A Brief History of JANET
THE EARLY YEARS - JANET
In the late 1970s academic networking activities were fragmented: universities had developed several regional networks, the national computer centres had developed separate star networks, and the SERC (Science & Engineering Research Council) had developed a national X.25 network.
JANET (the Joint Academic NETwork) was created in April 1984, essentially by expanding and enhancing SERCnet, SERC's X.25 network. Initially, JANET served around 50 sites with line speeds of 9.6 kbit/s. By the mid-1980s JANET comprised a 2 Mbit/s backbone with 64 kbit/s access. JANET's expansion started and by the late 1980s there were around 200 sites, which included research and higher education interests outside the academic community along with polytechnics and colleges.
Services such as e-mail, job transfer and file transfer were provided by the Coloured Book protocols, developed by the community where OSI standards were lacking. The intention was to migrate to full OSI standards when these were available.
A further upgrade in the early 1990s provided 2 Mbit/s access and an 8 Mbit/s backbone making JANET the highest performance X.25 network in the world.
THE JANET IP SERVICE
In January 1991, JANET started a pilot IP service over its X.25 infrastructure. This became a full service in November 1991. Interest was high and within ten months the IP traffic had overtaken the X.25 traffic. With the connectivity to the global internet secured, the IP service kicked off the exponential growth in traffic that we see today in JANET.
SUPERJANET
SuperJANET was proposed in 1989 and the contract signed in November 1992. It was an initiative to develop a high performance wide-area network based on optical fibres.
The first step was to implement two pilot networks (achieved in early 1993): a 34 Mbit/s data network and a 34 Mbit/s ATM network used for video traffic amongst 14 sites.
In addition to the pilot networks, the service comprised 10 Mbit/s SMDS access to around 50 sites with interconnects to the 34 Mbit/s network. SuperJANET cemented the move from X.25 protocols to IP.
SUPERJANET II
SuperJANET II started during 1995. It was aimed at significantly increasing the spread of SuperJANET and helped to create a number of Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs), aimed at geographically close institutions, mainly centred on existing SuperJANET sites.
From early 1995 a successful trial was carried out of IP over ATM using a combination of 155 Mbit/s and 34 Mbit/s curcuits. Later in 1995 an IP trunk service was provided over the 34 Mbit/s SDH network.
In a collaborative technical trial with BT in 1995, five ATM sites used 155 Mbit/s SDH lines to create an IP interconnect to European PNO networks.
A further 27 institutions were connected to either SMDS or to 8 Mbit/s access lines. Over the next few years, around 12 MANs were created.
SUPERJANET III
SuperJANET III was aimed at consolidating the pioneering work of SuperJANET and SuperJANET II. A 155 Mbit/s ATM backbone was installed between a central ring of switches at London, Bristol, Manchester and Leeds. The network was extended using 34 Mbit/s and 155 Mbit/s links to Backbone Edge Nodes from which connections to MANs and other sites were made.
SUPERJANET4
In March 2001 SuperJANET4 was launched. The key challenges for SuperJANET4 was the need to increase network capacity and to strengthen the design and management of JANET to allow it to meet a similar increase in the size of its userbase.
SuperJANET4 saw the implementation of a 2.5Gbit/s core backbone from which connections to regional network points of presence were made at speeds ranging between 155Mbit/s to 2.5Gbit/s depending upon the size of the regional network. In 2002 the core SuperJANET4 backbone was upgraded to 10Gbit/s.
SuperJANET4 also saw a increase in the userbase of JANET with the inclusion of the Further Education Community and the use of the SuperJANET4 backbone to interconnect schools networks.
The contract for SuperJANET4 expired in December 2006, when SuperJANET5 went live.
