About Sunet

Operates, maintains, and develops Sweden’s university data network, and also offers a range of web services for research IT and education.

Sunet (Swedish University Computer Network) has the mission of meeting the data communication needs of Swedish higher education institutions and other public organizations connected to research, higher education, and culture. Sunet also provides identity infrastructure, enhanced IT security services, and optional add-on services for these organizations. Additionally, Sunet participates in a number of projects and collaborations with other authorities within the scope of identity management and digitalization at large.

Since Sunet was established in the 1980s, the organisation has enabled Swedish researchers to access other national and international e-infrastructures and their associated resources and services. Today, Sunet is a part of the Swedish Research Council.

The current implementation of the Sunet data network is called Sunet CD. Sunet CD has 400 Gbit/s transmission capacity and uses only one-third of the previous data network’s power consumption. The network also features fully encrypted data communication.

Sunet CD is built to provide data network redundancy to the country’s higher education institutions, as well as many state-owned museums and other cultural organizations. Sunet CD is also connected to international networks, which provide access for Swedish researchers to international collaboration. In addition to regular network access with routers, Sunet can provide point-to-point connections for transferring large amounts of data directly between two points using a wavelength service. This service is becoming increasingly important for large e-science projects and infrastructures.

Organisationally, Sunet has been part of the Swedish Research Council since 2001, and has a funding model that differs from all other infrastructures. The Swedish Research Council receives earmarked funding for Sunet’s activities, and Sunet also has its own directive from the Ministry of Education and Research.

Sunet represents Sweden in NORDUnet, which is a cooperation between the Nordic National Research and Education Networks (NREN), in Norway (Sikt), Denmark (DeiC), Finland (CSC/Funet), Iceland (RHnet) and Sweden (Sunet). NORDUnet operates a Nordic and international network and e-infrastructure service of high quality, serving the Nordic research and education sector. NORDUnet is the result of a Nordic cooperation funded by the Nordic Council in the 1980s. The cooperation was formalised in 1989, and NORDUnet was established as a limited company in 1995.