Our Network

Our Network - AARNet

Australia's national research and education network

The AARNet network is designed to meet the specialised needs of the research and education sector

Our carrier-grade network is engineered with low latency, low contention and sufficient headroom capacity to support bursts of intense use, which means there’s no congestion. Operating our own fibre gives us full end-to-end control so that we can deliver high-quality bespoke solutions to our customers.

Key features of our ultra-fast terabit-scale network

Reach

From local to global: it's a network with over 25,000 kilometres of dark fibre spanning the continent and multiple subsea cable links to international destinations.

Resilience

Diversity and triversity in the network and equipment design means that we can deploy alternate paths to minimise the impact of outages on our customers.

Flexibility

250 integrated photonic nodes with throughput capacity of multiple terabits per second ensure our network scales to transport high volumes of traffic anywhere on demand.

24/7 Operations

Our Operations Team is located in Australia and monitors traffic 24/7 to ensure our network's high-performing capabilities are available to users when they need it.

National network

Our national network spans the continent and covers all capital cities. The reach of our network extends to rural, regional and remote locations to help empower all Australian communities.

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International network

Our international network provides links to the research and education communities in Europe, North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and Asia-Pacific.

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More information

Generally, all entities involved in research, education and training are eligible to connect. This includes universities, research institutes, hospitals, K-12 schools, vocational training providers, government agencies, galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Detailed guidelines can be found in Section 3.1 of the AARNet Access Policy, or you can contact our team to check your eligibility to connect to AARNet.

Check eligibility

Dark fibre and passive wavelengths are the most common technologies we use to connect our optical network to your site. These technologies can also be used to interconnect geographically dispersed facilities and campuses. Sometimes, depending on the location of the site, we will investigate and use alternative technologies, such as radio or laser connections, or third-party carrier services.

Connections to AARNet are delivered direct from our optical network or Network Access Point (NAP) sites to a Network Termination Unit (NTU) installed at your site, which can operate at either 1 gigabit per second (Gbps), multiples of 10 Gbps or 100 Gbps. This 'trunk' can then be used to deliver multiple services at any given time. You can connect as many, or as few, AARNet connectivity services at each campus as you need.

We work closely with you to determine the best bandwidth, performance and connection options for your needs.

As a passive measurement, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) interface statistics, both bytes and packets per second are recorded and viewed by modified Multi Router Traffic Grapher (MRTG) graphs. Error and Discard Statistics are also kept.

As Netflow is deployed at each Point of Presence (PoP), traffic is measured down to each Internet Protocol flow. The results of these are displayed as tables or graphs recording bytes, packets and flows per second.

With active measurement, Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) packets are sent betweenRegional Network Operator sites and to other points at regular intervals to measure network performance.

Other measurements, employing User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets are also used to measure Quality of Service (QoS) issues.

Network links and services are also tested for availability at very regular intervals.

Customers and partner organisations can report faults and issues affecting network performance to our 24/7 Operations Centre. Our team will help resolve any network performance issues as quickly and with as little impact on customers as possible.

Contact our Operations Team

AARNet peers with a wide range of online content and service providers for the benefit of our customers.

Read more about our peering policies and guidelines

Explore our connectivity solutions

We offer a range of solutions for connecting campuses, scientific instruments, facilities, data centres and cloud services.

VIEW ALL CASE STUDIES

Co-creating a network for genomics research

AARNet and UNSW IT collaborated to develop a specialised high-performance network for the Garvan Institute of Medical Research’s human genome sequencing facility.

Supporting researchers in the fight against diseases

Scientists at the University of Wollongong's Molecular Horizons facility rely on AARNet for moving data collected from powerful microscopes to high performance computing for analysis.

Networking the Square Kilometre Array

Reliable fast research network connectivity is critical for processing the deluge of data that will be generated by the next-generation SKA telescope, co-located in remote Western Australia and southern Africa.