TENET (network)

The Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET) is the de facto national research and education network in South Africa.

Structure

TENET is a membership-based, not-for-profit company incorporated in South Africa. Its members are the public universities and statutory research councils it serves.^[1] Its board of directors is appointed by the members at an annual general meeting.

Network

TENET acts as a comprehensive Internet service provider 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 links with a number of large ISPs in South Africa and peers at both the JINX (in Johannesburg) and CINX (in Cape Town) Internet exchange points. International connectivity at 10Gbit/s is provided from points of presence 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 and MeerKAT radio telescope.

Relationships to other research networks

As a founder member of the UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking, an African confederation of research and education networks,^[2] TENET is committed to improving regional connections.

TENET was connected to GÉANT in October 2004,^[3] a relationship that was subsequently subsumed by the UbuntuNet Alliance.