High Level Description
Introduction
GÉANT World Service (GWS) provides commodity IP access, offering NRENs access to the wider, commercial Internet. It is ideal for NRENs who wish to take advantage of the competitive costs, those who do not wish to organise an individual connection to an ISP or those who are keen to add diversity to their existing commodity IP access.
GWS allows NRENs to access commodity Internet traffic either through a direct connection to a GWS Internet Service Provider (ISP) or indirectly through their GÉANT IP port. In both cases there is a single bandwidth contract between DANTE and the ISP, meaning that bulk-buying power often brings lower prices than might be available to an individual NREN locally.
Technical Description
Direct connection to a DWS ISP
As GÉANT's remit is to provide capacity for research and education traffic, GWS is not subsidised by EC funding and where possible DANTE arranges a direct interconnection between the contracted ISP and the NREN, thus leaving the GÉANT port free for non-commercial traffic. NRENs can select from two ISPs: Cogent and Level-3. The data rates offered by the different ISPs, as well as nonrecurring and recurring charges require custom pricing based upon location.
Indirect connection via GÉANT IP port
In locations where a GWS ISP is not present, or costs are prohibitive, the DWS will be provided via the normal GÉANT access over the GÉANT backbone.
To facilitate GWS, GÉANT is connected to two ISPs with world-wide connectivity: Cogent and Level-3. Traffic destined for these providers exits GÉANT at the closest point to its entry, and return traffic enters GÉANT at the closest point to the NREN.
This is effected using Multi Exit Discriminators (MEDs), thus assuring symmetric traffic flow. Both ISPs provide communities that permit customers to modify how their routes are treated within the provider's network
Charges
Direct (direct connection between NREN and providers) Provider Committed rate (€ per Mb per month) Burst rate (€ per Mb per month)
Cogent 0.54 0.59
Level 3 0.58 0.58
Plus annual administration fee of €7,500 for one provider and €12,000 for two providers.
Indirect (traffic received via GÉANT access port)
Up to 1G: €1.10 per Mb per month
1G – 3G: €0.98 per Mb per month
3G +: €0.90 per Mb per month
Ordering
Via the GEANT Partner portal : https://partner.geant.net/