Find out all about NRENs - National Research and Education Networks - entities that, like FCCN, the digital services of the Foundation for Science and Technology, work every day to put technology at the service of knowledge.
It is necessary to ensure that the entire teaching and research community has equal access to the digital resources they need. This is exactly what, in simplified terms, an NREN guarantees.
What is it?
The acronym goes a long way to explaining what an NREN, or National Research and Education Network, is all about. The word "network" is the key to understanding this concept, as an NREN is the national network dedicated to the research and education community, and guarantees the provision of a network infrastructure and digital services to the research and education community.
In this way, NRENs are infrastructures, they are the secure, resilient and high-speed national academic network. Around the world, 140 countries have their own NREN dedicated to supporting their teaching and research communities.
National education and research networks are designed and planned to meet the demanding needs of the community they serve. They are characterized by providing much higher bandwidths than typical commercial networks, with low latency and constant jitter. These characteristics are essential to ensure the transfer of large volumes of scientific and academic data.
NRENs also guarantee the provision of various other digital services aimed at facilitating and enhancing the work of the various players in the national research and education community, such as students, teachers, researchers and other professionals.
One of these services is the authentication and authorization infrastructures, which in Portugal are called RCTSaai, and which provide a set of tools for managing identities and secure access to digital resources.
Collaboration: NRENS also act as catalysts for value creation, facilitating the creation of partnerships and working groups between the teaching and research community.
And in Portugal?
In Portugal, this network is called the Science, Technology and Society Network (RCTS). The management, planning and updating of this structure is the responsibility of FCCN, FCT's digital services.
This network serves more than 600,000 students, teachers, researchers and employees across the country, ensuring the provision of advanced connectivity services and allowing them to connect to the Internet in the first instance in a resilient way, with high capacity. To this end, it consists of 2,484 km of Optical Fiber Pairs, 1,000 km of Optical Fiber Cable, 105 Points of Presence and 6.5 Tbps of Installed Capacity.
At a national level, among the various impacts, we highlight the fact that the RCTS Network already has more than 80 institutions connected and 29 are connected at 100Gbps. On average, during 2024, around 8,000 daily logins will have been registered throughout the country on the RCTSaai infrastructure, which allows people to easily and securely access various webservices usingtheir own organization's account. In total, in 2023, more than 2.3 million logins were registered by students, teachers, researchers and IT technicians, among other professionals.
FCCN also provides a range of more than 20 digital services in the areas of Connectivity, Collaboration, Knowledge, Computing, Security and Innovation projects.
Why do we need an NREN?
Faced with constant evolution, educational and research institutions increasingly need to provide their users with an unrestricted and highly available digital experience.
What is needed is an accessible, secure and resilient network that connects the community and fosters global collaboration, particularly in large scientific and technological projects. The results of this work by NRENs are visible in the day-to-day work of education and research institutions, particularly in Portugal.
NRENs also make it possible, thanks to cooperation between the various players in a country's scientific and educational systems, to secure advantages such as cost savings, mobility, stimulating innovation and sharing good practices.
The relevance of NRENs has also increased in recent years. For example, the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequent transition to more online education and collaboration has meant that some of the advanced services provided by FCCN, such as the Colibri videoconferencing service, have become central to the day-to-day lives of the academic and research population.
On the other hand, the commitment of higher education and research institutions to integrated digital solutions and emerging technologies also requires a great deal of computing capacity, which is provided by NRENs. The challenges posed by cybersecurity threats to institutions have also reinforced the role of NRENs as infrastructures that work for their security.
What has FCCN done for us?
Connectivity: Designed to withstand the highest levels of use without hindering performance, FCCN provides the network and connectivity services needed for a high-quality, lag-free streaming experience.
Mobility: NRENs provide services such as eduroam that enable a seamless learning experience, allowing users to be connected and access the different services inside and outside their institution, using the single sign-on on their devices.
Vanguard and Innovation: Through the NREN, education and research institutions are guaranteed that all their needs in terms of security, connectivity, knowledge, computing and collaboration are being met, through constant investment in innovation and new services.
In short, these are just a few points that show how NRENs provide the necessary resources to meet the ever-changing requirements of the teaching and research community in Portugal and around the world.
What about collaboration?
The dimension of international cooperation is central to the life of NRENs. In Europe, for example, the 39 existing entities are linked through GÉANT - a regional association that connects more than 50 million users across Europe.
This is also a way of creating an integrated ecosystem of collaboration that allows for the continuous improvement of services, the execution of joint projects and the stimulation of innovation.
Find out more about NRENs on the GÉANT website: https://about.geant.org/about/
