Our Journey

1997
SingAREN started as a national project funded by the Singapore government to support Singapore’s R&E community

SingAREN started as a national project funded by the Singapore government in 1997 to take on the challenge of ensuring that Singapore’s research and education community is connected to the international community.

Singapore was the first country outside of North America to establish a high speed connection to the very high performance Backbone Network Service (vBNS) of USA, thus benefiting Singapore’s research and education community.

2003
SingAREN was registered as a Society

SingAREN was registered as a Society to widen its roles to better serve the research and education community.

2005
Established SingAREN Gigabit Internet Exchange (GIX)

SingAREN GIX was established in Global Switch, Singapore, enabling Singapore’s R&E community to be connected internationally.

2005
Singapore joins the TEIN2 network

SingAREN joins the TEIN2 network, during the early phase of the high-capacity Internet connectivity network, linking the research and education communities in Asia Pacific and Europe.

Singapore is also one of the Points of Presence (PoP) for TEIN2 network.

2006
Hosted APAN22 Meeting in Singapore

SingAREN was the host for the 22th Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) Meeting in Singapore, with over 100 participants, to exchange knowledge on advanced network applications.

2012
Launch of eduroam service in Singapore

SingAREN launched eduroam, a global wireless service for secure internet connectivity across eduroam-participating institutes, through the user’s home institution account and password.

2013
SingAREN granted status of Roaming Operator for eduroam in Singapore

SingAREN was granted status of Roaming Operator for eduroam service in Singapore by the Global eduroam Governance Committee (GeGC).

2013
SingAREN 10th Anniversary

SingAREN celebrated its 10th Anniversary of its incorporation as a society.

The pioneers of SingAREN were presented with appreciation awards for their contributions to SingAREN.

2013
Granted 5 years funding from National Research Foundation (NRF) for SingAREN-Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX) project

SingAREN embarked on the SLIX project in 2013.

SLIX is a collaboration and a network built between SingAREN, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS).

Built on an optical fibre core comprising dark fibres, SLIX allows resiliency, future capacity upgrades, and technology-proof network connectivity.

2013
Hosted the 13th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop (GLIF) Meeting

SingAREN hosted the 13th GLIF Meeting in Singapore, with over 80 participants, to collaborate and exchange knowledge on new lambda networking technologies, middleware and applications.

2014
Launch of SingAREN Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX)

SingAREN launched SLIX, the first 100 Gbps R&E network in Southeast Asia to benefit Singapore’s research community.

Through SLIX, Singapore’s Research and Education community gained seamless access to a super high speed network with 100 times more capacity than before; and enjoyed bandwidth fully dedicated to their use.

2015
Signed MoU with National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore

SingAREN signed a MoU with National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, where both parties agree to identify potential areas of collaboration in Supercomputing, Networking and Scientific Software Applications.

2016
Launch of Database Mirroring service

In collaboration with A*STAR, SingAREN launched the Database Mirroring service, a one-stop portal which mirrors major overseas scientific databases in Singapore, thus enabling collaborations by the research communities in Singapore and overseas.

2016
Launch of Singapore Access Federation (SGAF)

SGAF, a federated Identity Management System, was launched. The service enables scalable, trusted collaborations among Singapore’s research and education community.

2016
Launch of SingAREN Open Exchange (SOE)

SingAREN launched SOE to establish a resilient and open Internet Exchange in Singapore to benefit the domestic and international research and education communities. SOE is co-funded by National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore.

2017
Establishment of remote PoPs in USA and UK

In collaboration with National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, SingAREN established remote Points of Presence (PoPs) at LA, USA and Slough, UK respectively. These remote PoPs enable management of High Performance Networking and data transfers between Singapore and such locations.

2017
MoU signing – Asia Pacific Ring (APR)

SingAREN, together with National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), National Institute of Informatics (NII), Internet2, Widely Integrated Distributed Environment (WIDE) Project, Pacific Wave, and TransPAC, signed a MoU to form the Asia Pacific Ring (APR) , for advanced research and education collaboration across the Pacific Ocean.

The APR network is a set of links and resources operated by the Parties individually to form a resilient, high speed network system in excess of 100 Gbit/s.

2017
MoU signing – NICT, NSCC and SingAREN for collaboration for SG-HK-JP 100G circuit

SingAREN announced the launch of the 100G circuit connecting Singapore to Japan via Hong Kong. This was the first 100G international research and education link in Asia, co-funded by National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan, National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, and coordinated by SingAREN.

NICT, NSCC and SingAREN signed a MoU for collaborations in the field of information and communications technology through the 100G Singapore-Japan circuit.

2018
Hosted APAN45 Meeting, Singapore

SingAREN hosted the 45th Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) Meeting on 25 to 29 March 2018. Over 350 local & international participants from Asia, Europe, U.S. and Oceania collaborated and exchanged knowledge on advanced network technologies and applications.

2019
Partner of Collaboration Asia-Europe-1 (CAE-1)

Under the CAE-1 project, a 100 Gbps link between Singapore (SingAREN Open Exchange) and GÉANT Open (London) is established to support the rapidly growing bandwidth needs for research and education collaborations between Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

The consortium partners of the CAE-1 are AARNet (Australia), GÉANT (Europe), SURF (The Netherlands), SingAREN (Singapore), NORDUnet (European Nordics) and TEIN*CC (Asia-Pacific).

2019
Asiapacific-Europe Ring (AER) MoU Signing

The partners of the AER are AARNet (Australia), GÉANT (Europe), NICT (Japan), NII (Japan), NORDUnet (European Nordics), SingAREN (Singapore), SURF (The Netherlands) and TEIN*CC (Asia-Pacific).

The partners agreed to contribute their own 100 Gbps link to create a resilient system. In the event that one link in the ring fails, traffic between Europe and Asia will be transported over one or more of the other links.

2019
Partnership with NSCC for 2019 Data Mover Challenge (DMC19)

(Top photo: Lunch hosted by NSCC with the DMC19 partners, consisting of international research and education networks.)

SingAREN was a supporting partner for DMC19, organised by NSCC. The competition involved seven supercomputing facilities across the Pacific, including Japan, Australia and the US. The competing teams showcased their capabilities in transferring extremely large data quantities at high speed between supercomputing centres and data storage resources, optimally, safely and efficiently.

2019
Granted 5 years funding from National Research Foundation (NRF) for phase 2 of SingAREN-Lightwave Internet Exchange (SLIX 2.0) project

SLIX 2.0 is part of the National Research Infrastructure (NRI), where SLIX2.0 will be an important facility available to the research and education community in Singapore.

SLIX 2.0 will meet the strategic imperatives relating to advanced, reliable, secure and adequate network connectivities of the research and education community in Singapore.

2020
Partnership with NSCC for 2020 Data Mover Challenge (DMC20)

SingAREN collaborated with NSCC for the 2nd Data Mover Challenge (DMC) in 2020. Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs) were connected by 100 Gbps international research networks, set up globally in Singapore, Australia, Europe, USA, South Korea and Japan. The challenge for the international competing teams is to produce the best solutions for the optimization of point-to-point data transfer between sites.

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