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From 7 April to 16 May 2025, staff from Nigeria’s national research and education network (NgREN) are taking part in an intensive training programme on federated identity and integration with eduGAIN.

Registrations are now open for the upcoming international webinar on cybersecurity awareness, organised by the GÉANT community for the research and education sector.

GARR is looking for a Network Engineer to join the Packet Network team, which is responsible for the design, technological evolution, implementation and management of the GARR network, serving the research and education community in Italy.

The programme of the GARR Conference 2025 is available online. From 13 to 15 May, at the University of Bari, experts from the technological, academic, and research sectors will gather to share experiences on the evolution of digital infrastructures, the use of artificial intelligence, data protection, and the future of computing for science.

Starting today, the new eduVPN service is officially available for students, teachers, and researchers, allowing them to browse securely wherever they are.

On 15 April, Namex – Rome’s Internet hub and the main Internet Exchange Point (IXP) for Central and Southern Italy – celebrated its 30th anniversary. The milestone was marked in Rome at the Protomoteca Hall on the Capitoline Hill, with representatives from institutions, digital pioneers, and leaders of major tech companies in attendance.

Since its establishment in 1995, Namex has consistently invested in developing a cutting-edge digital infrastructure, which today serves millions of users through a continuously expanding network. Today, Namex is a non-profit consortium, bringing together 180 organisations and interconnecting 260 telecom networks. It ranks among the top 10% of the world’s most high-performing IXPs in terms of traffic volume.

GARR has also played a key role in the success of this infrastructure, having always worked closely with Namex to create an increasingly widespread and collaborative network ecosystem.

During the event, ten pioneers who helped shape Namex into the organisation it is today were honoured. Among them was Enzo Valente, founder and former director of GARR. His contribution was recognised as decisive, thanks to his determination in revolutionising the geography of Internet peering in Italy. In 1998, GARR managed to shift the main interconnection with TIM from Naples to Rome — a move that not only improved network performance, but also symbolically cemented the central role of Rome’s IXP on the national stage.

Another key moment in the collaboration between GARR and Namex came in 2003, when Namex was chosen to host Italy’s first root name server and the third F-Root instance in Europe, after Madrid and Moscow.

The anniversary celebration also offered an opportunity to reflect on the history and evolution of the Internet in Italy from the mid-1990s to today, featuring insights from some of its key players, including Massimiliano Capitanio, Commissioner of Agcom (the Italian Communications Authority), Maurizio Decina of Politecnico di Milano, Renato Brunetti, President of Namex, Paolo Nuti, Co-founder and former President of AIIP, and Enzo Valente, former Director of GARR.

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The 10 pioneers who helped make Namex one of Italy’s leading Internet interconnection hubs:   

• Bo Arnklit - MCLink
• Enzo Valente - GARR
• Francesco Proietti - Caspur
• Gianni Sandrucci  - Agorà Telematica
• John Souter - Linx
• Nino Catania - ANFoV
• Paolo Bevilacqua – Unidata
• Paolo Nuti  - MCLink/AIIP
• Renato Brunetti - Unidata
• Riccardo De Sanctis  - Namex
• Silvano Fraticelli - MCLink

Go to the event website NAMEX website

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GARR is seeking a recent graduate with a passion for networking and optical communication technologies to join our team as an Optical Network Engineer at our Rome headquarters.

Wednesday, April 9, at the ENEA Research Centre in Portici (Naples), the CRESCO 8 high-performance supercomputer will be inaugurated. Designed to support national scientific research with advanced computing capabilities, CRESCO 8 represents a significant step forward in computational power.

The event will feature a workshop focusing on the strategic role of High Performance Computing (HPC) in technological innovation. Among the participants in the institutional session will be Massimo Bernaschi, Vice President of GARR, alongside representatives from ENEA, CNR, CINECA, INFN, as well as local and ministerial authorities.

CRESCO 8, the latest evolution of the CRESCO supercomputer family, has been acquired through funding from the European Next Generation EU programme. Among its key applications, it will support the PNRR Divertor Tokamak Test Facility Upgrade (DTT-U) project, dedicated to plasma physics simulations and experimental data management. This system will enhance research in energy, sustainability, and digital transformation, strengthen national scientific infrastructures, and consolidate ENEA’s role in technological innovation, working in collaboration with industry and international partners.

GARR has always interconnected the various versions of CRESCO, and with the new GARR-T network, it has reinforced the backbone links of the PoP hosted in Portici, now benefiting from a dual 100 Gbps connection. This upgrade, funded by the PNRR as part of the ICSC project, has focused on Southern Italy, increasing the total backbone capacity in the Campania region to 4.4 Tbps.

