MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
SECRETARIAT GENERAL FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
Greek Research & Technology Network

Contact is not available Expertise: The Greek Research and Technology Network (GR-Net) is the Greek National Academic and Research Network (NRN). It is an initiative of the General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) of the Ministry of Education. The goal of GR-Net is to provide advanced and high quality inter-networking and Internet connectivity services to both Greek Universities and Technological Educational Institutes (TEI) in cooperation with GUnet (http://www.gunet.gr/), as well as research organizations. GR-Net is a non-commercial national backbone and includes Points of Presence (pops) in major Greek cities, where the above mentioned educational and research institutions are located. "Non-commercial" means that GR-Net provides its services with education and research, rather than commercial profit and the greater "market" in mind. From a financial point of view, profit per se is not a goal. The coverage of expenses and the future availability of the necessary capital for upgrades of the provided services are expected instead. The services provided by GR-Net include: IP v4 connectivity IP v6 connectivity Multiprotocol connectivity Managed and guarantied bandwidth services Voice transmission Still and moving image transmission Tele-education and Tele-conferencing Facility: GRNET constitutes an “intelligent” network that provides advanced internet services to the Greek Research & Education Community. Based on leading-edge technologies, the infrastructure is constantly upgraded to meet the growing demands of its users in terms of transmission, traffic and network capacity. In 2008 the GRNET backbone network was expanded, providing coverage of the whole national territory. The network spreads over more than 8,000 km of dark fiber-optic cable, operated by GRNET private owned equipment, allowing data transmission that reaches the speed of 21x10 Gbps. This GRNET achievement ensured the use of a state-of-the-art backbone network to the Greek Research & Education Institutions, over the next 15 years. Such backbone infrastructure will allow the deployment of any services that could be developed in the years to come, by offering unlimited speed and capacity upgrading. GRNET backbone network is fully operational today and at the forefront of technological developments. The fiber-optic network and related transmission & operation centers are supported by highly-trained scientific & technical experts, who work with enthusiasm and train hundreds of engineers all over the country, in the use of infrastructure and network applications. GRNET is a sophisticated and highly flexible network. The Network Operation Center undertakes the network installation, maintenance and problem solving. It provides direct and uninterrupted access to all GRNET computing and network resources. The new features of GRNET include: 1. Unlimited upgrading at low cost 2. User mobility 3. User support on connectivity issues 4. New network services (e.g. virtual private networks, sharing of network and computing resources) 5. Middleware for managing computing resources and applications. The use of the already developed computing and networking infrastructure will soon allow the implementation of innovative applications in various scientific fields, such as: 1. Monitoring and forecasting earthquakes and natural disasters, as well as tracking down oil deposits 2. Analyzing meteorological data 3. Processing data collected by distributed telescopes 4. Studying the global climate change 5. Handling and processing medical data on a large scale 6. Studying and predicting financial markets