Internet Network Organizations Les Cottrell Last Update: June 16, 2004. Alphabetized list of all links on this page

This is a list of some of the network organizations that are involved with the Internet, together with brief descriptions of their purposes.

Abilene Project

Abilene is a project of UCAID together with Qwest, Cisco and Nortel to develop an advanced backbone network to connecte regional network aggregation points (GigaPoPs)

ACFA-NWG

The Asian Committee on Future Accelerators (ACFA) Network Working Group's mission is to understand the network situation and needs for high energy physics accelerator collaborations and to recommend solutions to fulfill the needs.

ANX

The mission of the Autmotive Network eXchange (ANX) is to provide the automotive industry with a robust, global network infrastructure that enables an emerging set of electronic communication services. The ANX is sponsored by the The Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) a not-for-profit trade association of North American vehicle manufacturers and suppliers.

APAN and APAN-KR

Asia Pacific Advanced Network was establilshed June 1997 for research and development in advanced networking application and services in the Asia-Pacific region. APAN network has been operational since mid 1998.

APNG

The APNG (Asia Pacific Networking Group) is a volunteer's group organized by people promoting internetworking in the Asia & Pacific Region.

BBN

BBN Planet Corp. is a large Internet Service Provider.

CalREN

This $25M grant program, created by Pacific Telesis in 1993, funds advanced technology for innovators in communications technology.

CALREN2

The California Research and Education Network, is a project of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC). It includes the UC campuses, Caltech, CSU, JPL, Stanford and USC.

CAIDA

The Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis is a collaborative undertaking to promote greater cooperation in the engineering and maintenance of a robust, scalable global Internet infrastructure. provides a neutral framework to support these cooperative endeavors.

CANARIE & CA*net 2

CANARIE is an industry led and managed consortium created in 1993 as an innovative way for the Canadian Federal Government and private sector to collaborate in stimulating the development of the Information Highway in Canada. CA*net II ia a CANARIE partnership of Canada's leading carriers to provide Canada's next generation Internet initiative. It is designed to promote the development of the next generation of Internet networks, applications and services particularly those that take advantage of a Quality of Service (QoS) Internet.

CENIC

The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) will represent the common interests of California's higher education academic and research communities in achieving robust, high capacity, next generation Internet communications services.

CNRI

The Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI) is a non-profit organization dedicated to formulating, planning, and carrying out national-level research initiatives on the use of network-based information technology.

CrossGrid

The main objective of the CrossGrid project is to extend the GRID environment across Europe, and to a new category of applications. The CrossGrid project has been prepared by 21 partners from 11 countries. Cyfronet is a coordinator of the project. The project has been approved by the EU IST Directorate in 2001 and it started on March 1, 2002.

DANTE

DANTE (Delivering Academic Networks to Europe) DANTE is a not-for-profit company, set up in 1993 by European national research networks to organise international network services for European researchers. It has several International Projects including TEN-34 and Quantum. It is also involved in the Quantum Test Program.

DataTAG Project

The Eu DataTAG will create a large-scale intercontinental Grid testbed that will focus upon advanced networking issues and interoperability between several major intercontinental Grid projects at present both within the European Community, and in the USA, hence extending the capabilities of each and enhancing the worldwide programme of Grid development.

DFN

The Deutcshe Forschungsnetz is the German Academic and research network.

ESnet

ESnet is a global computer network managed and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Science Research.

EUMEDCONNECT

The EUMEDCONNECT project is a pioneering initiative to establish an IP-based network that serves the research and education communities of the Mediterranean region and is linked to the pan-European GEANT network.

European NRNs

This page provides links to the European National research networks.

FNC

The Federal Network Council is chartered by National Science and Technology Council's Committee on Computing, Information and Communications (CCIC) to act as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies to meet their research, education, and operational mission goals and to bridge the gap between the advanced networking technologies being developed by research FNC agencies and the ultimate acquisition of mature versions of these technologies from the commercial sector.

GARR

GARR is the Italian Academic and Research network.

