Janet

Janet is a part of Jisc Collections and Janet Limited, a Jisc company. Janet manages the operation and development of the Janet network, on behalf of Jisc. Jisc is the UK’s expert on digital technology for education and research, its work is guided by its funders, owners (AoC, GuildHE and UUK) and trustees. Janet is government funded, with the primary aim of providing and developing a network infrastructure that meets the needs of the research and education communities.

The concept of a community underpins everything we do and the network is based on the need for organisations to communicate, collaborate and co-operate in the shared interests of education and research. We offer many feedback mechanisms, including the Janet Stakeholder Group, to ensure that an open communication channel exists between us and the community we serve. Janet is the network dedicated to the needs of research and education in the UK. It connects the UK’s research and education institutions to each other, as well as to the rest of the world through links to the global Internet. In addition, Janet includes a separate network that is available to the community for experimental activities in network development.
The Janet network connects UK universities, FE Colleges, Research Councils, Specialist Colleges and Adult and Community Learning providers. It also provides connections between the Regional Broadband Consortia to facilitate the DfE initiative for a national schools’ network. Over 18 million end-users are currently served by the Janet network.

The range of activities facilitated by Janet allows individuals and institutions to push back the traditional boundaries of teaching, learning and research methods. For example, Janet’s videoconferencing and video streaming capabilities are being used to deliver lectures to remote groups of students. For researchers, the high capacity of the Janet backbone allows the linking of large data storage and high performance computing facilities at a national and international level.