Planning and Design of TWAREN: Advanced National Research and Education Network in Taiwan

With the evolution of technology, it has been a long- term mission for governments to always conform its own national-wide research network backbone to e-Science research applications. The Taiwan Advanced Research and Education Network (TWAREN) not only plays the role of a research network but also offers commodity Internet to universities and research organizations in Taiwan. Therefore, we have to consider both cutting-edge technologies and network protection when designing TWAREN architecture. In this paper, we present our design goals and the latest TWAREN network which adopts both MPLS and lightpath technology. Protection mechanism is also exhibited for preventing users from being unplugged with Internet.