Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network
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The Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN) is a high capacity, ultra high-speed connectivity between New Zealand’s tertiary institutions, research organisations, libraries, schools and museums, and the rest of the world.
It was commissioned in late 2006 and is linked to other established regional and national research and education networks (NRENs), notably JANET in the UK, and to the Pacific Northwest Gigapop, Seattle. KAREN is owned and operated by REANNZ. [1]
New Zealand researchers and educators need KAREN to participate in e-research:
- exchange large volumes of data quickly
- gain access to large scale national and international infrastructure, and
- collaborate better on research and education projects at a distance
KAREN's objectives are:
- To enable leading edge e-research
- To facilitate universal connectivity throughout the New Zealand and international research and education community
- 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 partners to ensure the greatest possible flexibility for ongoing evolution
KAREN links Universities and Crown Research Institutes within New Zealand via fibre-optic cable, with links to Sydney and Seattle (Pacific Northwest Gigapop) via the Southern Cross Cable at speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second (or 622 megabits per second to Seattle).
KAREN consists of a highspeed optical network connecting Points of Presence (PoPs) throughout New Zealand. A PoP is an interconnection point between member sites around the network. Members may connect at one or more POPs.
International links connect KAREN to other National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) in Australia and the United States, and through them to Asia and Europe.
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 GRIDs, 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.
[edit] See also
[edit] Reference
Introducing KAREN by Claire Le Couteur: e.nz magazine Volume 8/4, July/August 2007
