Deutsches Forschungsnetz
The Association for the Promotion of German Research Network Association ( DFN-Verein ) is a self-governing organization that wants to create in Germany for scientific and technical requirements for the establishment of a computerized information and communication system for research on the basis of public transmission networks.
History
The club was founded in 1984 by universities, non- university research institutions and research-based business enterprise with administrative and financial start-up support by the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology (BMFT ). The statutory bodies of the Association are the General Assembly, the Board of Directors and the Executive Board.
CEO is Hans -Joachim Bungartz of the TU Munich. Vice-presidents are Bernhard Neumair the Steinbuch Centre for Computing at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Ulrike Gutheil, Chancellor of the University of Berlin. Almost all universities and public research institutions are members of the DFN-Verein.
After its establishment, the club 's members initially supported in the first phase in the procurement of hardware (generally X.25 sub- agencies) for connection to the DATEX -P network of the German Federal Post Office. At the same time the possibility has been created to achieve this, and thus the EARNs BITNET via that network. At the same time efforts were started to prefer in all network activity products that strictly adhered to the OSI reference model. Thus, only X.400 -compliant software for e-mail should be used in the field of German science institutions. With the ever increasing importance of the Internet and the TCP / IP protocol suite, these efforts were terminated.
Scientific networks
From 1989/90 the DFN began to operate their own networks. All provided by the DFN-Verein networks have always had or the abbreviation WiN as the name or part of their name. The first own network WiN sat on the X.25 protocol and was designed as a sub-network of the DATEX -P network of the German Post Office. The connected academic institutions so had the opportunity at a reasonable cost to operate high-order connections (up to 2 Mbit / s).
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the WiN in the GDR and in the new federal states has been extended into it. This extended WiN was named ERWIN.
Thereafter every five years each new wins were built with more modern technology and correspondingly increased bandwidth. Specifically, these were, in chronological order
- ERWIN (1990-1992)
Projects of the DFN DFN- participation or
- 6WiN (since 2002)
- VIOLA (2004-2007)
International Cooperation
Since the DFN-Verein occurs against its members as an Internet service provider, the relevant scientific network is an integral part of the Internet. However, there are powerful connections to the research networks of partner organizations abroad, especially in the context of GÉANT and GÉANT2. The DFN is the German partner of the international network Eduroam.