Cogent Communications today announced it will provide Internet service to RUNNet, a federal network of Russian universities, through its Amsterdam PoP. RUNNet is an educational and collaboration network that links major educational institutions.

“We needed a large amount of bandwidth to exchange large volumes of data reliably between our universities,” said Yury Izhvanov, first deputy director of RUNNet, in a prepared statement. “After evaluating several providers, Cogent proved to be one of the best and the most cost effective solutions. Since so many American university networks like The Quilt, SURA, OARnet, MichNet are already connected to Cogent, it became an obvious choice for us.”

Cogent operates a competitive IP network with more than 85 points of presence in 12 countries.