GARR (''Gruppo per l'Armonizzazione delle Reti della Ricerca'') is the Italian national

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

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 A national research and education network (NREN) is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country. It is usually distinguished by support for a high-speed back ...

in Europe and the world, is an integral part of the global

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, and thereby promotes the exchange and collaboration between researchers, teachers and students worldwide.

History

The GARR network originates from the wish to unify and harmonise the previously existing different data networks of research centres and universities. The first single network was built in 1991, thanks to the efforts of the Group for Harmonisation of Research Networks (GARR), which was created in the late 1980s to represent the world of research organizations and universities. The current network is designed and managed by Consortium GARR, an association incorporated in 2001 under the auspices of the

Ministry of Education, Universities and Research The Ministry of Education, University and Research (in it, Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca, italic=no or MIUR) is the ministry of the Italian government for the national education system, the Italian universities and ...

, whose founders are CNR, ENEA,

INFN The Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN; "National Institute for Nuclear Physics") is the coordinating institution for nuclear, particle, theoretical and astroparticle physics in Italy. History INFN was founded on 8 August 1951, to furt ...

and the CRUI (Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities) Foundation as the representative of all Italian universities. Consortium GARR has its headquarters in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

in the street where the headquarters of CASPUR (the Interuniversity Consortium for the Application of Supercomputers by Universities and Research) and the NaMex

Internet exchange point Internet exchange points (IXes or IXPs) are common grounds of IP networking, allowing participant Internet service providers (ISPs) to exchange data destined for their respective networks. IXPs are generally located at places with preexisting ...

are also located, as well as one of the major nodes of the GARR network.

The GARR network

The GARR network connects more than 450 locations throughout the country and has more than two million teachers, students and researchers as its users. All areas of education and research are represented. In particular, GARR connects: * 145 research centres and laboratories of CNR, ENEA,

INGV The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology ( it, Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, INGV) is a research institute for geophysics and volcanology Volcanology (also spelled vulcanology) is the study of volcanoes, lava, ma ...

and ASI; * 90 universities and 34 institutes for higher education in the arts and music; * 45 hospitals and institutes for scientific care; * 26 national and university libraries and other documentation centres; * 17

INAF The National Institute for Astrophysics ( it, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, or INAF) is an Italian research institute in astronomy and astrophysics, founded in 1999. INAF funds and operates twenty separate research facilities, which in turn ...

observatories and astrophysics centres; * 91 other research and education institutions of international importance located in Italy. The network extends over the country with more than 50 points of presence and is based on a fibre-optic infrastructure with a capacity of 20 Gbit/s. The interconnection with the Internet is achieved by multiple 100 Gbit/s connections to the

GÉANT GÉANT is the pan-European data network for the research and education community. It interconnects national research and education networks (NRENs) across Europe, enabling collaboration on projects ranging from biological science, to earth obse ...

network (which is managed by the company

DANTE Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian people, Italian Italian poetry, poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', origin ...

, of which Consortium GARR is a shareholder) and 2.5 Gbit/s connections to the commercial operators

Level 3 Communications Level 3 Communications was an American multinational telecommunications and Internet service provider company headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado. It ultimately became a part of CenturyLink (now Lumen Technologies), where Level 3 President ...

and

Cogent The CoGeNT experiment has searched for dark matter. It uses a single germanium crystal (~100 grams) as a cryogenic detector for WIMP particles. CoGeNT has operated in the Soudan Underground Laboratory since 2009. Results Their first announ ...

, as well as various links to different regional networks. Peering is mainly done at the Internet exchange points MIX (200 Gbit/s), NaMeX (100 Gbit/s), TOP-IX (2 Gbit/s) and VSIX (1 Gbit/s), which are located in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany Regions of Italy, region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilan ...

and

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...

, respectively. The next-generation GARR-X network has a backbone and user connections that are mostly based on a fibre-optic infrastructure lit and managed by GARR itself. The entire GARR network provides both IPv4 and

IPv6 Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...

Services for users

GARR offers its user community a range of services with a high innovation level. Some of these services are related to the operations and use of the network, while others are application services for end-users. * GARR Vconf is a videoconferencing service that allows to connect up to 40 locations simultaneously. GARR Vconf is a free service for all users in the Italian academic and research community. * GARR IDEM AAI is the

Authentication and authorization infrastructure Authentication (from ''authentikos'', "real, genuine", from αὐθέντης ''authentes'', "author") is the act of proving an assertion, such as the identity of a computer system user. In contrast with identification, the act of indicatin ...

that simplifies access to online resources through the use of a standard authentication procedure. The

federated identity A federated identity in information technology is the means of linking a person's electronic identity and attributes, stored across multiple distinct identity management systems. Federated identity is related to single sign-on (SSO), in which a ...

approach allows users from organisations that are part of IDEM to use their home credentials also when accessing resources of other organisations. *

eduroam eduroam (''edu''cation ''roam''ing) is an international Wi-Fi internet access roaming service for users in research, higher education and further education. It provides researchers, teachers, and students network access when visiting an institu ...

is a service that allows access to wireless networks in the university and research environment in the entire world without requesting specific credentials from the host organisation. eduroam is a registered trademark of

TERENA The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA, ) was a not-for-profit association of European national research and education networks (NRENs) incorporated in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The association was originally f ...

, which coordinates the worldwide deployment. It is based on a federated approach and is widely deployed in Europe, North America and parts of the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America and Africa. * GARR NRENUM VOIP - in the context of IP telephony, GARR administers the Italian number block +39 as part of

ENUM Telephone number mapping is a system of unifying the international telephone number system of the public switched telephone network with the Internet addressing and identification name spaces. Internationally, telephone numbers are systematica ...

service NRENum.net in the research network environment, and advises on and directs the implementation of

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

. * GARR-NOC is the

Network Operations Center A network operations center (NOC, pronounced like the word ''knock''), also known as a "network management center", is one or more locations from which network monitoring and control, or network management, is exercised over a computer, teleco ...

responsible for the management and operations of the network infrastructure. Its activities include fault management, link activation and the collection and publication of traffic data statistics. For this purpose, GARR has created the GARR Integrated Network Suite that is able to monitor the performance of the network at every level of the infrastructure in real time, simplifying troubleshooting and enabling interoperability with other systems. * GARR-LIR and GARR-NIC are services for the registration of .it and .eu domain names and for the assignment and management of IP addresses. * GARR-CERT is a

CSIRT A computer emergency response team (CERT) is an expert group that handles computer security incidents. Alternative names for such groups include computer emergency readiness team and computer security incident response team (CSIRT). A more modern ...

with the task of assisting GARR users in the field of computer security, managing risks and preventing incidents. * GARR-SCARR is a new service to perform vulnerability tests on the machines of the GARR network by making a series of repeated scans on request. * GARR-CA is a Certificatie Authority service that issues and server certificates as part of the

Certificate Service. The use of digital certificates is required to sign and encrypt documents and to protect and certify the authenticity of sites. * GARR MIRROR is a service for the distribution of the most used open source software available on the Internet. The archive of the GARR ftp-mirror has a 120 terabytes of pre-

RAID Raid, RAID or Raids may refer to: Attack * Raid (military), a sudden attack behind the enemy's lines without the intention of holding ground * Corporate raid, a type of hostile takeover in business * Panty raid, a prankish raid by male college ...

capacity. * GARR USENET NEWS provides the Italian feed and part of the international feed of

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

news to managers of local news servers.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://www.garr.it/b/eng
GARR Backbone Status
Information technology organisations based in Italy Internet in Italy Internet mirror services National research and education networks