JANET is a private British government-funded
computer networkA computer network is a group of interconnected computers. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general overview of some types and categories and also presents the basic components of a network....
dedicated to education and research. All further- and higher-education organisations in the UK are connected to JANET, as are all the
Research CouncilThe UK Research Councils, of which there are currently seven, are publicly-funded agencies responsible for co-ordinating and funding particular areas of research, including the arts, humanities, all areas of science and engineering...
s; the majority of these sites are connected via 20
metropolitan area networkA metropolitan area network is a large computer network that usually spans a city or a large campus. A MAN usually interconnects a number of local area networks using a high-capacity backbone technology, such as fiber-optical links, and provides up-link services to wide area networks and the...
s (though JANET refers to these as Regional Networks, emphasising that JANET connections are not just confined to a metropolitan area) across the UK. The network also carries traffic between schools within the UK, although many of the schools' networks maintain their own general Internet connectivity.
JANET is a private British government-funded
computer networkA computer network is a group of interconnected computers. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general overview of some types and categories and also presents the basic components of a network....
dedicated to education and research. All further- and higher-education organisations in the UK are connected to JANET, as are all the
Research CouncilThe UK Research Councils, of which there are currently seven, are publicly-funded agencies responsible for co-ordinating and funding particular areas of research, including the arts, humanities, all areas of science and engineering...
s; the majority of these sites are connected via 20
metropolitan area networkA metropolitan area network is a large computer network that usually spans a city or a large campus. A MAN usually interconnects a number of local area networks using a high-capacity backbone technology, such as fiber-optical links, and provides up-link services to wide area networks and the...
s (though JANET refers to these as Regional Networks, emphasising that JANET connections are not just confined to a metropolitan area) across the UK. The network also carries traffic between schools within the UK, although many of the schools' networks maintain their own general Internet connectivity. The name was originally a contraction of Joint Academic NETwork but it is now known as JANET in its own right.
It is linked to other European and worldwide
NRENA national research and education network is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country....
s through
GEANTGÉANT is the main European multi-gigabit computer network for research and education purposes. GÉANT link speeds range from 155 Mbit/s on the slowest spur links to 10 Gbit/s in the core optical fiber network....
, has a private connection to its equivalent
CERNETThe China Education and Research Network is the first nationwide education and research computer network in China. The CERNET project is funded by the Chinese government and directly managed by the Chinese Ministry of Education...
in China and
peersPeering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the other for the exchanged...
extensively with other
ISPsAn Internet service provider is a company that offers its customers access to the Internet...
at
Internet Exchange PointAn Internet exchange point is a physical infrastructure through which Internet service providers exchange Internet traffic between their networks . IXPs reduce the portion of an ISP's traffic which must be delivered via their upstream transit providers, thereby reducing the average per-bit...
s in the UK. Any other networks are reached via
transit servicesInternet transit consists of two bundled services:* the advertisement of customer routes to other ISPs, thereby soliciting inbound traffic towards the customer from them...
from commercial
ISPsAn Internet service provider is a company that offers its customers access to the Internet...
.
JANET is operated by
JANET(UK)JANET is the trading name for the JNT Association, which since 1994 has had responsibility for the management of the United Kingdom’s Higher Education networking programme. It manages the operation and development of the JANET network, which links the UK’s education and research organisations to...
, formerly known as UKERNA (the United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association), who are also responsible for the .ac.uk and .gov.uk
domainThe Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participants...
s. It is funded by JISC, the Joint Information Systems Committee.
History
JANET developed out of a number of local and research networks dating back to the 1970s. By 1980, a number of national computer facilities (ULCC London, UMRCC Manchester, Rutherford Laboratory serving the Science and Engineering Research Council community), each with their own star network had developed. There were also regional networks centred on Bath, Edinburgh and Newcastle, where groups of institutions had pooled resources to provide better computing facilities than could be afforded individually. These networks were each based on one manufacturer's standards, were mutually incompatible, and overlapping. In the early 1980s a standardisation and interconnect effort started, hosted on an expansion of the SERCnet
X.25X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, Plain old telephone service connections or ISDN connections as physical links...
research network. The system first went live in April 1983, hosting about 50 sites with line speeds of 9.6 kbit/s. In the mid-80s the backbone was upgraded to a 2 Mbit/s backbone with 64 kbit/s access links, and a further upgrade in the early 1990s sped the backbone to 8 Mbit/s and the access links to 2 Mbit/s, making JANET the fastest
X.25X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet switched wide area network communication. An X.25 WAN consists of packet-switching exchange nodes as the networking hardware, and leased lines, Plain old telephone service connections or ISDN connections as physical links...
network in the world.
