GÉANT, Europe’s superfast research network, recently announced that a major upgrade has enabled it to reach speeds of up to 2Tbps (terabits per second). This means that individual users can now transfer data at speeds of up to 100Gps. The network, which receives €41.8 million in funding from the EC and played an important role in the discovery of the Higgs Boson, will thus provide increased capacity to support all scientific disciplines, through enabling faster collaboration on critical projects. It will also allow the network to meet the increasing demand for data transfer capacity created by the exponential growth of the amount of data generated by major projects for sharing, distribution and analysis.

The GÉANT network serves 43 countries, reaching more than 50 million users in universities, research institutes, libraries, museums, archives, hospitals and schools. Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the EC, said of the upgrade. “The data side of the research equation is almost as important as the research itself today. With this upgrade, GÉANT demonstrates it is the leader of the research network pack.”