The Research and Education Network for Academic and Learning Activities (iRENALA) is the
national research and education networking organisation (NREN) of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
. iRENALA was incorporated in June 2012 as an association under Malagasy law. It is a member of the
UbuntuNet Alliance
:''UbuntuNet Alliance is not to be confused with Ubuntu Linux''
UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking (also known as UbuntuNet Alliance) is the regional Research and Education Network of Eastern and Southern Africa. It was foun ...
.
Objectives
The objectives of the association are:
* to provide the management for the creation of a national
computer network
A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
for research, technological development and education;
* to assist the development of networks for professional science and technology and to ensure their national interconnection;
* to provide connections with
national research and education networks
A national research and education network (NREN) is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country.
It is usually distinguished by support for a high-speed backb ...
of other countries and to participate in international and interconnection projects;
* to provide the management of electronic communication services, in particular address management, routing and numbering plans, and network directory services (
DNS
The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...
and reverse zone lookup), for the benefit of the entire research, technological development and education community;
* to provide the management for a range of services, applications and resources dedicated to higher education and research.
The network
A partnership agreement between the Ministry of Higher Education and Scienfific Research and the Ministry of Post, Telecommunications and New Technologies from July 2011 has made it possible to implement a fibre-optic network. iRENALA has an international connectivity of 155 Mbit/s and 15 member organisations are connected via 22 interconnection sites. iRENALA is not involved in the management of the local networks of its member institutions, but it collaborates with the system and network administrators of each of the institutions to obtain standardisation at the national level. The national network infrastructure of iRENALA is based on a fibre-optic backbone of the telecom provider
Telma (Telecom Malagasy).
Services
Network-related services provided by iRENALA include a wiki that serves as a portal for information about the evolution of the network and accompanying services, a teleconferencing and collaborative work service, web hosting, and domain name management. For teachers and students iRENALA provides a portal of education resources as a virtual university library. For researchers iRENALA runs the Madagascar Digital Library as well as an information service about Madagascar scientific publications and news.
References
{{reflist, 30em
External links
Official website
Communications in Madagascar
National research and education networks