What is HARNET?
In 1985 the Hong Kong Academic & Research Network (HARNET) was formed. It serves to link up all the local government-funded tertiary institutions to form a wide area network and to provide linkage to overseas academic and research networks. At present, there are a total of eight HARNET member institutions:
The
Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
City University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong Baptist University
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Lingnan University
University
of Hong Kong
For the past years HARNET has gone through a series of upgrades and has now evolved to an Metro-Ethernet based regional network. HARNET operates a high speed international Internet link for shared global Internet access by member institutions. Some institutions like HKUST also possess individual Internet link(s) for dedicated access. Presently, each HARNET member has a 300Mbps Metro-Ethernet connection to HARNET. HARNET is also connected directly to the HKIX (Hong Kong Internet eXchange) which internconnects most of the local ISP (Internet Service Provider) in Hong Kong. There are also a 155 Mbps connection to CERNET (China Academic & Research Network) and a 45 Mbps connection to TANET (Taiwan Academic Network).
Click to see the current HARNET Configuration.
Internet Setup in HKUST
For HKUST, there are a total of 2 international connection paths to the global Internet. Besides the HARNET shared pipe, we have a dedicated Internet link via another ISP . With multiple Internet connections, we can distribute Internet traffic on different links as needed, achieving faster performance and better service reliability to our users.
