National Networks

National Networks

Posted on: 13 Dec, 2023

Arab National Research and Education Networks (Arab-NRENs) representing the ASREN Network stakeholders

A. Jordanian Universities Network

Jordanian Universities Network (www.junet.edu.jo) is a non-profit company connecting the Jordanian Public Universities via a state-of-theart high-speed broadband network creating the best infrastructure needed for advanced Higher Education and Research in Jordan. The Jordanian Universities Network owns a national broadband network with 1 Gbps fibre optic cables connecting public universities at the national level. It offers many services, including:
Internet services, aggregated software licensing, subscription of digital libraries, video conferencing, and technical support and applications. The network runs an 8 Core grid system accessible through gLite middleware. JUNet was connected to EUMEDCONNECT during its first two phases and currently has no dedicated link to the global scientific and research networks. JUNet currently hosts the Africa & Arabia ROC portal.

B. Algeria Research Network

The Algeria Research Network (www.arn.dz) provides connectivity services to research institutions through a structured IP broadcast and multicast service that enables communication at the national and international levels through the European GEANT and the worldwide Internet. The technical setup of the network is based on a 622 Mbit/s backbone connecting 76 universities, institutions, and research centres. The EUMEDCONNECT link has been upgraded to 622 Mbit/s allowing fast communications with European counterparts. ARN hosts a 50 Core grid system that runs gLite middleware. In addition to connectivity and grid services, ARN provides email, web, DNS, proxy, and authentication services as well as support to all research and education institutions connected to its backbone. ARN also provides access to content through search engines, websites and databases available to CERIST in particular. It facilitates a videoconferencing service and interactive service audio and video streaming. It has recently facilitated access to research projects totaling about 15,394 topics as well as communication and cooperation between teams of researchers from different academic and research institutions, in the first place, and to allow evaluation and promotion of research in progress.
CERIST is also supporting the Africa & Arabia Regional Operation Centre.

C. Moroccan academic and research network

The Moroccan Academic and Research Wide Area Network (www.marwan.ma) is the national computer network that is dedicated for education, training and research. It is an information infrastructure connecting educational institutions and is run by the National Center for Scientific and Technical Research (CNRST). Since its inception in 1998, MARWAN has been a driver for Moroccan universities to develop new services in education, technology transfer and scientific research. CNRST relies on the evolution of communication technologies internationally to improve the quality, service and network architecture of MARWAN. In its new topology,MARWAN offers institutions and universities a choice of speed from 2 to 100 Mbps. CNRST services include Student Management System, Digital Work Environment, Moroccan Virtual Campus, National Grid Computing, Moroccan Institute of Scientific and Technical Information, Global Information System, Videoconferencing, and DNS services. The available grid infrastructure at CNRST is a 60-core with12-Terrabyte storage available for grid computing services at the national level. Its connection to the GEANT network was reserved only for academic traffic, when it was connected to EUMEDCONNECT. All Internet traffic “commercial” is conveyed by another Internet link from the core network provided by Meditel. MARWAN has been connected to EUMEDCONNECT 2004 -2011for linking to European research and academic sites and is interested in re-establishing connection. CNRST Team supports the Africa & Arabia ROC.

D. Egyptian Universities Network

The Egyptian Universities Network (www.eun. eg) was founded in 1985 under the umbrella of Supreme Council of Universities to serve the higher education community at large. Currently, EUN links all Egyptian universities through two main ISPs at a speed that ranges between 34 Mbps and 1 Gbps. It has a 930 Mbps (Six STM1) international link to the Internet and 34Mbps to Internet2. EUN provides value added services by contributing to some European projects such as EUMEDGRIDSupport for a grid-computing infrastructure. The available infrastructure at EUN is a 68- Core CPU running gLite middleware for grid computing. EUN hosts and manages higher education development projects, including e-learning, Training, Digital Library and Management information system for the Supreme Council of Universities. EUN also operates an advanced Video Conferencing system to facilitate communication between all the Egyptian Universities. It also provides electronic mail services to all universities. EUN manages and operates the .eg Top Level Domain infrastructure and services. It provides service protocol supporting communications using IPv6 to generate a wide range of IP addresses to all universities in Egypt. EUN was connected during the first two phases of EUMEDCONNECT for seven years, and is currently connected to “GLORIAD”, the global ring network for advanced applications and development, through the Egyptian National Scientific and Technical Information Network (ENSTINET). ENSTINET is also in the process of linking a 622 Mbps international link to GEANT for research and education connectivity with Europe and the EUMEDCONNECT project.

