipment housing
MOU renewed this year with increased technical & marketingcollaboration and user support (e.g. ITER, BELLE II)
Further connectivity upgrades planned
NICT
New MOU signed 2016, extending technical co-operation(e.g. SDN, federated identity technologies, )SingAREN
Co-funding a 10Gbps TEIN link to GÉANT
Planning London equipment housing for Singaporean HPC community

User collaborations (e.g. supercomputing)Joint Japan-Europe user’s activities

MMCFTP demo

ESOC-JAXA joint Satellite mission control• European Space Agency/JAXA collaboration• Hayabusa2 (JAXA) and BepiColombo (ESA) satellites• Establish a redundant and diverse p2p circui

ESOC-JAXA joint Satellite mission control
ESOC

Darmstadt

DFN AS 680
Frankfurt

BerlinVLAN 353

VLAN 354
VLAN 353
GenevaFrankfurt

Hamburg

VLAN 354
Hamburg

SINET AS 2907
Kanagawa

VLAN 3152

Osaka

MAN LANNew York

VLAN 3152
Paris

VLAN 3153
Tokyo

Amsterdam

SINET London
RouterVLAN 3153

GEANT AS 20965

LondonLisbonISASTEIN-CN
AS23911TEIN-SGAS24490

TEIN-JPAS24287

MadridITER data challenge
Rokkasho (JP)
ITER

IFERC

Cadarache (FR)PARIS

LONDONLHCONE

Asia

North America

South America

EuropeNetwork evolution strategy

Traffic forecast
GÉANT TRAFFIC PB per Quarter
450
400

350
300
250
200
150
100
50

0
IP MPLS
Total

Q1 2015

Q2 2015

Q3 2015

Q4 2015

Q1 2016

Q2 2016

Q3 2016

Q4 2016

Q1 2017

Q2 2017117.24239.84133.57259.37118.08239.36155.84280.99173.16303.15219.19359.42202.01349.06267.22414.27259.78416.38265.26421.86

Our current platforms• Transmission layer based on Infinera DTNx Platform• IP/MPLS layer based on Juniper MX series Platform• Single vendor solution• High backplane capacity• High space and power requirements• No data-plane programmability

Juniper - MX960

Limitations of current network design
Expensive hardware

Inflexible
Single box
solutions

Expensive
hardware

Closed platform

Vendor lock in

VendorIntegrated
solutions

Current limitations

Underutilized
functionality

W/bit highPoor power
density

Poor port
density

Maintenance cost
fixed to hardware
investment
Limited upgradepathIndustry trend: Disaggregation
Reduced space &power costs

Opportunity to
own control plane

Data Centre density,
economics andhardware architectures
moving into WAN

Separation of softwarefrom hardware

We need aplan to meet
our software
needs

Cheaper hardware
Pizza box
approach
Reduced form
factor

Open programmablehardware andsoftwareOpportunity to
exposure
software &hardwarethrough APIs

Ability todifferentiate

Agile service
development

Multivendor integration
Choose mostappropriate
vendors per set of
requirements

Integration
complexity is
being simplified
by vendors

Network Evolution Process – so far

NREN Feedback
and Workshops
Vendor/Industry
Engagement
Forecast the
network growth

NREN
Requirement
Gathering

Network
Evolution Plan
(work inprogress)

The pillars
Open Standards
and Protocols

DisruptiveCompetition

Programmability

Speed ofdeployment

Merchant silicon

Disaggregationof proprietary vendor
solutions

À la carte
Networking(best of breed)

Data Centre
approaches moving
into WAN

H/W Cost
Multivendor
Interoperability

Power Cost

Disaggregation how-toDCI for the WAN

Software Driven Networking• Avg. router firmware ~30 million lines
of code (strictly closed-source)• 80% is completely unnecessary in the
average environment

Open Line System

ROADM

ILA

ILA

Open Line System

Infrastructure sharing between GEANT and NRENs
Lowering the cost of sharing capacity over fibre

ROADM

What are we trying to achieve?
• Support (sustainable!) exponential growth in network traffic• Scale faster• Reduce space and power costs• Flexibility and ease of deployment• Agnostic infrastructure

Open, disaggregated networks are
essential to meet the requirements of the
R&E communityご清聴ありがとうございました(Thank you!)vincenzo.capone@geant.org

www.geant.org© GEANT Limited on behalf of the GN4 Phase 2 project (GN4-2).
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 731122 (GN4-2).