The JANET effort resulted in the standardisation known as the
Coloured Book protocolsThe Coloured Book protocols were a set computer network protocols used on the SERCnet and JANET X.25 packet-switched academic networks in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1992...
, which provided the first complete X.25 standard. The naming scheme used on JANET (
JANET NRSThe JANET NRS was a pseudo-hierarchical naming scheme adopted for use on United Kingdom academic and research networks before the superficially similar system used by the Internet DNS had been fully established....
) had similarities to the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
's
Domain Name SystemThe Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participants...
, but with the domains specified in the reverse order, e.g. UK.AC.HATFIELD.INFSC1 instead of infsc1.hatfield.ac.uk. There had been some talk of moving JANET to
OSIOpen Systems Interconnection is an effort to standardize networking that was started in 1977 by the International Organization for Standardization , along with the ITU-T.-History:...
protocols in the 1990s, but changes in the networking world meant this never happened.
JIPS and SuperJANET
In January 1991 the JANET IP Service (JIPS) was set up as a pilot project to host
IPThe Internet Protocol is a protocol used for communicating data across a packet-switched internetwork using the Internet Protocol Suite, also referred to as TCP/IP....
traffic on the existing network. Within ten months the IP traffic had exceeded the levels of X.25 traffic, and the IP support became official in November. Today JANET is primarily a high-speed IP network.
In order to address speed concerns, several hardware upgrades have been incorporated into the JANET system. In 1989 SuperJANET was proposed, to re-host JANET on a fibre optic network. Work started in late 1992, and by late 1993 the first 14 sites had migrated to the new 34 Mbit/s
ATMAsynchronous transfer mode is an electronic digital data transmission technology. ATM is implemented as a network protocol and was first developed in the mid 1980s. The goal was to design a single networking strategy that could transport real-time video conference and audio as well as image...
system. SuperJANET also moved solely to IP.
In 1995 SuperJANET2 started, adding 155 Mbit/s ATM backbones and a 10 Mbit/s
SMDSSwitched multimegabit data service was a connectionless service used to connect LANs, MANs and WANs to exchange data. SMDS was based on the IEEE 802.6 DQDB standard...
network encompassing some of the original JANET nodes. JANET's mandate now included running metropolitan area networks centred on these sites.
SuperJANET3 created new 155 Mbit/s ATM nodes to fully connect all of the major sites at
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
,
BristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, west of London, and east of Cardiff.With an estimated population of 416,400 for the unitary authority in mid-2007, and a surrounding urban area with an estimated 561,500 residents, it is England's sixth, and...
,
ManchesterManchester is a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. In 2007, the population of the city was estimated to be 458,100...
and
LeedsLeeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. The historic core at the heart of Leeds in 2001 had an estimated subdivision population of 443,247, whilst the entire city, that includes the urban and suburban areas incorporated into the city in 1974, had an estimated...
, with 34 Mbit/s links to smaller sites around the country.
In March 2001 SuperJANET4 was launched. The key challenges for SuperJANET4 were the need to increase network capacity and to strengthen the design and management of JANET to allow it to meet a similar increase in the size of its userbase.
SuperJANET4 saw the implementation of a 2.5 Gbit/s core backbone from which connections to regional network points of presence were made at speeds ranging between 155 Mbit/s to 2.5 Gbit/s depending upon the size of the regional network. In 2002 the core SuperJANET4 backbone was upgraded to 10 Gbit/s.
SuperJANET4 also saw an increase in the userbase of JANET with the inclusion of the Further Education Community and the use of the SuperJANET4 backbone to interconnect schools' networks. The core point of presence (Backbone) sites in SuperJANET4 were
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
,
GlasgowGlasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
,
WarringtonWarrington is a large town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. The population of the borough of Warrington, including its 18 civil parishes, is around 194,000...