E. United Arab Emirates Research and Education Network

United Arab Emirates - UAE’s leading universities formed Ankabut (www.ankabut.ae) as a dedicated research and education network within the country. Ankabut caters to the regional educational and research needs, offering great improvements in how research is conducted, as well as improving the teaching and learning processes. It also provides collaboration and sharing of resources. It links for international collaboration with other research network such as the US Internet2 and the European GEANT. The available network bandwidth at Ankabut is 155.52Mbit/s international link and interconnects over 56 UAE university Campuses with a 10G backbone and 1G access links. It provides access via its advanced 6 Core routers (10Gb) backbone and 56 access routers (1Gb). This connects to a High Performance Computing Cluster of 10 TFlops at Khalifa University. Ankabut is a host of 60-core CPU running gLite middleware for grid computing and a 64 Cores High Performance Computing Cluster of 1.2 TFlops over the Cloud. Ankabut has a 5 years plan of the community services, and now is planning to build the UAE Educational Cloud. Ankabut is offering Web Hosting, DNS, NTP Videoconferencing by default to its members. The UAE Library Consortium is under the Operation Management of Ankabut.

F. Somalia Research and Education Network

Somali Research and Education Network (www.somaliren.org) has a goal is to promote research and quality higher education among the Somalis. It is a network whose members include the major Somali higher education institutions and exists for the sole purpose of bringing them together to collaborate on issues that matter not only to them but also to the Somali community at large. The establishment of SomaliREN sprung from the realization that the development of the research capabilities and facilities of those institutions, and the general quality of higher education are necessary components for finding a way out of the current state of messed affairs. With the belief that knowledge is the real power and research is the only way to gain and share it, representatives of six universities convened to work towards this goal. SomaliREN is a member of a sub-regional backbone (UbuntuNet Alliance) network in eastern and southern Africa connecting National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) to each other and to similar networks on other continents via GÉANT. SomaliREN’s efforts are currently focused on the development of the ICT capabilities of the member organizations to facilitate connectivity among them and also connect them to UbuntuNet Alliance. This is a first step towards building a suitable network infrastructure for e-Learning and cross-border research collaborations.

G. Tunisia - CCK

The Computing Center Al Khwarizmi (CCK) is the internet service provider for the sector of Higher education and scientific research in Tunisia. Since its creation, CCK plays an active role in concretizing the strategy of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research related to the use of Information and Communication Technologies in order to modernize higher education and advance scientific research.
Currently, CCK is the entity of the National Academic Network (RNU) responsible for connecting more than 380 institutions of higher education, scientific research, administrations, and serving almost 400 000 users such as teachers, researchers, students and administrative staff. CCK offers different e-services to its users such as hosting all academic web sites, national academic applications (e-registration, e-orientation, virtual library Biruni, etc…) and e-mail service to all its users.
Since September 2012, CCK lunched a new version of its Network (RNU 2) based in optical fiber connections and offering a range of speeds from 20 to 100 Mbps.

H. Lebanese Network

The initiative to build the Lebanese National Research Network began in 2011 with discussions between the Ministry of Education, the National Council for Scientific Research - CNRS, and ASREN. Connectivity is available on individual basis to the commercial Internet with no interconnection either in between universities at the national level or to the Global REN. Currently the CNRS (www.cnrs.edu.lb) is leading the establishment of LNREN and is interested in wider international connectivity with EUMEDCONNECT3.

I. Palestine - PREN

Palestinian National Research and Education Network (www.palnren.net) is a network connecting the Palestinian universities electronically. The purpose is to help communicate and exchange services and information between Palestinian universities through providing educational content and experiences. Palestine has reached a favourable agreement with PALTEL to connect all national universities with advanced fibre-optic network, and connecting through the EUMEDCONNECT at 45 Mbps capacity through EUMEDCONNECT3. Current efforts are on building a learning network linking all schools at the national level through the implementation of a unified content and services delivery network.

J. Syria - HIAST

Syrian Higher Education and Research Network has been created as a result of cooperation among UNDP, UNESCO and Ministry of Higher Education. Higher  Institute of applied science and technology – HIAST (www.hiast.edu.sy) has been active in leading e-Infrastructure and connectivity at the national level and  developing SHERN. SHERN builds a modern core network within the different Syrian universities and connectivity between them and other education and research institutions. The pilot project started with 2 Mbps link between universities and 1 Mbps Internet connection as reported during LinkSCEEM user meeting in 2008. During EUMEDCONNECT2, SHERN interuniversity links should have upgraded to 30-40 Mbps and international link to E1 155 Mbps. SHERN offers variety of services including email, DNS, eLearning, video conferencing, multimedia broadcasting, administrative information exchange, e-libraries, and more. Due to the current situation in Syria, SHERN is no more connected to the EUMEDCONNECT and has no international link to the global research and
education network.

