Euro-Link is a National Science Foundation-funded initiative that facilitates the connection of European and Israeli National Research Networks (NRNs) to the high-performance vBNS and Abilene networks. As part of the NSF’s High-Performance International Internet Services (HPIIS) program, Euro-Link is funded through 2004 as a next-generation Internet initiative that supports international research collaboration.

Euro-Link consortium members IUCC, NORDUnet, SURFnet, RENATER2 and CERN, along with partner HPIIS network consortia TransPAC and MIRnet, connect to the vBNS through its international anchor, the Science, Technology and Research Transit Access Point (STAR TAP℠). Euro-Link and STAR TAP℠ are managed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Countries worldwide are currently building next-generation networks to meet the high-bandwidth, quality-of-service (QoS) and connectivity needs of academic researchers running high-performance scientific applications. Euro-Link was established in early 1999 to encourage the interconnection of U.S. networks to these foreign networks for the express purpose of enhancing and expanding U.S.-led scientific research. Euro-Link engineers and researchers will work with European NRNs and their U.S. partners to optimize end-to-end performance such that tens of Mbps are realized to the desktop.