ÉANT, the superfast pan-European research network that helped discover the Higgs Boson, announced today that it could reach speeds up to 2Tbps thanks to a major network upgrade. From today, capacity of up to 500Gbps is available across the core network. This means individual users across 32,000 universities, higher education institutes, research institutes, schools, libraries, museums, national archives and hospitals can transfer data at speeds of up to 100Gbps. That is a hell of a lot of high-speed porn which even a university network can’t handle.

Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission, said: “We need high speed and high capacity to keep in the global research race. The data side of the research equation is almost as important as the research itself today. With this upgrade, GÉANT demonstrates it is the leader of the research network pack.”

Speeds like this will enable faster collaboration on critical projects and meet the rapidly increasing demand for data transfer capacity.

The creation and sharing of research data is increasing exponentially, impacting the ICT infrastructures in particular research networks. Major projects involving global partners generate massive amounts of data that need to be distributed, analysed, stored and accessed.

With today's high speeds the GÉANT network will provide the essential capacity to support all scientific disciplines: from high-energy physics and deep space research to those addressing societal challenges like ageing populations, disease diagnosis and climate change.

The European Commission currently provides funding for the GÉANT network of €41.8 million, so it is not likely that the great unwashed will get that sort of access.