Global Crossing

Global Crossing's fiber optic cables run below the surface of the Atlantic and the Pacific, emerging at landing stations along the coasts in the North and South America, Europe and Asia

Global TeraBit Research Network

The GTRN is a partnership to establish a true world-wide next generation Internet to interconnect national and multinational high speed research and education networks. The partnership initially involves North America through Internet2 in the US and CANARIE in Canada, and Europe through the NREN Consortium. Participation of the Asia Pacific and other regions is expected soon.

HENP Networking Working Group

Mission: Help ensure that the required national and international network infrastructures, monitoring tools and facilities, and collaborative systems, are developed and deployed in a timely fashion to meet the needs of the U.S. LHC Program, as well as the HENP community

IAB

Internet Architecture Board is a technical advisory group of the Internet Society.

ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Numbers and Names is the new non-profit corporation that was formed to take over responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions now performed under U.S. Government contract by IANA and other entities.

IETF

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet.

Internet 2

The Internet 2 mission is to facilitate and coordinate the development, deployment, operation and technology transfer of advanced, network-based applications and network services to further U.S. leadership in research and higher education and accelerate the availability of new services and applications on the Internet.

ILAN

Israeli R&E Network Service Provider.

IOPS

IOPS.ORG promotes, in the public interest, industry cooperation on the joint engineering efforts to help ensure an operational global internet.

JANET

The UK Joint Academic Network.

MFS

Metropiltan Fiber Systems run the MAEs (Metropolitan Area Ethernets).

MirNET

MirNET is a joint US-Russian project to provide next generation Internet services to collaborating US-Russian scientists and educators.

MOAT

NLANR's Measurement and Operations Analysis Team (MOAT) will work closely with the two other NLANR activities, the Distributed Applications Support Team (DAST) and the National Center for Network Engineering (NCNE). These three activities are the successor of the original NLANR collaboration, which formally started in 1995.

NACSIS

National Center for Science Information Systems is one of the Inter-University Research Institutes which serve all university researchers in Japan. Its function is to gather, organize and provide scholarly information and relevant systems.

NANOG

The North American Network Operators' Group.

National Lambda Rail (NLR)

Overview, Weekly NOC Reports, Submitting problems, requests and questions.

NOCs

provides a list of Network Operation Centers for many networks.

Nordunet

NORDUnet is the Nordic Internet highway to research and education networks in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, and provides the Nordic backbone to the Global Information Society.

NSRC

The Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC), a non-profit organization, has been involved for the past decade with the deployment and integration of appropriate networking technology in various projects throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Oceania.

NTONC

The National Transparent Optical Network Consortium (NTONC). An all-optical open testbed for demonstrating high bandwidth applications and emerging wave division multiplexing (WDM) applications.

Pacific Wave

Pacific Wave is centrally located in an internationally-recognized telecommunications carrier facility in Seattle, WA, USA.

Singaren

Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network is a national initiative to create a high-speed broadband network platform to support R&D and advanced technology development in Singapore, serving users from academia, research orgainisations and industry.

STAR Light and STAR TAP

Science, Technology And Research Transit Access Point -- is a persistent infrastructure, funded by the National Science Foundation CISE Networking and Communications Research and Infrastructure division, to facilitate the long-term interconnection and interoperability of advanced international networking in support of applications, performance measuring, and technology evaluations.

Supernet

Supernet is a wide-area, advanced networking testbed supported by the NGI (Next Generation Internet) program.

Teleglobe

Teleglobe International is based in the Washington DC. area & offers telecommunications services to clients around the world. In particular they have been chosen to provide a 43Mbps connection for the UK Janet community to N. America.

TERENA

The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA) represents its members, the national research networks of Europe and other associated organisations. Also see its Compendium of European National Research and Education Networks

Transpac

TransPAC provides high performance international Internet service connecting the Asia Pacific Advanced Network to the vBNS and other global networks for the purpose of international collaborations in research and education.

UCAID

The University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) is a non-profit consortium to provide leadership and direction for advanced networking development within the university community.

UKERNA

United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association provides a set of computer networking services to the UK research and education community.

vBNS & vBNS+

The National Science Foundation Very High Speed Backbone Network Service.

Virtual Silk Highway

provides internet connectivity to the Caucasus and Central Asis through satellite thechnology.

XIWT

Cross Industry Working Team a multi-industry coalition committed to defining the architecture and key technical requirements for a powerful, sustainable national information infrastructure (NII).