Capacity Building in Africa to Improve Cyberinfrastructure

Transcription

1 Capacity Building in Africa to Improve Cyberinfrastructure Science and Cyberinfrastructure in Africa Workshop August 6, Boulder, Colorado Hervey Allen Phil Regnauld

2 There s quite a bit going on Cyberinfrastructure Capacity Building - Numerous pan-african organizations involved - Activities for: Universities and Research Institutions Network Operators Internet exchange Points (IXPs) Country Top Level Domain Support (TLDs) National and Regional Research Education Networks - Opportunities to attend international conferences IETF meetings Internet2 ICANN, and many more

3 Training is only part of the picture It's about much more than just connecting switches and routers. It's about helping to develop a community of professionals to enable continuous and sustained progress.

4 NSRC and many others Have been involved heavily in network and technical capacity building for years. The landscape in Africa is changing Enhanced capacity from new fiber cables is driving REN buildout on national and regional scales. Building RENs: - Customized campus network design workshops, NREN development programs and on-site visits to assist with REN formation. - Poor network design at the campus level can be an issue. - Teaching political/sociological and technical models is important.

5 RENs: Serving the Scientific Community An NREN leverages size to purchase more bandwidth, equipment, An NREN can keep traffic local. NRENs can join Regional RENs Some African REN Projects Kenya (KENET) Morocco (MARWAN) South Africa (TENET) Tanzania (TERNET) Senegal (SnRER) Ghana (GARNET) Nigeria (ngren) UbuntuNet (East/Southern Africa) WACREN (West/Central Africa)

6 African Capacity Building A few of the African organizations involved: - AfNOG (African Network Operators Group) - AfriNIC (African Internet Numbers Registry) - AfREN (African Research & Education Network) - TENET/FRENIA (Support given outside ZA) - AAU (Association of African Universities - ISOC* (Michuki Mwangi) - ngnog (local to Nigeria) - ghnog (local to Ghana) Training the trainers

7 What is being taught? Major topic areas include: - Switching (L2), Routing (L3) Campus Network Design - Network Monitoring/Management - Security (Network and Server) - System Administration - Wireless - DNS/DNSSEC - Physical buildout (cabling, planning, wifi physics) - Authentication practices (Kerberos, 802.1x, RADIUS/LDAP) Best Practices across all of these topics is heavily stressed. Build it right from the start.

8 Improving the CI IXPs Leverage your local connectivity Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) are critical Keep the local traffic local Technically usually simple to do Politically difficult in many situations But, once you get over the hurdles

9 Front Range GigaPoP and UCAR Point of Presence FRGP/UPoP Very successful! Most traffic stays local 34 members, thousands of users many gigs of data

10 IXPs Currently in Africa

11 How we (NSRC) have done this With the help of our friends African capacity building efforts are part of our work with the International Research Network Connections (IRNC) program of the NSF. Capacity building helps cultivate the international research and education network fabric, which is an essential underpinning of cyberinfrastructure. NSRC provides technical information, direct engineering assistance, training, books and equipment to universities, research institutions and networking organizations in developing areas. Assisting those who take ownership of the problems or challenges they are trying to solve i.e., Local hands cultivating local expertise Our primary objective is to make it easier for U.S. scientists and engineers, and those in developing economies, to collaborate via the Internet. There are a lot of friends who help us with these efforts and have helped us in the past

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