Renater

France's Renater network, built and operated by a public interest group (GIP) comprised of the country's major research and education organizations as well as the ministère de l'éducation nationale, de la recherche et de la technologie (ministry of national education, research and technology), serves over 600 sites across France.

This high-performance network offers advanced services to the research and education community: IPv4, IPv6, VPN, multicast, QoS, etc. Its distributed architecture is based on the Renater 3 backbone (2.5 Mbps/OC-48) and regional distribution networks built in partnership with local authorities.

The French backbone is interconnected with other European and North American research networks by a 2.5 Gbps link to the pan-European GEANT network. It is also equipped with a direct link (155 Mbps/OC-3) to the STAR TAP node in the United States. This link is dedicated to high-priority research projects; another link, at 20 Mbps, connects the network to the Pacific region via South Korea, also using STAR TAP.

Finally, the Renater GIP operates France's main Internet exchange node. SFINX is deployed in three locations in the Paris area, at the core of a local optical loop operating at up to 80 Gbps.