Infrastructure | KREN - The Sovereign Backbone
National Grid

The National Digital Foundation.

KREN operates Kosovo's dedicated optical backbone, physically and logically separate from commercial ISPs, ensuring low-latency, high-performance, and secure traffic for the academic community.

Target Speed 100 Gbps

Core Backbone Capacity 2028

Fiber Coverage 100 %

Institutions Connected by 2030

Architecture Sovereign

Independent of Commercial ISPs

EU Link GÉANT

Part of pan-European Grid

High-Capacity Optical Infrastructure

KREN's optical network is the digital spine of Kosovo. In alignment with the GÉANT GN5-1 project, we are upgrading from 1Gbps to a massive 100Gbps+ international backbone.

Strategic Routing

Utilization of new fiber corridors along Route 6 and Route 7 motorways.

Regional Transit

Direct, high-capacity terrestrial fiber links to Tirana (AL) and Skopje (MK).

Backbone Evolution Pathway

Centralized Hub

Prizren Sovereign Cloud

Our Tier III-ready data center at ITP Prizren hosts the Azure Stack Hub, ensuring sensitive academic data remains within Kosovo's digital jurisdiction.

99.9% Availability SLA
Hybrid Infrastructure
☁️
Azure Stack Hub

On-premise consistency with global Azure capabilities.

Regional Integration

KREN integrates Kosovo into Europe's next-generation scientific infrastructure via strategic regional corridors.

🦅
EAGLE Subsea System

Redundant multi-terabit route via Albania to global hubs.

🛣️
Balkans Digital Highway

Cross-border connectivity for seamless research data exchange.

Redundancy & Resilience

Redundancy is achieved through multiple cross-border fiber entry points (West/South), ensuring uptime for the national research ecosystem even during regional outages.

NODE: SKOPJE
NODE: TIRANA

Infrastructure Oversight

🖥️

Network Ops Center

24/7 monitoring of the national backbone and GÉANT peering points.

🛡️

National CERT

Security operations center protecting connected academic assets.

📡

5G Testbed

Campus private wireless networks at ITP Prizren for research.

© 2024 Kosovo Research and Education Network

Strategically Aligned with the 2026-2030 National Plan