<strong>TERENA</strong> Compendium of National Research and Education Networks In Europe /IntroductionINTRODUCTIONSince the publication of the first edition of the Compendium in 2001, it hasgrown into a sought-after and authoritative source of reference for all those whotake an interest in the development of research and education networking. Theinformation contained in the Compendium has continued to grow in variety anddependability, even though caution in interpreting the data remains essential.This year’s edition is the fourth that has been published as part of the GN2(GÉANT2) project and it has benefited from the input from activity leaders in thatproject. This year, the editing process has been shared by John Dyer and Bert vanPinxteren. Like last year, an attempt was made to aggregate data for groups ofNRENs and to look at and partially explain multi-year trends. Summarised andanalytical information is provided in a number of ‘overview’ sections at the startof each chapter. Throughout the Compendium, analytical or explanatory text hasbeen highlighted. Various sections in the Compendium have been re-organised,in order to align it with the taxonomy that was developed by the <strong>TERENA</strong> TaskForce on Life Cycle and Portfolio Management (succeeded in 2008 by the TaskForce on Management of Service Portfolios).Some of the trends have again been summarised in the ‘Summary of KeyFindings.’The production of the 2008 edition was overseen by a Review Panel composed ofthe following people: Claudio Allocchio (Italy), Tryfon Chiotis (Greece), Mike Norris(Ireland), Esther Robles (Spain) and Shirley Wood (UK). Input was also receivedfrom other members of the <strong>TERENA</strong> Technical Staff, the Secretary General and theExecutive Committee. Anikó Nagy, who was recruited for this project as a DataAnalyst, was responsible for reminding NRENs, handling requests for informationand clarification and for preparing the tables and graphs.the gathering, submitting, clarifying and checking of the data contained in thispublication.The Compendium consists of two parts: the basic information as submitted bythe individual NRENs (available on the Web at http://www.terena.org/activities/compendium) and this publication.Most tables and graphs first show the EU 1 and EFTA 2 countries and then othercountries in Europe and North Africa. A list of all those countries is given insection 1.0. Data are usually presented in alphabetical order by the Englishlanguagename of each country. An alphabetical list of NRENs included in theCompendium is in Appendix 1. For the second time, countries from outside ofEurope were asked to provide some basic data, in the form of responses to a miniquestionnaire.In a few cases, information from these questionnaires has beenincluded for illustrative purposes. The full data can be found on the Web.Note that unless otherwise specified, the data describe the situation at or close tothe 31 st of January, 2008.It is hoped that this eighth edition of the Compendium will prove to be at least asvaluable as the previous ones. Feedback is again invited and is key to the futuredevelopment of the Compendium!John Dyer/Bert van Pinxteren<strong>TERENA</strong>Collecting data of this type typically requires the involvement of a number ofpeople from each NREN, as well as careful checking by NREN staff. <strong>TERENA</strong> wishesto express its gratitude to all those in the NREN community who contributed to41On 1 January 2007, Bulgaria and Romania joined the EU. Where information on EU/EFTA countriesis presented from 2006 and earlier years, that information does not include Bulgaria and Romania.Information from EU/EFTA countries from 2007 does include Bulgaria and Romania.2The EFTA countries are Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Liechtenstein is serviced bySWITCH (Switzerland) and not counted separately in this Compendium.
<strong>TERENA</strong> Compendium of National Research and Education Networks In Europe /IntroductionIn a number of places in this document, reference is made to the EARNESTstudies. These are foresight studies into research and education networkingthat were carried out within the framework of the GN2 project and supportedas such by the European Union. The studies ran from March 2006 to October2007 (see http://www.terena.org/activities/earnest). The summary report,‘Innovation, Integration and Deployment - Challenges for European researchand education networking Innovation’, ISBN 978-90-77559-18-5 is availablefrom the <strong>TERENA</strong> Secretariat and on the Web, at http://www.terena.org/publications/files/EARNEST-Summary-Report.pdfAs part of the EARNEST work, a new index is being developed to measurethe performance of NRENs in different countries. It makes use of some of thedata collected for the Compendium. The results of this study (the GeographicIssues Study) will be published by <strong>TERENA</strong> later this year.5
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