Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network
Encyclopedia
The Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN) is a high-capacity, ultra high-speed national research and education network
National Research and Education Network
A 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....

 connecting New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

's tertiary institutions, research organisations, libraries, schools and museums, and the rest of the world. REANNZ (Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd), a Crown-owned, not-for-profit company, owns and operates KAREN.

Commissioned in late 2006, KAREN links to other established regional and national research and education network
National Research and Education Network
A 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 (NRENs), notably JANET
JANET
JANET is a private British government-funded computer network dedicated to education and research. All further- and higher-education organisations in the UK are connected to JANET, as are all the Research Councils; the majority of these sites are connected via 20 metropolitan area networks JANET...

 in the UK, and to the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, Seattle.

New Zealand researchers and educators can use KAREN to participate in e-research
E-research
The term e-Research refers to the use of information technology to support existing and new forms of research...

:
  • to exchange large volumes of data quickly
  • to gain access to large scale national and international infrastructure
  • to collaborate better on research and education projects at a distance


KAREN aims:
  • to enable leading-edge e-research
  • to facilitate universal connectivity throughout the New Zealand and international research and education communities
  • to encourage broad participation by the research and education sector in New Zealand through accessible technology and reasonable pricing
  • to connect the research and education sector to the broader innovation community for pre-commercial research and development based collaboration
  • to facilitate participation by multiple telecommunications-sector partner
    Partner
    A partner is:*A friend who shares a common interest or participates in achieving a common goal*A Significant other in an intimate relationship*A member of a partnership*A business partner...

    s to ensure the greatest possible flexibility for ongoing evolution


KAREN consists of a high-speed optical network connecting points of presence
Point of presence
A point of presence is an artificial demarcation point or interface point between communications entities. It may include a meet-me-room.In the US, this term became important during the court-ordered breakup of the Bell Telephone system...

 (PoPs) throughout New Zealand. A PoP provides an interconnection point between member sites around the network. Members may connect at one or more POPs. KAREN links universities and Crown Research Institutes
Crown Research Institutes
In New Zealand, Crown Research Institutes are corporatised Crown entities charged with conducting scientific research.Crown Research Institutes date from 1992, with most formed out of the parts of the former Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and of elements of various government...

 within New Zealand via TelstraClear
TelstraClear
TelstraClear is New Zealand's second-largest telecommunications company and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telstra Corporation , with around 400,000 customers....

 fibre-optic cable, at speeds of 10 gigabits per second.

International links to Sydney and to Seattle (Pacific Northwest Gigapop) via the Southern Cross Cable
Southern Cross Cable
The Southern Cross Cable, operated by Bermuda company Southern Cross Cables Limited, is a trans-Pacific network of telecommunications cables commissioned in 2000....

 connect KAREN to other national research and education networks in Australia and the United States, and through them to Asia and Europe. The speeds are 155 megabits per second to Australia and 620 megabits per second to Seattle.

A distinguishing feature of any NREN is its flexibility to meet the diverse needs of all its users. The numbers involved, coupled with increasing sophistication of personal applications, mean that managing demand and maintaining performance require the use of a hybrid Ethernet and Internet Protocol (IP) network architecture.

The research community, driven by the development of various e-science grid
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...

s, has developed large-scale applications that will individually use high amounts of bandwidth and can in some cases also have strict demands on the network that may require defined resources allocated temporarily to meet performance demands.

KAREN will need to continually evolve so the range of production and development demands can co-exist. This means taking into account the collaborative nature of the development, and research processes, and therefore the need to deliver both advanced network services and associated development facilities to participating organisations.

, 99 organisations at 144 sites across New Zealand had connections to KAREN.

External links

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