APAN-KR/KOREN
APAN Korea Consortium (APAN-KR) was established in Feb, 1998 as a local consortium of APAN. APAN-KR is a high-speed network for research and development of advanced applications and services in Korea. Among current projects are building a domestic high performance network testbed (Mirinae), providing network testbed for domestic universities, research institutes and governmental organizations to develop advanced network technology and application services, connecting international high performance network testbeds, providing international experimental network capability by peering Mirinae with international Next Generation Internet testbeds, participating in international joint research and collaboration, performing joint research of advanced network technology and application services with Asia-Pacific countries, North-America, and Europe and and undertaking projects that research and develop related technology, eventually, for transfer to the domestic Internet community. KOREN is an advanced research and education network in Korea which supports APAN-KR members such as SNU and the original KOREN members. (http://kr.apan.net)

CERN
CERN's mission requires advanced local, European and world-wide networking. Last year, a demonstration Gigabyte System Network (GSN) was built during a workshop organized by CERN, in collaboration with the High Performance Networking Forum (HNF) - only the second time that GSN has been demonstrated in Europe, and it was the largest GSN to be built anywhere (up to 800 Mbytes/sec. Transfer.) CERN has a direct link from its European research center to the STAR TAP. (www.cern.ch)

CANARIE and CA*net3
CANARIE's CA*net3, one of the world's most advanced networks, is based on an IP over optics infrastructure. CANARIE Inc. - In 1998, the Federal Government provided CANARIE with a $55 million grant towards the $120 million project to develop a national optical R&D Internet using DWDM technology. Later that year, when the first section of CA*net 3 was lit, CANARIE gained immediate international recognition as a world leader high-speed optical transport technology. CANARIE is Canada's advanced Internet development organization - is a not-for-profit corporation supported by its members, project partners and the Federal Government. CANARIE's mission is to accelerate Canada's advanced Internet development and use by facilitating the widespread adoption of faster, more efficient networks and by enabling the next generation of advanced products, applications and services run on them. CANARIE has formed partnerships with advanced networking organizations world-wide. (www.canarie.ca)

NORDUnet
NORDUnet interconnects the Nordic national networks for research and education and connects these networks to the rest of the world. NORDUnet offers network services that are based on the Internet Protocol only. NORDUnet provides its services by a combination of leased lines and Internet services provided by other international operators. Primary R&D network interconnects are accomplished at the STAR TAP. (www.nordu.net)

DANTE and TEN-155
DANTE was established in 1993 and, as a result of an international competition for its location, was established in Cambridge. It has been granted "Research Association" status by the UK Department of Trade and industry. It is owned by the Research networks responsible for its establishment and organises, manages and builds international networking services on their behalf. DANTE supports the primary objectives of research networks, as a infrastructure support to researcher, and as a subject of research, implementing new services in advance of the general marketplace for telecommunications. They are ideally placed to do this as their users are generally computer and communications literate and are prepared to experiment with new technology. DANTE, which is an acronym for "Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe," is an active participant in the development of new networking services to support European research. TEN-155 represents the Current European research networking. The high-speed network connects 16 national and one regional research networks. TEN-155 is the direct result of the Quantum project and has been organised and implemented by the Quantum Consortium with DANTE as Coordinating Partner. (www.DANTE.net)

MREN
Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN), The Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN) is one of the world's most advanced high-performance broadband networks. Although MREN's primary focus is on providing advanced digital communications for leading-edge research and educational applications, it also addresses more general networking requirements. MREN is a collaborative effort undertaken as an interdisciplinary, interorganizational, cooperative partnership. (www.mren.org)

RedIRIS/I2-CAT
RedIRIS is the main tool of the National Programme of Applications and Telematic Services and assumes responsibility for providing the required network services and actual and future support to the infrastructure, according to the main objectives of the Programme. On 1988, the Nacional Plan for R&D started a horizontal special programme -IRIS- for the Interconnection of Computer Resources (Interconexión de los Recursos InformáticoS) of universities and research centres, and until the end of 1993 this programme was managed by Fundesco . From 1991, when the first promotion stage was finished, IRIS became what RedIRIS is today: the national academic and research network, still funded by National Plan for R&D and at present managed by the Scientific Research Council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas). About 250 institutions are nowadays connected to RedIRIS, mainly universities and R&D Centres. IRIS I2CAT is a consortium that has as its main objective an intent to build an I2 platform in Catalonia. This platform is based on an experimental I2 network that interconnects all Catalan Universities (8), four primary Hospitals and multimedia contents producers like TV3 (Catalan broadcast TV) or Media Park (temathic Channels) to the GigaPoP of the UPC. These connections are provided by the main Spanish network providers. These organizations connect all the partners and users through the UPC GigaPoP. (www.rediris.es)

SingAREN
SingAREN, the Singapore Advanced Research and Education Network, established in November 1997, is a national initiative that has implemented a very high-speed broadband network platform to support research and development and advanced technology development in Singapore. It has also established high performance international links. (www.singaren.net.sg)

STAR TAP
The 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 long term interconnection and interoperability of advanced international networking in support of applications, performance monitoring, and technology evaluations. (www.startap.net)

SURFnet
SURFnet is the organization that manages Nederland's advanced Internet. SURFnet interlinks universities, schools, libraries, research centers, municipalities, and other organizations within the countries and provides links to countries throughout Europe and the world. SURFnet is also involved in many research and development projects related to advanced networking and related applications. (www.surfnet.nl/en)

TransPAC
TransPac provides high-performance international Internet service connecting the Asia-Pacific Advanced network to US national research and education networks, such as the vBNS and Abilene as well other global networks to support international collaborations in research and education. (www.transpac.org)

WIDE
The WIDE research goal is "to establish a large-scale distributed computing environment". WIDE stands for "Widely Integrated Distributed Environment". WIDE is working for providing the wide area communication infrastructure with telecommunication technology and operating system technology, and trying hard to contribute to the common good. WIDE is a national advanced performance network, based on Internet protocols, in Japan that supports a large number of organizations through-out the country, including research and development organizations and educational institutions. (www.wide.ad.jp)