GÉANT IP provides high bandwidth international Internet connectivity for millions of academic users through NRENs via the shared GÉANT IP backbone network.
The GÉANT IP Service has been designed to provide general purpose IP transit services between participating NRENs and other approved research and education partners and providers. The core function of this service is to provide a private, separate service for IP traffic separated from general purpose access to the Internet .
GÉANT IP service offers a neutral IP routing facility, meaning there are no constraints imposed by the GÉANT network on access control, protocol or interdomain routing. The IP service can be accessed by members of the GÉANT consortium and is co-funded by the payment of an annual subscription. Access is available to non-consortium NRENs only by special agreement.
Features of GÉANT IP
The basic GÉANT IP service is defined as follows:
An NREN will be provided with a standard “best-effort” IP service, i.e. with no bandwidth or performance guarantee between any communicating pair of addresses. The following configuration details will be provided:
- IP addresses to be used in the GÉANT and on the NREN access router.
- IP address space to be used for the access link.
- AS number of GÉANT.
- DNS record corresponding to GÉANT address space.
- MD5 password for the BGP session (unless the NREN prefers not to use MD5).
- GÉANT will announce a routing table of the GÉANT connected networks.
- The NREN must specify:
- AS number of customer NREN.
- RIPE DB as-set (as-macro) to be accepted by GÉANT.
IPv4 and IPv6 support.
The GÉANT IP service supports both IPv4 and IPv6 natively using a dual stack routing structure.
IPv4: IPv4 is the dominant and most widely deployed standard internet protocol used around the world today. The GÉANT network provides transit to all IPv4 unicast packets to and from connected NRENs and towards international partners.
IPv6: IPv6 resolves, in particular, the problem of the limited number of available IPv4 addresses. The provision of IPv6 services means that, together with several of its counterparts in other regions of the world, GÉANT forms part of the world’s first next-generation Internet network and indeed, many of GÉANT’s NRENs already provide IPv6.
The GÉANT IP service offers transit for both addressing schemes but does not provide any gateway or network address translation between IPv4 and IPv6. These services must be undertaken by the NRENs external from the IP service.
Security
As an IP transit service, GÉANT IP provides no access control or security services . Access control and security are the responsibility of the NRENs.
Capacity
GÉANT IP services can be provided at capacities up to 100Gbit/s. The capacity available to each NREN will depend on the capacity at the nearest GÉANT IP POPPOP or, if the GÉANT POP is not co-located with suitable NREN access equipment, the available capacity of dedicated circuits from the NREN access equipment and the GÉANT IP POP .
Capacity is available at the following rates:
- On fibre NRENS: 10 Gbit/s – 100 Gbit/s : 10 Gbit/s increments
- Off fibre NRENS: Up to 2.4 Gbit/s at SDH connection rates (155, 622, 1024, 2048 Mbit/s)
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| To learn about accessing GÉANT IP services in your country, refer to your national NREN. Visit the Partners page for links to GÉANT's NREN project partners. |
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For more information:
See article in Connect April 2010 issue
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