African Development Bank Team Visits NgREN A three-man delegation from the African Development Bank (AfDB), led by Mr. Joshua Liberton of the Federal Ministry of Communication Technology (FMCT), on Tuesday, 28 January, 2014, visited the Secretariat of the Nigerian Research and Education Network (NgREN), located at the Peter Okebukola Building of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Abuja, to explore modalities for collaboration on the project. Giving details of the project, NUC Head, ICT Projects, Dr. Joshua Atah, said that the NgREN was designed and registered as a corporate entity, limited by guarantee and meant to connect education and research institutions in Nigeria directly to each other, other RENs and the ‘‘commercial’’ or ‘‘commodity’’ internet world. Dr. Atah stated that the Project was conceived to, among other things, provide world class networking infrastructure for the use of the research and education community in Nigeria, establish an operational platform that enabled resource sharing as well as facilitated innovation and development; procure more and cheaper internet bandwidth for member-institutions, provide network services and applications, such as backbone transmission service, web services (ftp caching and mirroring), domain name service, e-mail and messaging services, network security, bandwidth management, IP telephony, video conferencing, identity management, e-learning resources, indexing and searching to the research community. Other objectives listed were: to leverage on technology for the promotion of innovative ways of teaching and learning, promote linkages and collaborations among the research community, industry, government and similar institutions globally, in order to translate research into commercial products for the nation’s benefit. On the implementation of the NgREN, Dr. Atah disclosed that the Project, which was conceived by the NUC and Committee of Vice-Chancellors (CVC), began in January, 2010, with the objective to implement an IP/MPLS network strengthened by a concept document, network design and funding proposal. It was believed that public and private sector engagement was inevitable in the process to ensure its success, adding that the Project received funding to the tune of 9.5million USD, through the World Bankassisted Science and Technology Education Post-Basic (STEP-B) Project, in 2012, for phase one implementation and that the procurement cycle was concluded in February 2013. The Federal Government, he said, had also invested an additional 2 million USD. In his contribution, Dr. M. T. Usman, remarked that the idea was to start with 27 of the oldest universities as well as the NUC and CVC Secretariat, in the first phase of the Project, with a projection of more than one million network users. He noted that the NgREN had established a Network Management Centre (NMC), consisting of a data centre, monitoring centre and a staging laboratory. It had also invested in a Data Recovery Centre (DRC), in Lagos, installed P and PE routers in Lagos, Kano, Port- Harcourt and Abuja (as cluster nodes) and CPEs in 29 locations, adding that NgREN had invested in a four-layer power solution at the Secretariat. He disclosed that phase two of the Project was aimed at connecting the remaining 102 universities by the end of 2014. Dr. Usman further explained that NgREN had efficient high-capacity broadband network, which linked all the 27 universities, NUC and the CVC Secretariat to a high speed 10 gigabit core, thus having access to shared internet resources, content, capacity development initiatives and collaboration tools. He informed the team that a highdefinition video conferencing infrastructure had also been installed in each of the universities, the NUC and CVC Secretariat, thereby enabling multiple party conferencing and university-touniversity communication within and outside the country. He pointed out that the NMC and the Secretariat of the Project were hosted by the NUC, with a DRC at the University of Lagos, to host centralised resources and provide parallel monitoring of the Network. Commenting on the challenges of the Project, Mr. Ahmed Isah Chafe said that, due to inadequate technical capacity, engineers in the universities were facing the challenge of integrating the NgREN bandwidth capacity into their networks, alongside existing subscribed bandwidth. He highlighted other challenges to include: poorly-designed university networks, inadequate power supply within the universities, disruption of network due to power failure and difficulty in communication among researchers to collaborate and share research findings (occasioned by inadequacy of internet bandwidth, institutionalisation of the network as well as inadequacy of the 10 gbps core ring to support the existing institutions). On the needs of the Project, Mr. Chafe said that it was necessary to sensitise and build capacity of various stakeholders, including Chief Executive Officers of the institutions and regulatory agencies, members of the NgREN Board of Directors, Directors of ICT, network engineers and users in the institutions as well as NgREN staff, especially on the rudiments of network management and the vision of the NgREN. He stressed that strengthening the networks of member-institutions was required, to guarantee constant and reliable access to the NgREN as well as the acquisition of International Private Leased Circuit (IPLC), connection to the London Open Exchange (4 gbps), to enable NgREN to peer with Internet2, NORDUnet and JANET at the London Open Exchange and to procure less expensive internet bandwidth. Responding, Mr. Joshua Liberton expressed delight at the opportunity to have a first-hand view of the Project, describing it as a well equipped and state-of-the-art facility. He noted that the Project, if fully harnessed, was capable of transforming the higher education sub-sector in Nigeria and promised that AfDB would extend its scope and range of collaboration and assistance to the Network. Also in the FMCT delegation were Nicholas Williams and Ezekiel Odoigo.
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 14:22:27 +0000
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