Participant Connection

ACOnet provides a backbone service to its participants, offering them efficient access to international Research Networks as well as to the Commodity Internet. According to its concept as a National Research and Education Network (NREN), ACOnet aims to support primarily issues of nonprofit organisations in the fields of research, education, and culture.

• Consequentially, traffic among ACOnet participants and with other other scientific networks is free of charge. All academic traffic is limited solely by the physical capabilities of the Last Mile (see below). The same goes for any upload. No additional price tag is attached to the upload of content to the internet.
  
  
• The costs for ACOnet participation depend on the subscribed commodity traffic bandwidth; i.e. downloads from commercial networks (upload is not affected). In accordance with the principles of fair use, and under the premise that it occurs on legitimate grounds, the actual data transfer from commodity networks may, at times, add up to 1600 % of the subscribed bandwidth.
  
  
• Special arrangements are in place for students' dormitories.

In order to differentiate scientific traffic from commodity traffic, each packet is tagged according to its source on entry into ACOnet. The details may be reviewed at Class of Service (CoS). Further information on ACOnet's connection to other scientific networks and to the global Internet as such may be found at International Connectivity.

The term "last mile" designates the connection (the actual cable) between a participant and its nearest ACOnet PoP. It is each ACOnet participant's responsibility to provide for an appropriate link to the respective ACOnet PoP. ACOnet staff will happily counsel you on your possibilities. Generally, we recommend VLAN-transparent Ethernet services or transparent dark fiber connections, to utilize all ACOnet services. ACOnet provides only Ethernet interfaces.