Faster Networks for Research and Education

Faster Networks for Research and Education

N. Chetty, Physics Department, University of Pretoria, South Africa

The African Research and Education Network (AFREN) met in Kampala, Uganda, 17-18 June 2019. The

meeting brought together National Research and Education Network (NREN) and regional REN technical

experts, managers and operators on the one hand and university and research leaders on the other

hand. Together they discussed the importance of RENs, to advocate for growing the national and

regional RENs in Africa, to outline services and potential new services provided by RENs, and to hear

directly from the research and education community about their REN needs. The AFREN conversation is

extremely important for growing the research linkages in Africa, and with physics being a lead discipline,

there is much hope and expectation that we are moving in the direction of increased intra-African

collaboration in physics for the future. The meeting was organized by the Association of African Universities. The context for the meeting was the African Union - Continental Education Strategy for Africa 2016-2025 (CESA 16-25). 

Meeting discussion points 

NRENs are important for the academic enterprise in any country. The goal of NRENs is to provide-low cost, high-bandwidth connectivity for research and teaching. NRENs provide services to the academic and research community that go well beyond simply providing network connectivity. It is in this respect that NRENs are different from commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Major Objectives for RENs 

1. Provide scientific research and education institutions with reliable means of communication in order to facilitate ease of cooperation and coordination. 

2. Strengthen the notion of partnership and encourage joint scientific research among communities. 

3. Minimize the cost of research by using diversified academic and technical resources to be made available for use on the network with no need for duplicating investment. 

4. The fact that students, teaching staff, and researchers use such dedicated networks would eventually, uplift efficiency and productivity and would boost the concept of creativity and innovation. 

Major services provided by RENs 

1. Unified connectivity to all research and education institutions to provide country-wide standard communication facilities and capabilities to faculty, researchers, students, and staff, leading to better sharing of services, resources, information, data, knowledge and expertise. 

2. Consolidated Internet services, with the NREN acting as an ISP to universities and research institutions. Available statistics in some countries have shown that savings can go up to 40% on access costs while enabling common access policies and configurations at the national level. 

3. Connectivity to regional research networks, providing opportunities for joint research collaboration and online education initiatives. 

4. Access to content, common repositories, and library resources of all universities with a unified subscription to all journals and periodicals for all universities and research centres. 

5. Video conferencing services, media streaming, IP telephony, access federations, and wireless roaming for the purpose of facilitating communications, exchanges of lectures, and coordination of meetings, training and conferences between all users in universities and institutes. 

6. Consolidated agreements with software vendors on behalf of all universities for licensing, with savings reaching up to 50% in some cases. 

7. Common caching, filtering and anti-spam and anti-virus protection services provided by NRENs to all connected institutions. 

8. Furthermore, an NREN can be eligible to create and manage a national Internet Exchange depending on the regulations of the Country, and provide domain name registry services and networking consultancy. 

Implementing Research and Education Networks 

The REN model has been shown to work all around the globe. However, it is a challenge to convince governments in many African countries to provide funds for NRENs because they don’t always appear to appreciate the importance of NRENs. There is an urgent need to bring government officials, university and research leaders as well as academics together in many African countries to begin to develop and strengthen the NREN jointly, which should be seen to be much more than simply providing infrastructure. NRENs should be seen to be independent organizations funded largely by governments. The organizational structure of NRENs was repeatedly stressed by various speakers. NRENs need to be managed by the user community (the Higher Education sector and Research Institutions) so that the service provided can readily link with the needs of the community. There are best practices for governance for NRENs that are not always freely implementable because of political interference in some African countries. 

Why does Africa need NRENs? 

African scientists are not sufficiently connected with each other across national boundaries. It was repeatedly mentioned that African scientists are more inclined to cooperate with the global North than within Africa. NRENs are essential, but so too is connectivity within Africa. There are three regional RENs, with the names WACREN (West and Central African Research and Educational Network), ASREN (Arab States Research and Educational Network) and Ubuntunet, all of which aim to enhance connectivity on a regional basis in the continent. African Connect is a program funded by the European Union that has supported the regional development of RENs. In the era of the rapid increase in data sizes, for example in astronomy, high energy physics, genomics, medicine, etc., it is imperative that African academics have access to greater bandwidth for scientific research and collaborations. Accessing high-performance computing resources and large research data sets is critical for scientists working in less developed countries. Concerns were expressed about cybersecurity, and the need for the NREN community to learn from each other about ways to counter this growing international scourge. The idea of a virtual research and education college was discussed extensively and argued to be very realizable in the era of growing NRENs in Africa. Here, real-time communications were highlighted as important, for example in connecting with a collaborator in Africa or abroad, or a remote supervisor or thesis examiner, or presenting a seminar or an interactive lecture series to participants elsewhere in Africa. Sharing expert human resources over the network means that the quality of research and education can grow significantly, particularly in rural Africa where that capacity might not be strong.