SURFnet

SURFnet is a high-grade computer network specially reserved for higher education and research in the Netherlands. Staff and students of connected organizations can communicate through SURFnet with other Internet users all over the world. Ongoing innovation has made the SURFnet network one of the world’s most-advanced networks with congestion-free connections to the major Dutch, European and transatlantic networks. Speed, reliability and security of the network are key issues.

To remain in the lead, SURFnet puts in a sustained effort into improving its network infrastructure and develop new applications, ensuring faster and better access to new Internet services for its users. SURFnet is an important partner in the GigaPort project, the national project involving the development of the next generation Internet in the
Netherlands. The new SURFnet network is a hybrid network in which a traditional packet-switched network is combined with optical network services.

Among the new applications are the SURFnet video services, consisting of the SURFnet Videotheek (large VoD archive, supporting MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4 and Windows Media) and SURFnet-TV (for live and scheduled streaming, in the above formats). We partner with the Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision (Dutch audio/video archive) and the public broadcasters to provide video from the archive and several digital theme channels to the Dutch higher education and research community. We investigate new formats for all services and in that respect experiment with all versions of compressed and uncompressed HD over IP that run over the regular IP network or the lightpaths.