National Research and Education
Networks (NRENs):
the potential for SADC participation
CODATA Workshop on Strategies for Permanent Access to
Scientific Information in Southern Africa
Pretoria, 5 – 7 September 2005
Duncan Martin
CEO of TENET
The origin of the NREN
1970’s: Internet started by US DoD research arm.
1980’s: US academe takes control.
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Free for all. Netiquette defines the rules. Email is what it’s about.
Distributed, user-led management.
1990’s: Growth of the WWW.
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Jan Allerman gets connected.
Rise of the ISP industry
Intellectual property issues become important.
Commercial interests vie for control.
2000’s: Commerce and governments take control. Congestion.
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Top level policy power passes to political and legislative levels
Spam (unsolicited, bulk marketing by email)
Access circuits congested by by student email and browsing
Institutional budgets stretched
Academe’s Response: Let’s build RENs!
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So what exactly is a REN?
Acronyms:
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REN: “Research and Education Network”
NREN: “National REN”
RREN: “Regional REN” (e.g NorduNET in Scandinavia)
RENS are an integral part of the Internet; but provide
alternative links and routes between member sites
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Carry only traffic passing between member sites. (“Private”
networks in this sense…)
Usually, members must be research and/or educational
institutions
May have peering agreements with other RENs
Have transit agreement with “superRENs” like Géant
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Who owns NRENS?
Of the 34 NRENs in Europe
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Approx. 50% controlled by state agencies
Approx 50% consortia of user institutions
In the USA, there are many different RENs
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National scope: NSFNet, ESNet, Internet2,
LambdaRail,..
State scope: CENIC, NYSERNET,..
Manifold inter-connection agreements
Some, but not many, financed by federal agencies
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Scientific Information in Southern Africa
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Géant
Géant – the “superREN”
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Initiative of (and partly funded by) the European Commission
Very high-speed (up to 10 Gb/s) backbone network
Inter-connects 34 European NRENs
Has 7.5 Gb/s trans-Atlantic connections to Internet2 and CANARIE
Has connections to APAN (Asia Pacific Academic Network)
Operated by a non-profit UK company called “Dante” under contract
to the EC (see www.dante.net)
As a result, there’s a unique, global REN
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If you connect to Géant and/or to Internet2, you connect to it!
The EC looks to a country’s government to identify that
country’s NREN for purposes of connecting to Géant.
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So: in the developed world:
NRENs have arisen to
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ensure that advanced networking traffic is
not disabled by congestion from commoditytype traffic
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develop next-generation networking and
applications in research and higher
education.
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(Extract from Internet2’s interconnection MoU)
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In SADC, there are other roles as well….
Bandwidth is very expensive!
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The NREN as “bandwidth consortium”
Negotiates affordable Internet access for its member
institutions;
 Volume discounts
 special “holy cow” deals;
 lobbying government and regulators, e.g. for relaxed VSAT
license conditions
Share cost of connection to Géant
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enable participation in collaborative international research
projects
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Be part of the global networked research community
Develop ICT human capacity
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The South African situation
TENET is the “bandwidth consortium” that arranges
general Internet access (via TELKOM)
SANReN: The SA Government is creating an NREN
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Department of Science and Technology (DST)
Driven by needs of “big e-science” projects
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VLBI, ALICE Project, tropical medicine
Will connect to Géant; will not provide general Internet access
All TENET institutions will connect, either directly or via a
SANReN/TENET gateway
“Connectable” institutions in other countries welcome
EC very supportive
In place by 1Q2006
Dedicated connection to Géant (1 Gb/s?)
TENET is assisting the DST
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Why is bandwidth expensive? (1)
Africans bear the full cost of the long-haul
connectivity to Europe and USA
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That’s just how the Internet developed! Johnny-come-lately
pays to connect!
Many countries still have a single incumbent operator
protected by restrictive license regulations
SADC lacks EU-type regional authority
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Regional bodies that do exist tend to be associations of
vested interests, like the telcos and the regulators.
Consumer interests are not represented.
Cross-border connectivity is tightly regulated for the benefit
of the incumbents.
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Why is bandwidth expensive? (2)
“Shareholders’ Club” model for financing submarine
cables prevents competitive access
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Clubs are private, are not incorporated as accounting entities,
and are very secretive about costs.
SA’s SNO has no landing rights for traffic from SAT-3 cable
There is healthy competition to provide international
connectivity via satellite (VSAT), but
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VSAT bandwidth is inherently much more costly to provide
Requires each site to install a large dish ($45,000)
Prices between $2,50 and $4,00 per kb/s (one-way) per month
Latency is always over 500 ms
Not feasible for high bandwidths (over 100 Mb/s)
Result: Pricing for cable connectivity is not cost-related
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Price pitched to just compete with VSAT
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The University of Witwatersrand
11.3 Mb/s Internet access
Cost breakdown
Appox. unit cost ($ per kb/s per month)
Carrier transit cost in UK
$4.00
7%
Long haul to UK (via SAT-3 cable) cost
63 %
Transport and peering within South Africa
30 %
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Scientific Information in Southern Africa
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The University of Swaziland
192 kb/s Internet access
Cost breakdown
Appox. unit cost ($ per kb/s per month)
Carrier transit in UK
$ 12.00
2.5 %
Long haul to UK (via SAT-3 cable)
21.0 %
Transport and peering within South Africa
10.0 %
Trans-border link: S African half-circuit
25.0 %
Trans-border link: Swazi half-circuit
41 5 %
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New deployments of optical fibre
In many SADC countries: this is driven by
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Electrical power providers, who need fibre-connectivity for
managing their distribution grids; and
Cellular telephony operators, whose customer base has far
outstripped that of the traditional fixed-line operators.
In many countries, the cellular operators (including MTN
and Vodacom) have more extensive fibre backbones than
the incumbent telco.
Reading:
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Backbone telecommunications infrastructure development
initiatives in Southern and East Africa. Final report. NEPAD eAfrica Commission. August 2004.
The proposed role of the AAU: Enabling member and associated
institutions to access more bandwidth at lower cost. Report of The
Association of African Universities (AAU) ICT and bandwidth
Initiative. FF Tusubira and Nora K Mulira. August 2005.
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The SARUA initiative
Southern African Regional Universities Association
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Launched in March 2005
46 public universities in the SADC region
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26 have access to SAT-3
20 use VSAT connectivity
SARUA envisages
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adopting a TENET-like agency model
Negotiating a common VSAT deal for SARUA universities
Lobbying, where necessary, for relaxation of VSAT license
restrictions and/or fees
Achieving a shared connection to Géant / Internet2
Pursuing capacity develop programs throughout the region
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What are the prospects for a SADC
RREN?
Option 1: VSAT bandwidth consortium
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Common VSAT service provider
Participation contingent upon VSAT license condition in your
country
Shared connections to general Internet and to Géant (or
Internet2) from common base-station in Israel, Europe or USA.
Option 2: Terrestrial connectivity
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Much tougher to realise, because of
 Multiple cross-border links to establish
 Multiple licenses in multiple administrations required to land
and transit traffic
 Multiple operators involved. No uniform prices in the region.
 Competitive sub-marine cable connectivity some years away
Both: Important capacity development work
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Scientific Information in Southern Africa
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