,
ReadingReading is a large town in England, located at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London...
,
BristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, west of London, and east of Cardiff.With an estimated population of 416,400 for the unitary authority in mid-2007, and a surrounding urban area with an estimated 561,500 residents, it is England's sixth, and...
,
PortsmouthPortsmouth is a city located in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is the United Kingdom's only island city and is located on Portsea Island. The City of Portsmouth and Portsmouth Football Club are both nicknamed Pompey...
,
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
and
LeedsLeeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. The historic core at the heart of Leeds in 2001 had an estimated subdivision population of 443,247, whilst the entire city, that includes the urban and suburban areas incorporated into the city in 1974, had an estimated...
.
In October 2006 the SuperJANET5 project was launched after £29 million of investment. It provides a 10Gbit/s backbone, with an upgrade path to 40Gbit/s over the next few years. The new backbone as a result of the SuperJANET5 project is a hybrid network offering, providing both a high speed IP transit service and private bandwidth channel services provisioned over a dedicated fibre network. It is designed not only to fully accommodate the requirements of the traditional JANET user base - all research institutes, universities and further education - but also to meet the needs of a new userbase in the UK's primary and secondary schools.
Regional networks
The JANET network is implemented through 19 regional network operators (RNOs) which connect universities, colleges and schools to the JANET network. Most RNOs are operated as independent entities working under contract to JANET(UK), though JANET(UK) operates a small number of RNOs directly.
Each RNO covers a specific geographical area, as of 2009 the following regional networks are connected to JANET:
- AbMAN
AbMAN is one of the regional networks that comprise JANET. AbMAN connects universities and colleges in and around Aberdeen in Scotland to one another and to the JANET backbone....
The Aberdeen Metropolitan Area Network
- C&NLMAN
C&NLMAN is one of the regional networks that comprise JANET. C&NLMAN connects universities and colleges in Cumbria and Lancashire in the north east of England to each other and to the JANET backbone....
The Cumbria And North Lancashire Metropolitan Area Network
- ClydeNET The Glasgow and Clydeside Network
- EaStMAN
EaStMAN is one of the regional networks that make up JANET. EaStMAN connects universities and colleges to one another and to JANET in the Edinburgh, Stirling, West Lothian and Borders areas of Scotland....
The Edinburgh and Stirling Metropolitan Area Network
- EastNet The Eastern Regional Area Network
- EMMAN
-Introduction:EMMAN is a company limited by guarantee and jointly owned by its members, eight Higher Education Institutions in the East Midlands region of the United Kingdom....
The East Midlands Metropolitan Area Network
- FaTMAN
FaTMAN is one of the regional networks that comprise JANET. FaTMAN connects three universities University of Dundee, University of St Andrews and University of Abertay Dundee and five colleges to each other and to the JANET backbone in the east of Scotland...
The Fife and Tayside Metropolitan Area Network
- Kent MAN The Kent Metropolitan Area Network
- LenSE The Learning Network South East
- LMN The London Metropolitan Network
- NIRAN
Niran is a kibbutz and Israeli settlement in the West Bank. Located in the Jordan Valley near Jericho, it falls under the jurisdiction of Bik'at HaYarden Regional Council. In 2006 it had a population of 52....
The Northern Ireland Regional Area Networking
- NNW
NNW may refer to:*National Nurses Week, the week of May 6 through May 12 proclaimed by Richard Nixon in 1974 as a period for Americans to recognize nurses' service and contributions...
Network North West
- NorMAN
Norman may refer to:* Norman people or Normans, a people who colonized Normandy in France and conquered other lands, particularly England** Norman architecture, styles of Romanesque architecture developed by the Normans...
The North East Metropolitan Area Network
- PSBA Wales (under bespoke contract)
- SWERN
SWERN is one of the regional networks that make up JANET, the UK's higher education internet backbone. SWERN is owner and operated by the universities of Plymouth, Exeter, Bristol, Bath and the West of England and also provides high speed connections to the other South West Higher Education...
The South West England Regional Network
- TVN The Thames Valley Network (operated directly by JANET(UK))
- UHIMI The University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute Network
- WMRN West Midlands Regional Network (operated directly by JANET(UK))
- YHMAN The Yorkshire and Humberside Metropolitan Area Network