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sanren: closing the digital divide
for south africa’s research & development
In brief
South Africa is making substantial progress
in realising its vision of broadband
connectivity through the investment
by the Department of Science and
Technology (DST) in a sustainable national
cyberinfrastructure system for research,
development and innovation across the
entire National System of Innovation. The
South African National Research Network
(SANReN) is a component of South
Africa’s national cyberinfrastructure system
and is working towards achieving these
goals together with the Centre for High
Performance Computing, the South African
Very Large Scale Database Initiative, and
the South African National Grid initiative,
providing a software platform for joint
research at universities and research
organisations.
The challenge
One of the major requirements for all South
African public universities to participate
fully in local and international research
collaboration, is access to broadband
connectivity. Unlimited computing power
combined with unlimited bandwidth and
unlimited storage holds the promise of
unprecedented research and development
possibilities, now and in the future.
CSIR research
Following the signing of a contract
between the DST and the CSIR in 2006,
the CSIR was tasked with designing and
implementing the rollout of the SANReN
network. This task commenced in 2007,
and the first part of the national research
infrastructure went live in 2008. South
Africa’s Telkom was contracted to install the
first phase of the national backbone which
was completed in December 2009.
Designing an NREN
The initial hardware design was done
together with industry partners, and the
Tertiary Education Network (TENET). Design
decisions are taken in-house and aligned
with best practices followed by international
NREN communities.
The network topology design (for the
backbone extensions) was done jointly with
TENET and the requirements and priorities
of institutions were taken into account.
The network was planned based on
inputs from all higher education institutions
(facilitated by the Association of South
African University Directors of Information
Technology), science councils, and national
facilities managed by South Africa’s
National Research Foundation.
A sea change in connectivity
SANReN provides South African
researchers with world-class networking,
enabling them to collaborate nationally and
with their international peers. A 10 gigabitper-second
fibre-optic ring network provides
the national broadband connectivity
network for public research institutions
and universities. It is linked to international
networks, such as GéANT, a multi-gigabit
pan-European data communications
network.
As the contracted operator for SANReN,
TENET has acquired international
bandwidth from Seacom which is
distributed via the SANReN national
backbone network. Seacom is a 1.28
terabytes-per-second,17 000 km-long
submarine fibre-optic cable system linking
southern and East Africa to global networks
via India and on to Europe. The SANReN
backbone will connect universities and
public research organisations at speeds
of between 1 and 10 gigabit-per-second
over the next few years. About 150 sites,
including all rurally-based universities,
together with KAT7, the precurser to the
Square Kilometre Array (SKA), and South
African Large Telescope (SALT), will be
connected by the end of the 2011/2012
financial year.
Dr Colin Wright (left) and the SANReN
team: Simeon Miteff, Zukisani Makalima,
John Hay, Uli Horn, Thabo Koeshe, Geoff
Daniell and Christiaan Kuun
What’s in it for South Africa
With access to high-quality cyberinfrastructure,
it is now possible for South
African researchers and scientists to
find solutions to national and regional
problems in a range of areas, from health
and energy to industrial innovation. Large
science projects, such as SALT, MeerKAT,
the Applied Centre for Climate and
Earth Systems Science (ACCESS), the
International Centre for Genetic Engineering
and Biotechnology, and the National
Bioinformatics Network, all stand to gain
from SANReN.
South Africa is now positioned
internationally as a player in global science
efforts, as the unprecedented benefits from
SANReN’s high-speed connectivity become
apparent. The availability of SANReN has
demonstrated South Africa’s readiness to
host the connectivity requirements of the
SKA. The Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy
Observatory has been enabled to
participate in international radio astronomy
experiments through very long baseline
interferometry (e-VLBI) data provision to
the Joint Institute for e-VLBI in Europe. Data
from South Africa’s SumbandilaSat are
downloaded at the South African National
Space Agency space operations and sent
to SunSpace in a short period of time to
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