The event is open to the public, with free participation upon registration: https://www.eventi.enea.it/tutti-gli-eventi-enea/inaugurazione-del-supercalcolatore-cresco-8.html

Go to website event

On 2 April, Lise Fuhr, CEO of GÉANT, visited GARR as part of a series of introductory meetings with national research networks (NRENs) across Europe. These meetings were initiated by the new head of the organisation at the start of her tenure in November 2024.
The visit provided GARR with the opportunity to present an update on its organisation, infrastructure, and user community, highlighting its specific features and needs. The meeting was a key opportunity to strengthen cooperation among research networks and develop common solutions to address future challenges in Europe.

GÉANT, the European backbone connecting national research and education networks, faces the challenge of harmonising the diversity of national networks, which operate in different geopolitical contexts and feature highly varied governance models, management structures, user communities, and service offerings. GÉANT’s core mission is to interconnect these networks, bridging their differences to create a research support infrastructure that meets the needs of all. In this context, mediation and interaction play a crucial role in integrating the various "identities" within this community. GÉANT facilitates dialogue among networks, working to unify different perspectives and ensure increasingly effective and productive cooperation.

As one of GÉANT’s founding and active supporting members, GARR collaborates to provide high-capacity connectivity across Europe and beyond. Recently, GARR upgraded its connection to the European backbone, increasing its total capacity to 600 Gbps, responding to the growing data exchange demands of international collaborations. This was particularly evident during the LHC Data Challenge, where data transfer peaks exceeded 200 Gbps.

What is GÉANT?
GÉANT is Europe’s ultra-high-capacity backbone network, connecting research and education networks across the continent with multiple 100 Gbps links and advanced services for major research infrastructures. The network interconnects over 50 million users in approximately 10,000 scientific, educational, and cultural institutions across Europe, transferring more than 7 petabytes of data daily. With a scalable capacity of up to 8 Tbps, GÉANT supports the evolving needs of the scientific and education communities.

GÉANT is co-funded by the European Commission and research and education networks across Europe, including GARR. These networks manage and guide the GÉANT organisation. Its infrastructure and services continuously evolve thanks to research carried out within dedicated projects. For over 20 years, GÉANT and Europe’s research networks have been at the forefront of telecommunications technologies, ensuring ongoing support for the ever-changing needs of research and education users across Europe. GÉANT is in turn globally interconnected with the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia and, thanks to dedicated projects, is able to reach even the most remote areas of the planet to connect unique research infrastructures and make them available to scholars from anywhere in the world.

The new edition of the Rome Science Festival has been unveiled, marking its 20th anniversary this year. From 8 to 13 April, at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, research will take centre stage under the theme Bodies. This edition will explore human bodies with their features, shapes, functions, transformations, and adaptations, as well as animal and plant bodies, microscopic entities such as viruses and bacteria, celestial bodies, and, thanks to technological advancements, hybrid and mechanical bodies like robots and automatons.

Renowned scientists, journalists, and intellectuals will engage in discussions and reflections on this year’s theme with the multidisciplinary and cross-cutting approach that defines the festival. The event is structured around five thematic areas: Complex bodies, original bodies, responsible bodies, plastic bodies, and restless bodies. In addition to a rich programme of talks, the festival will feature exhibitions, interactive installations, activities for schools, and workshops for young people and families.

GARR will be among the key players with a dedicated event on 12 April at 12:00 in the Auditorium Arte hall.
The session will highlight the importance of digital infrastructures in supporting researchers in multidisciplinary collaborations and explore the promising frontiers of sensing research—the innovative use of optical fibres as environmental sensors. The conference, titled  “The sea that listens and tells its story - Il mare che ascolta e racconta”, will take attendees deep into the ocean’s depths, far from surface light and noise. Here, an intricate network of electronic eyes and ears helps monitor climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystems by listening to the sea. At the same time, while exploring the depths, marine observatories also detect signals from space, collecting valuable data about the universe. Speakers at the event include Luigi Antonio Fusco, professor at the University of Salerno and INFN associate (Naples section); Giuditta Marinaro, senior technologist at INGV, coordinator of international activities for EMSO-ERIC, and head of research on geosphere-ocean-atmosphere interactions; Paolo Bolletta, optical infrastructure expert at GARR; and Fabrizio Bocchino, researcher at INAF - Astronomical Observatory of Palermo. The discussion will be moderated by science journalist and communicator Giorgia Burzachechi.

Produced by the Fondazione Musica per Roma, with project partnership from Codice Edizioni, the Rome Science Festival is promoted by Roma Capitale – Department of Culture, and organised in collaboration with INAF and INFN. Scientific partners include Bioparco di Roma, CMCC, CNR, ENEA, ESA, GARR, GSSI, Humanitas University, Human Technopole, IIT, INGV, ISPRA, Museo Galileo – Institute and Museum of the History of Science, and the Planetarium of Roma Capitale.

Visit the event website