The University of Trieste is the leading university of the “LighNet” agreement, an initiative launched in 2006 by the local research and academic community. The members of this agreement are universities and research centres in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region. The main aim of “LightNet” is to plan, develop and maintain its own telematic infrastructure; the agreement also aims to implement the most advanced technological solutions related to the optical telecommunication field for everyday activities of lecturers, researchers, students and university staff and for international collaboration.

The network links the “LighNet” agreement members to each other and to Italian broadband network GARR. It also connects more than 50,000 final users, including offices, didactic and research laboratories, libraries, archives, data centres, server farms, astronomical and geophysical observatories, particle accelerators, science parks and many other facilities.
“LightNet” users use this network mainly for reasons related to didactics and research, such as multimediality, real-time audio-visual applications, very low-latency streaming for artistic and musical performances, e-Learning, high-energy physics, materials science, radio astronomy, Earth observation, microscopy, Big Data and supercomputing, telemedicine, robotics, Artificial Intelligence etc.