The Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET) is the de facto

national research and education network 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 ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

Structure

TENET is a membership-based,

non profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

company incorporated in

. Its members are the

public universities A public university or public college is a university or college that is in owned by the state or receives significant public funds through a national or subnational government, as opposed to a private university. Whether a national university ...

and statutory research councils it serves. Its board of directors is appointed by the members at an annual general meeting.

Network

TENET acts as a comprehensive

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

as well as a research and education network: it operates the South African National Research Network (SANReN), a large-scale government infrastructure project that provides network connectivity between higher educational and research organisations. In addition, it maintains private

peering In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the "down-stream" users of each network. Peering is settlement-free, also known as "bill-and ...

links with a number of large ISPs in South Africa and peers at both the

JINX A jinx (also jynx), in popular superstition and folklore, is a curse or the attribute of attracting bad or negative luck. The word ''"jynx"'' meaning the bird wryneck and sometimes a charm or spell has been in use in English since the seventeent ...

(in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...

) and CINX (in

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

)

Internet exchange point Internet exchange points (IXes or IXPs) are common grounds of IP networking, allowing participant Internet service providers (ISPs) to exchange data destined for their respective networks. IXPs are generally located at places with preexisting ...

s. International connectivity at 10Gbit/s is provided from

points of presence A point of presence (PoP) is an artificial demarcation point or network interface point between communicating entities. A common example is an ISP point of presence, the local access point that allows users to connect to the Internet with their ...

in London and Amsterdam via the SEACOM cable. A second 20Gbit/s route on the WACS cable up the West Coast provides redundant access and was obtained as an IRU by South Africa's Department of Science and Technology as part of the broader aims of SANReN and in support of bandwidth-hungry applications such as the

Square Kilometer Array The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is an intergovernmental international radio telescope project being built in Australia (low-frequency) and South Africa (mid-frequency). The combining infrastructure, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKA ...

and

MeerKAT MeerKAT, originally the Karoo Array Telescope, is a radio telescope consisting of 64 antennas in the Meerkat National Park, in the Northern Cape of South Africa. In 2003, South Africa submitted an expression of interest to host the Square Kilom ...

radio telescope.

Services

TENET operates a growing bundle of services in support of research & education in South Africa. These include: * Video conferencing * the

eduroam eduroam (''edu''cation ''roam''ing) is an international Wi-Fi internet access roaming service for users in research, higher education and further education. It provides researchers, teachers, and students network access when visiting an institu ...

national roaming operator for South Africa * South African Identity Federation (SAFIRE), which is a member of the global

eduGAIN eduGAIN is an international interfederation service interconnecting research and education identity federations. It enables the secure exchange of information related to identity, authentication and authorization between participating federations ...

inter-federation. * a sector CSIRT (in conjunction with

SANReN SANReN (South African National Research Network) is the project to create a new National Research and Education Network in South Africa. However, unlike most other NRENs, SANReN will provide its clients with both connectivity to the world's re ...

)

Relationships to other research networks

As a founder member of the

UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking :''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 ...

, an African confederation of research and education networks, TENET is committed to improving regional connections. TENET was connected to

GÉANT GÉANT is the pan-European data network for the research and education community. It interconnects national research and education networks (NRENs) across Europe, enabling collaboration on projects ranging from biological science, to earth obser ...

in October 2004, a relationship that was subsequently subsumed by the UbuntuNet Alliance.

References

External links

Official homepage

eduroam South Africa

South African Identity Federation
{{South African universities Internet in South Africa National research and education networks Science and technology in South Africa