Last week, ESnet and five other leading R&E networks comprising the Advanced North Atlantic (ANA) Collaboration announced that together, they provide a record 740 Gbps of trans-Atlantic connectivity to advance collaborative science. The other ANA participants are CANARIE (Canada), ESnet (USA), GÉANT (Europe), Internet2 (USA), NORDUnet (European Nordics), and SURFnet (The Netherlands).
While the transatlantic high-speed links develop and expand, a group of network specialists from R&E networking organizations and exchange points operators from around the world are also collaborating to ensure researchers see the end-to-end performance results their science requires not just locally but globally. To achieve this, network architects from around the globe have developed a set of global principles and technical guidelines for collaboration, as well as sharing costs and aligning investments.
The news announcement also noted that the ANA Collaboration is in compliance with the Global Network Architecture (GNA) initiative’s Reference Architecture, first released in January 2017. That document is defining a reference architecture and creating a roadmap for both national and regional research & education networks to more seamlessly support research on an end-to-end basis.
In a follow-up to the announcement, editor Ad Emmen of Primeur Weekly magazine interviewed René Buch, CEO of NORDUnet, one of the partners in ANA Collaboration and presents a deeper look at the importance and technical challenges of collaboration across such large scales and between different organizations, and what it all means globally.
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