AARNet

Last updated

AARNet
Founded1989 (1989)
Founder Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC)
Area served
Australia
Services Internet service provider (ISP)
Owner38 Australian universities and CSIRO
Employees
131
Website aarnet.edu.au
ASN
  • 7575

AARNet (Australian Academic and Research Network) provides Internet services to the Australian education and research communities and their research partners.

Contents

AARNet built the Internet in Australia. [1] [2] [3] In 1995, the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC) transferred AARNet1 as a going concern to Telstra [4] who then operated it as the initial Telstra Internet. Today, AARNet is Australia's National research and education network (NREN). It forms the Australian component of the global advanced research and education Internet network.

AARNet Pty Ltd, which owns and operates the AARNet, is a not-for-profit company limited by shares. The shareholders are 38 Australian universities and the Australian CSIRO. AARNet's services in addition to Internet connectivity include Eduroam, voice, video and data storage services and a content mirror.

History

The AARNet network as at October 1993 AARNet Network 1993.png
The AARNet network as at October 1993

AARNet was initially built between the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, where the international Internet feed initially landed, and university and CSIRO facilities in all Australian state capital cities and the Australian National University in Canberra. AARNet was formed in 1989 by the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC).

In 1989, Kevin Robert Elz established the first permanent Internet feed to Australia, at the University of Melbourne. Until this time, researchers within Australia had limited access to the ARPANET, due to the high expense of providing communications between Australia and the United States. The national network infrastructure generally consisted of groups of hosts connected throughout the country exchanging mail and files on a periodic schedule using the SUNIII software and protocols, with several international dial-up links around the country exchanging this information where required.

AARNet was initially built as a multi-protocol network, comprising Internet Protocol (IP) as well as DECnet and X.25 so as to accommodate pre-existing ACSnet and SPEARnet systems then in current use. With the rapid subsequent growth in popularity of the Internet, AARNet soon evolved into an IP-only network. In 1988, there were a number of popular network protocols, such as IBM's SNA and the CCITT's X.25, and the ARPANET's IP protocol was only beginning to become favoured. Australian National University staff members Geoff Huston and Peter Elford were seconded by the AVCC in 1989 and tasked with technical management and build of the new network. [5]

AARNet introduced its 'value added reseller' program to allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to use its network, the first being Connect.com.au in May 1994. [4] AARNet gradually became a wholesale backbone ISP, serving over 300 smaller ISPs by June 1995. At that point, about 20% of total AARNet traffic was from these other users, and AVCC decided to sell the AARNet commercial assets to Telstra, who currently operates it under the name Telstra Internet.

In early 1997, AARNet2 went into service, a network that used ATM links and Internet services under a contract with Cable & Wireless Optus (CWO), now Optus. AARNet became a separate company from the AVCC in 1999.

In 2001 AARNet deployed its own international capacity by acquiring 310 Mbit/s of capacity from Sydney via Hawaii to Seattle. As of 2006, the current network is known as AARNet3, and the backbone uses a dark fibre network provided by Nextgen Networks.

The AARNet international network as at September 2013, showing onward connections to peer NREN networks AARNet International Network.png
The AARNet international network as at September 2013, showing onward connections to peer NREN networks

Chronology

Major milestones in the development of AARNet include: [1] [2] [6]

Pre-AARNet – pre-internet

The early years – building the Internet in Australia

Building the present AARNet

Up to the present

AARNet generations

Key milestones in the creation of the Internet in Australia AARNet timeline.svg
Key milestones in the creation of the Internet in Australia

AARNet1 (1989–1997): Australia's first Internet: [2]

AARNet2 (1997–2006): Fostered the building of Optus' ATM and Optus' Internet networks: [1]

AARNet3 (2006–2013): The AARNet optical network: [9]

AARNet4 (2013–present): The AARNet optical network grows: [10]

AARNet Pty Ltd

AARNet was established in 1989 originally as an activity under the auspices of the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC).

