NRENs and the World

I am working on the NRENs and the related area of research.

Therefore I thought it will be a good idea to publish some of the stuff I know and have been working now. This will enable me also to think through my own work and research as an insight
A National Research & Education Network (NREN) is a specialised Internet Service Provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country.
NRENs provide services to Research and education organizations located within geographical areas of different sizes: a city, a region, a country, or a continent. Most RENs have the national size and these are therefore called National Research and Education Networks (NRENs).

To support the demanding needs of scientific researchers and academics, National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) are defining the cutting edge of scalable, high performance networks. The open, dynamic nature of collaboration requires that these networks be standards-based and manageable, assure data integrity and privacy, quickly mitigate emergent threats, and provide high application availability . Research and Education Network (NREN) focuses on the development and early deployment of high-performance networking technologies to provide exciting new capabilities for education, science and engineering.

National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) are now more than an operational platform for communications. They are the engines driving the pace of collaboration, innovation and discovery amongst scientists. The role of a National Research and Educational Network is critical to the achievement of stated national education and research goals.
It's usually distinguished by support for a high-speed backbone, often offering dedicated channels for individual research projects. To satisfy the need of users, new protocols are introduced before being considered stable enough for deployment within the internet. Two examples of these protocols are IPv6 and IP multicast.

NRENs of various countries
Internet2: http://www.internet2.edu/ GEANT: http://www.geant.net/ DANTE: http://alice.dante.net/ REDClara: http://www.redclara.net/ ACOnet http://www.aco.net/aconetus.htm BELNET: http://www.belnet.be/en/ Hangarnet http://www.hungarnet.hu/ or http://www.niif.hu/ HEAnet http://www.heanet.ie/ SURFNet http://www.surfnet.nl/ Janet http://www.ja.net/ CERNET http://www.cernet.edu.cn/, SINGAREN http://www.singaren.net.sg

TERENA (the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association) is an association of organisations that are involved with the provision and use of computer network infrastructure and services for research and education in Europe. TERENA's principal members are the National Research and Education Networking organisations (NRENs) of a large number of countries in and around Europe. TERENA’s activities include fostering activities towards collaboration and development of NRENs. Since 2001, the TERENA compendium provides information about the development of NRENs in key areas such as legal form, users, network and traffic and budget and staffing in and around Europe and other countries as well. http://www.terena.nl/