High speed data for science to travel on dark fibre[fr][de] 

The network makes use of dark fibre technology, which is capable of transmitting large amounts of data at an unprecedented speed. Up to three million users in 3,500 academic institutions from 34 European countries will be linked to GÉANT2. 

Possible applications include linking up high-tech devices such as radio telescopes. In order to make best use of the network, one of the new capablities of GÉANT2 includes setting up point-to-point (P2P) connections, which allow users to create virtual subnets without the bottleneck of a central IP router, as was the case in the predecessor GÉANT network, set up in 2001. These applications are linked to the network, which now has a capacity of 320 Gigabit per second - meaning it is capable of transmitting the equivalent of the data stored on eight DVDs every second. 

The EU has contributed 93 million euro - a little less than 50% - to the costs of GÉANT2. The rest is financed from national research funding.