DANTE World Service

The normal NREN connection to GÉANT2 provides connectivity amongst European NRENS and to certain other research networks. The DANTE World Service (DWS) is DANTE's offering to NRENs of connectivity to the wider Internet. This is likely to be of interest to NRENs which do not have, or do not wish to organise, connections to commercial providers.

For the most part, an NREN subscribing to DWS does this using its normal GÉANT2 access circuit and may subscribe to up to 50% of its GÉANT2 bandwidth for DWS traffic. NRENs using DWS via GÉANT2 can control which of their routes announced to GÉANT2 are in turn announced to the DWS providers. This is done using Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) communities.

GÉANT2 is connected to two ISPs with world-wide connectivity, Level3 and Telia, at a total of six interconnection points. Traffic destined for these providers exits GÉANT2 at the closest point to its entry, and return traffic enters GÉANT2 at the closest point to the NREN. This is effected using Multi Exit Discriminators (MEDs), thus assuring symmetric traffic flow. Both Level3 and Telia provide communities that permit customers to modify how their routes are treated within the provider's network.

Several NRENs connect directly to Level3 and Telia routers on accesses procured by DANTE as part of the overall service. For these NRENs, DANTE makes traffic figures available.