015.20.1 Australia by Geoff Huston <G.Huston@aarnet.edu.au>
Within Australia the Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet) provides infrastructural internetworking services to the broad national academic and research community.
The network interconnects all 38 higher education institutions, the divisions of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and also provides connection services to sectors of the national and state governments and various governmental and commercial organisations. AARNet currently supports some 22,000 connected end user host systems and supports a user population of in excess of 100,000 people, drawn predominately from the academic and research domain. The network was established in May 1990.
The internal structure of AARNet is based on the deployment of multiprotocol routers and point to point leased serial lines. Internal capacity of the links ranges from 2Mbps on the major internal trunk routes to 48Kbps for tail loops and a number of low speed 9.6kbps tails. The major networking protocol in use across AARnet is the TCP/IP protocol suite. A national Phase IV DECnet is also supported (this network does not use addressing modes which allow direct DECnet connectivity to the HEP/SPAN DECnet) and regional X.25 switching facilities are also supported within the transport infrastructure. The namespace of Australian nodes is within the national top level domain ".au".
The major international facility is a satellite link to the US Federal exchange point on the West Coast, Fix-West. From this point direct connectivity is established to a number of other Asia / Pacific national networks, and through connections within the national US infrastructure connections to the remainder of the global Internet are established. Additionally AARnet supports international mail connections to Papua New Guinea and Thailand.
AARNet is operated by the peak national university body within Australia, the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee. The facility is funded directly by the user community through institutional participation in the program.
More information on services and facilities available within AARNet can be retrieved via the anonymous ftp facility from the host aarnet.edu.au. Documents held there include a resource guide of Australian resources and copies of periodic newsletters and informational publications from AARNet.
Geoff Huston is Network Manager, Australian Academic and Research Network