AARNet was formed into a separate company on 22 December 1998. [11] AARNet Pty Ltd, ACN 084540518, ABN 54 084 540 518, is a not-for-profit company limited by shares. The shareholders are 38 of Australia's universities and the Australian CSIRO. [12]

AARNet Pty Ltd became a licensed telecommunications carrier (Telco) under the Australian Telecommunications Act on 27 November 2000, becoming Australian carrier number 61. [13]

National network

AARNet national network as at October 2013 AARNet National Network.png
AARNet national network as at October 2013

The AARNet4 national network comprises high capacity optical fibre transmission paths between switching centres in major cities from Cairns to Perth as well as branch lines to Darwin, Hobart and several other locations. Because optical fibre repair times are long, the backbone network follows two physically diverse paths. As at late 2013, capacity on each leg of the routed network was between 10 and 100  gigabit per second (Gbit/s). [14] Starting with only 48 kbit/s national backbone capacity in 1990, this reflects a similarly rapid exponential growth rate as for AARNet's international capacity.

The Network peers with external content providers and ISPs to increase performance and availability of the network. The organisation has a selective peering policy [15] for peering with other providers. This policy applies to all requests for settlement-free interconnection with AARNet, either via dedicated connections or traffic via public internet exchanges.

AARNet provides the Internet to several million end-user devices at Australian universities, CSIRO, various other research and educational institutions, and some hospitals. Customer site connections are mostly at 1 to 10 Gbit/s rates, with most end-user Ethernet services at 1 Gbit/s, and Eduroam services at available Wi-Fi performance levels.

AARNet's layer 3 services are usually delivered at the AARNet PoP sites. With the introduction of the AARNet3 optical fibre network (i.e. from 2006 onwards) AARNet progressively developed capability to extend services to customer sites in some locations, as well as providing layer 1 and layer 2 inter-campus connections in those areas. Prior to that, and at other locations, it is end-customer institutions' responsibility to extend services to site and to provision their own inter-campus network links. These are either operated directly by AARNet such as in Queensland or provided by companion networks such as SABRENet in South Australia and VERNet in Victoria.

Summary of AARNet national IP network performance levels as at 2013:

International connectivity

AARNet's trans-Pacific capacity growth from its inception to 2013 AARNet trans-Pacific traffic growth.png
AARNet's trans-Pacific capacity growth from its inception to 2013

AARNet provides the Australian component of the global advanced Research and Education Internet network. AARNet has high capacity interconnections with North American [16] [17] (Internet2), European [18] (GÉANT) and Asian [19] (TEIN3) components of the global network.

As at late 2014, AARNet operated a total capacity of 120 Gbit/s to North America and a further 5 Gbit/s to Asia. [20] This equates to a 2.2 million-fold increase over AARNet's initial trans-Pacific capacity of 56 kbit/s in 1990 and represents an average doubling time of aggregate international capacity of only 14 months over the entire history of AARNet (cf. Moore's Law).

Application services

In addition to providing high capacity Internet transmission and routing services and a comprehensive range of core Internet services including BGP, DNS, NTP and IPv6, AARNet also provides a variety of higher-layer network services including:

To further optimise network traffic loads, AARNet operates high capacity peering links with various major content providers including the Australian ABC, Apple, [23] Microsoft and Amazon. [24]

Supporting big science

CSIRO's ASKAP antennas at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, Western Australia CSIRO ASKAP 2010.jpg
CSIRO's ASKAP antennas at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, Western Australia

Throughout their life, a major driver for the very high capacities of advanced Research and Education Internet networks including AARNet has been to meet the needs of data-intensive research across a wide range of research disciplines in both the sciences and the humanities. For example, to interconnect major research instruments such as synchrotrons and telescopes in remote locations to high performance computer systems and researchers around the world, such as astronomers in Europe viewing the southern sky using telescopes in Australia [25] or high resolution realtime video links between remote locations. [26]

Most recently, AARNet has built a 100 Gbit/s WDM optical fibre transmission system [14] from Perth to Geraldton and on to the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) in Western Australia in support of Australia's component of the international Square Kilometre Array project and the initial ASKAP telescope array at the MRO.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">JANET</span> Academic computer network in the United Kingdom

Janet is a high-speed network for the UK research and education community provided by Jisc, a not-for-profit company set up to provide computing support for education. It serves 18 million users and is the busiest National Research and Education Network in Europe by volume of data carried. Previously, Janet was a private, UK-government funded organisation, which provided the JANET computer network and related collaborative services to UK research and education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metropolitan area network</span> Computer network serving a populated area

A metropolitan area network (MAN) is a computer network that interconnects users with computer resources in a geographic region of the size of a metropolitan area. The term MAN is applied to the interconnection of local area networks (LANs) in a city into a single larger network which may then also offer efficient connection to a wide area network. The term is also used to describe the interconnection of several LANs in a metropolitan area through the use of point-to-point connections between them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Telecommunications in Australia</span> Overview of telecommunications in Australia

Telecommunications in Australia refers to communication in Australia through electronic means, using devices such as telephone, television, radio or computer, and services such as the telephony and broadband networks. Telecommunications have always been important in Australia given the "tyranny of distance" with a dispersed population. Governments have driven telecommunication development and have a key role in its regulation.

