There is no awareness of the capabilities of the broadband capacities of GEANT among researchers (other than those involved in LHC data analysis, perhaps). How can researchers have access to the broadband capacity for their everyday work?
What services are needed for such broadband capacity to really be accesible for researchers everyday work?
Hi Isabel -sorry to hear that news about GÉANT doesn't reach you. We are working with users in many disciplines as well as particle physics -metreology, genomics, climate science, astronomy, HPC etc. In fact, the vast majority of European universities, research institutes and other science and education sites are already connected to GÉANT through their national R&E network. Many users may not aware of the underlying network infrastructure they use, simply because it is working well! Others may be more aware of services like eduROAM, which also derive from GÉANT. In any case, we would certainly be happy to share more about GÉANT with you and help you to make the most of the infrastructure and services we provide. Please do get in touch (businessdevelopment-at-geant.org)
In terms of very concrete examples, I give you two:
1) We are transferring data from Spain to Germany at 2 Mb/s between research institutes in principle, having access to broadband (> 1Gb/s). What can an individual researcher do use that broadband ? maybe some tools are needed there for people to access it.
2) I had to explain a few researchers, from CERN actually, who is responsible for the development and maintenance of eduroam. They thought it was a sort of network, not knowing from whom it depends, privacy conditions, etc... ("what is GEANT and what is TERENA?").
The awareness, of researchers in general, about the capabilities of GEANT (they do not even know what GEANT is, most of them) is very low.
It is indeed surprising for us, people always around these e-infrastructure projects, but when one goes down to individual research teams, is when reality strikes you, very hard!
