By Neil Shewry and Rob Evans
On the 1st of April, whilst many are playing pranks on each other, we at Jisc are reflecting on the anniversary of the Janet Network, the National Research and Education Network (NREN), that has quietly powered innovation, collaboration, and discovery for generations.
For those of you who may not know Janet’s backstory, here’s some history…..
Born on 1 April 1984, Janet (originally the Joint Academic NETwork, then funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee, which we now know better as Jisc) went live with just 50 connected sites and line speeds of 9.6 kbit/s. Today, it serves over 20 million users, connects every university and further education college in the UK, links research institutions, local authorities, and schools, and stands as Europe’s busiest National Research and Education Network by data volume.
From early experiments to a National Backbone:
Janet’s roots stretch back to the late 1960s, when pioneering academic networks like the South West Universities Computer Network (SWUCN) and regional systems in Edinburgh, London, Manchester, and Newcastle began linking researchers across the UK. These early networks were powerful but fragmented – each built on different standards and unable to talk to one another.
The breakthrough came in the early 1980s with a national push for standardisation which culminated in the launch of Janet in 1984.
A network that helped shape the internet:
We in the UK struck our own way for a while, with the Coloured Book Protocols and the Janet Name Registration Scheme (NRS) that had back-to-front domains (e.g. @uk.ac.ulcc), and spawned the use of ‘uk’ as the Top Level Domain rather than ‘gb’ which it should have been if it had followed the relevant ISO standard.
However, by 1989, Janet connected to NSFnet with a 4Mbps (yes, Mbps) transatlantic link called The Fat Pipe, which was soon congested but helped integrate UK academia into the emerging global internet. And by the early 1990s, the JANET Internet Protocol Service (JIPS) had shifted the network away from X.25 and decisively toward IP.
SuperJanet: The upgrade era
As demand exploded, Janet evolved through a series of ambitious upgrades under the SuperJanet programme:
– SuperJanet (1992–93): First fibre-optic backbone at 34 Mbit/s
– SuperJanet2 (1995): 155 Mbit/s ATM backbone
– SuperJanet3 (1998): Fully connected major UK cities
– SuperJanet4 (2001): 2.5 Gbit/s core, later upgraded to 10 Gbit/s
– SuperJanet5 (2006): Originally a 10 Gbit/s backbone, eventually among the first networks in the world to deploy 40Gbps and 100Gbps transmission.
– Janet6 (2013): A leap to 400 Gbit/s core capacity, upgraded to 800 Gbit/s in 2016, with plans to reach 1.6 Tbit/s in 2026 (and the capability to go far far beyond).
These upgrades expanded the network’s reach, bringing schools, research councils, and regional networks into a unified national infrastructure.
More than a network, a national institution:
Today, Jisc operates Janet and remains responsible for the .ac.uk domain and the UK part of global federated authentication protocols that allow staff, students and researchers in the UK to use academic Wi-Fi around the world via eduroam, as well as providing many other services to UK education and research. Janet connects all UK universities, all further education colleges, research councils, and regional networks across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Janet also peers extensively with other global research and education networks through GÉANT, as well as with hundreds of content and service providers in the UK and further afield.
From 9.6 kbit/s links to terabit capable backbones, from isolated academic clusters to a unified national network, Janet has been the quiet force behind UK research and education for over 40 years.
We hope to see you at Networkshop in June where you can continue to learn and be inspired by the capabilities of Janet, and how it’s underpinning members and customers to take their infrastructure to the the next level.
Born from innovation; Built for discovery; Powering the future.
Happy Birthday Janet!