GÉANT
ACOnet is part of GÉANT, the pan-European research and education network. The GÉANT backbone network interconnects Europe’s National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) including ACOnet, which together deliver seamless connectivity to an estimated 50 million research and education users in over 10.000 institutions across Europe.
GÉANT provides the most enhanced services and widest geographical reach of any network of its kind in the world, with cutting-edge standards of reliability and innovation.
Every ACOnet participant has access to all hosts reachable over GÉANT. The data traffic is only limited by the bandwidth of the physical connection, but not by the contractual bandwidth. ACOnet is connected to GÉANT via a 100 Gbps primary and an additional 100 Gbps backup link.
For further information about GÉANT please visit www.geant.org.
Institutional Restructuring on The European Level
On October 7th, 2014, TERENA and DANTE merged and re-emerged under the name "GÉANT Association". As of May 1st, 2015, they use the common designation GÉANT.
This merger occured at the wish and decision of the European NREN community. It marks a new phase in almost thirty years of collaborative research and education networking in Europe. The main benefits for the NREN community are simplified governance, more efficient management, more flexible use of resources and a better coordinated approach to the European Commission's Horizon2020 Program.