| Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd | |||||
| Abbreviation: | REANNZ | ||||
| Formation: | September 2005 | ||||
| Headquarters: | Wellington, New Zealand | ||||
| Status: | Crown entity | ||||
| Region Served: | New Zealand | ||||
| Leader Title: | Chairperson | ||||
| Leader Name: | Janine Smith | ||||
| Main Organ: | Board of Directors | ||||
| Module: |
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The Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand Ltd. (REANNZ), formerly known as the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN), is a high-capacity, high-speed national research and education network (NREN) connecting New Zealand's tertiary institutions, research organisations, libraries, schools, museums, and the rest of the world. REANNZ is a Crown-owned non-profit company.
Commissioned in late 2006, REANNZ links to other established regional and national research and education networks, notably to JANET in the UK and to the Pacific Northwest Gigapop in Seattle.
New Zealand researchers and educators can use REANNZ to participate in e-research:
REANNZ aims to:
REANNZ consists of a high-speed optical network connecting points of presence (PoPs) throughout New Zealand. A PoP provides an interconnection point between member sites around the network. Members may connect at one or more POPs. REANNZ links universities and Crown Research Institutes within New Zealand via One NZ (Vodafone) fibre-optic cable and Vocus Communications, at speeds up to 100 gigabits per second.
International links to Sydney and to Seattle (Pacific Northwest Gigapop) via the Hawaiki Cable connect REANNZ to other national research and education networks in Australia and the United States, and through them to Asia and Europe for Research and Education traffic.[1]
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.
REANNZ 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.
, 86 organisations at 66 sites across New Zealand had connections to REANNZ.