A leased line is a private telecommunications circuit between two or more locations provided according to a commercial contract. It is sometimes also known as a private circuit, and as a data line in the UK. Typically, leased lines are used by businesses to connect geographically distant offices.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internode (ISP)</span>

Internode Pty Ltd is an Australian Internet service provider (ISP) that provides NBN broadband services, business-class broadband access, web hosting, co-location, Voice over IP, and a variety of related services. Internode became part of TPG Telecom in July 2020.

Optical Carrier transmission rates are a standardized set of specifications of transmission bandwidth for digital signals that can be carried on Synchronous Optical Networking (SONET) fiber optic networks. Transmission rates are defined by rate of the bitstream of the digital signal and are designated by hyphenation of the acronym OC and an integer value of the multiple of the basic unit of rate, e.g., OC-48. The base unit is 51.84 Mbit/s. Thus, the speed of optical-carrier-classified lines labeled as OC-n is n × 51.84 Mbit/s.

TransACT is the trading name of TransACT Capital Communications, an Australian telecommunications company based in Canberra which provides broadband internet access, fixed telephony, cable television services, and mobile phone services in Canberra and a subset of these services in Queanbeyan, throughout South-east New South Wales and in Victoria.

Optical networking is a means of communication that uses signals encoded in light to transmit information in various types of telecommunications networks. These include limited range local-area networks (LAN) or wide area networks (WANs), which cross metropolitan and regional areas as well as long-distance national, international and transoceanic networks. It is a form of optical communication that relies on optical amplifiers, lasers or LEDs and wavelength-division multiplexing (WDM) to transmit large quantities of data, generally across fiber-optic cables. Because it is capable of achieving extremely high bandwidth, it is an enabling technology for the Internet and telecommunication networks that transmit the vast majority of all human and machine-to-machine information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer network</span> Network that allows computers to share resources and communicate with each other

A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. Computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are made up of telecommunication network technologies based on physically wired, optical, and wireless radio-frequency methods that may be arranged in a variety of network topologies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SURFnet</span>

SURF is an organization that develops, implements and maintains the national research and education network (NREN) of the Netherlands. It operates the national research network formally called SURFnet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CANARIE</span>

CANARIE is the not-for-profit organisation which operates the national backbone network of Canada's national research and education network (NREN). The organisation receives the majority of its funding from the Government of Canada. It supports the development of research software tools; provides cloud resources for startups and small businesses; provides access and identity management services; and supports the development of policies, infrastructure and tools for research data management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">EMMAN</span>

EMMAN was a company limited by guarantee and jointly owned by its members, eight Higher Education Institutions in the East Midlands region of the United Kingdom.

JASURAUS was a 5.332 Gbit/s, 2,800 km optical submarine telecommunications cable that connected Port Hedland, Australia, to Jakarta, Indonesia, with a further interconnection to the APCN and which was decommissioned in 2012.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nextgen Networks</span> Australian communications company

Nextgen Networks is a wholly owned subsidiary of Vocus Group.

Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe (DANTE) is a not-for-profit company that plans, builds and operates the consecutive generations of the backbone network that interconnects the national research and education networks (NRENs) in Europe. The organisation is based in Cambridge, United Kingdom and was formed in 1993 as a limited liability company owned by Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne (RARE). Ownership was transferred to a number of NRENs and government agencies in 1994.

