The association was originally formed on 13 June 1986 as Réseaux Associés pour la Recherche Européenne (RARE) and changed its name to TERENA in October 1994.

This includes: Full membership of TERENA is open to NRENs (one per member country of the ITU) and international public sector organisations.

Similar organisations elsewhere in the world include Internet2, APAN, UbuntuNet Alliance and CLARA (Cooperación Latino Americana de Redes Avanzadas).

[9] By 1991, a project called Ebone was proposed as an interim solution while the European research networking community made the transition from OSI to IP.

[10][11] The Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) was created by RARE in 1992, and was split off five years later as a separate legal entity.

At the end of 1983 IBM had taken the initiative for the European Academic and Research Network (EARN), which would link selected computer centres in Europe via leased lines.

[18] TERENA supports the development of research and education networking in less advanced countries and regions in and around Europe by studying their needs and by providing advice, consultancy and training.

Task forces are groups where specialists in a certain field exchange information, discuss best practices and work together to investigate technologies for the development and deployment of services for the research and education community.

By 2011, TERENA was supporting eight task forces: TF-CPR (communications and public relations), TF-CSIRT (collaboration of security incident response teams), TF-EMC2 (European middleware coordination and collaboration), TF-Media (media management and distribution), TF-MNM (mobility and network middleware), TF-MSP (management of service portfolios), TF-NOC (network operation centres) and TF-Storage (storage and cloud services).

TERENA's Trusted Introducer service offers an accreditation and certification scheme for Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs).

[32][33] Locations: Edinburgh (1997), Budapest (1996), Tel Aviv (1995), Prague (joint with Internet Society's INET conference; 1994), Trondheim (1993), Innsbruck (1992), Blois (1991), Killarney (1990).