K. Oman - OMREN

Oman Research and Education Network is meant to be the national e-infrastructure with highspeed backbone connectivity, connecting all research and education organizations and entities. The current state analysis of OMREN is to identify the capabilities of the existing private and public telecommunications network infrastructure (technical, financial and commercial aspects), then to ascertain industry trends and assess which approach will be most suited to meet key objectives set out for OMREN, namely, (http:// www.trc.gov.om): Organization (Ownership options; Funding models; Governance; Operating models), Regulation (NREN usage; Local loop access; Public or private network accessibility), Market (Currently available services; Future services/roadmaps), and Technology (Optical/ packet transport; Network Security; Network Management). OMREN established Oman KID federation to allow restricted access to services, including Electronic Library, Knowledge of the identity system, The electronic system for research proposals, financial system to manage research grants, and programs to support innovation and research.

L. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - KACST

The Saudi Arabian King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) has been mandated to undertake the planning and implementation phases of the SARInet (www.sarinet.org.sa). KACST has been leading the gradual introduction, adoption and penetration of a Next Generation National Research and Educational Network within Saudi Arabia, servicing the entire Academic and Research communities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The network will provide a high-capacity Internet network and accompanying services to further improve the collaboration and knowledge sharing between the education and research institutions within Saudi Arabia. SARInet has been administered and operated by KACST, and a 1 Gbps link from SARInet to GÉANT has been implementedand was set operational by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology since 2011.

M. Sudan - SudREN

The Sudanese Research and Education Network (www.suin.edu.sd) is a specialized Internet Service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within Sudan. SudREN is a nonprofit entity operating under the umbrella of the Association of Sudanese Universities. The network connects more than 40 public and private research and education institutions. The network is based on the national fibre network owned by Sudatel Telecom and Canar Telecom companies. SudREN’s operating bandwidth is 155 Mbps and has two Points of Presence (POPs) hosted by the University of Khartoum and the Sudan University of Science and Technology. SudREN is used to transfer the internal traffic between the members and for distributing the Internet bandwidth to its members as well as providing variety of services including: access to the world journals, Virtual Library, host servers internally, video conferencing, and more. SudREN is implementing a link to UbuntuNet, the African Research and Education Network through AfricaConnect.

N. Qatar Foundation

Qatar Foundation Research and Education Network (www.qf.edu.qa) is in the process of being set up to provide a dedicated R&E infrastructure linking the Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), Education City, and the Qatar Foundation’s headquarters. The infrastructure network will be based on a 40 Gbps backbone linked with a 1 Gbps to the US Internet 2 REN. The network will enable communication of large volumes of research data and computing processes as well as collaborations on projects and sharing of resources within the research and education communities. It will provide services related to Super Computing, Grid  Computing, high definition TV and media sharing, and streaming high quality online teaching and learning.

O. Other Arab Countries: Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, and Yemen

In Bahrain, ASREN has been intensively working with Bahrain University and Bahrain e-Government to launch the development of such a network at the national level. No reports are available on both Comoros and Djibouti developments for research and education network at the national level. ASREN will investigate opportunities for cooperation in the two countries. ASREN has initiated communication with the Ministry of Higher Education in Iraq to support the development of Iraqi national research and education network. In Kuwait, ASREN has supported the development of Kuwait University (KU-01-KUGRID) grid site as part of the UNESCO-HP Brain Gain initiative. Discussions continued to lead the development of e-Infrastructure at the national level. In Libya, discussions started in 2011 with the Ministry of Higher Education, with no solid actions taken yet. No reports are available on the development of research and education network in Mauritania and Yemen, and ASREN will initiate cooperation to help support the establishment of e-Infrastructure in these countries.
These results show different stages of implementation of national e-Infrastructure and connectivity, while lacking cross-border linkages in between them. There are important network characteristics that need to be taken into account for a further enhancement and development. These include availability and maturity of the network operation centers in providing network services and circuit management, development of optical points of presence (PoPs) to serve wider research communities and linking to neighbouring academic backbones, and establishing external links dedicated for research and education traffic.
While the network capacity in the Arab countries is less than 1 Gbps, the typical core capacity elsewhere is now exceeding 10 Gbps, with a growing trend towards establishing 100 Gbps dark fibre on national REN backbones. In addition, when there is no cross-border fibre connecting national RENs in the Arab countries, cross-border fibre has reached 10 to 100 Gbps linkages in thousands of kilometres in Europe and elsewhere. The concept of PoPs is not mature in the architectural design of the Arab national RENs and is at very preliminary stages of implementation, compared to 344 PoPs in Netherlands REN alone as an example. The total capacity of external link does not exceed 2 Gbps connecting only very few countries alone, compared to very condensed cross-border connection in Europe with a tendency towards increasing international linkages.