Internet in Australia first became available on a permanent basis to universities in Australia in May 1989, via AARNet. Pegasus Networks was Australia's first public Internet provider in June 1989. The first commercial dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) appeared in capital cities soon after, and by the mid-1990s almost the entire country had a range of choices of dial-up ISPs. Today, Internet access is available through a range of technologies, i.e. hybrid fibre coaxial cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and satellite Internet. In July 2009, the federal government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network. Subsequently, the roll out was downgraded to a Multi-Technology Mix on the promise of it being less expensive and with earlier completion. In October 2020, the federal government announced an upgrade by 2023 of NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services to FTTP for 2 million households, at a cost of A$3.5 billion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Internet in Iceland</span> Overview of internet in Iceland

The use of the Internet in Iceland places Iceland among the top countries in the world in terms of Internet deployment and use. 99.68% of Icelanders used in the internet in 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gulf Bridge International</span>

Gulf Bridge International (GBI) is the Middle East's first privately owned submarine cable system linking the countries bordering the Persian Gulf on a self-healing ring to each other and onward to Europe, Africa and Asia. Gulf Bridge International (GBI), both owns and operates this submarine cable asset as a carrier's carrier as well as offering a full suite of wholesale transmission, IP capacity options, and Enterprise Services. Its main headquarters are located at the Qatar Science & Technology Park in Doha, Qatar.

GARR is the Italian national computer network for universities and research. The main objective of GARR is to design and manage a very high-performance network infrastructure that delivers advanced services to the Italian academic and scientific community. The GARR network is connected to other national research and education networks in Europe and the world, is an integral part of the global Internet, and thereby promotes the exchange and collaboration between researchers, teachers and students worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ACOnet</span>

ACOnet is the name of the national research and education network in Austria. The ACONET association promotes the development and use of that network. ACOnet is not managed and operated by ACONET, but by a unit in the Computing Centre of the University of Vienna that also operates the Vienna Internet Exchange. The University of Vienna represents ACOnet internationally, for example as a member of TERENA and as a participant in the project that funds the European backbone network GÉANT.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Korporaal, Glenda (2009). AARNet – 20 Years of the Internet in Australia – 1989–2009 (PDF). AARNet. ISBN   978-0-646-52111-4 . Retrieved 2 November 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 Clarke, Roger. "Origins and Nature of the Internet in Australia". www.xamax.com.au/. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  3. ↑ Grubb, Ben (28 June 2013). "Who really invented the internet in Australia". The Age . Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  4. 1 2 Goggin, Greg (2005). Virtual Nation: The Internet in Australia. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. ISBN   978-0-86840-503-2 . Retrieved 16 September 2008.
  5. ↑ "Father of Australian Internet Warns of Address Crunch | Internet Hall of Fame". www.internethalloffame.org. Retrieved 3 April 2020.
  6. ↑ "AARNet Annual Reports". AARNet. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
  7. 1 2 "AARNet4 boosts capacity and reach for research and education". AARNet. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
  8. ↑ "Australia's Academic and Research Network advances science, education and R&D with Juniper Networks". AARNet. Retrieved 30 November 2013.
  9. ↑ "AARNet Annual Report 2004" (PDF). AARNet. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 August 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2013.
  10. ↑ "What will AARNet4 enable our customers to do?". AARNet. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
  11. ↑ "ASIC Search". Australian Securities & Investments Commission . Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  12. ↑ "AARNet Shareholders". AARNet. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  13. ↑ "Register of Licensed Carriers". Australian Communications & Media Authority. Archived from the original on 3 December 2013. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  14. 1 2 "AARNet National Network Map" (PDF). AARNet. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 November 2013. Retrieved 7 November 2013.
  15. ↑ "Australian National Peering Policy" (PDF). AARNet. AARNet Pty Ltd. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
  16. ↑ "Internet2 International Partners". internet2.edu/. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  17. ↑ "CANARIE International Peer Networks". www.canarie.ca/en/home. Archived from the original on 9 October 2013. Retrieved 4 November 2013.
  18. ↑ "GÉANT Global Connectivity Asia Pacific". www.geant.net/Pages/default.aspx. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  19. ↑ "TEIN3 Project Partners". www.tein3.net/Pages/home.aspx. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  20. ↑ "AARNet International Network Map" (PDF). AARNet. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
  21. ↑ Debelle, Penelope (13 September 2007). "VoIP starts to talk the talk". The Age . Retrieved 7 November 2013.
  22. ↑ Unified Communications Exchange, AARNet
  23. ↑ Grubb, Ben. "AARNet provides unmetered access to Akamai". iTnews. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  24. ↑ Pearce, Roman. "AARNet peers with Amazon's cloud". Computerworld. Retrieved 6 November 2013.
  25. ↑ "Australian astronomers give a Euro view". The Age. 9 October 2007. Archived from the original on 29 August 2015. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
  26. ↑ Ramadge, Paul (16 January 2008). "Fast data link for researchers". The Age. Retrieved 30 August 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.