Connecting UniversitiesDr. Mohamed BaqerQuality Assurance Authority for Education and Training

December 2012

Universities in Bahrain

Type Numbers

Public 3

Private 12

Total 15

Introduction• Universities and research centers have been closely connected

with the Internet since its inception. • In some countries, the major universities or academic network

even acted as the first main ISP.• Today, universities continue to pioneer advances in ICTs in

respect of network infrastructure, services and applications, and the latest developments in grid and cloud computing.

Internet Status• It is widely recognized that ICTs are important for economics

and social development• Internet is considered general-purpose technology• Broadband is considered basic infrastructure.• In some countries access to the Internet is a fundamental

human right for their citizens (e.g. France, Finland, and Estonia).

Aspects of Connectivity

Universities

Education Research

Education• An infrastructure for:• Facilitating eLearning and distance learning• Sharing learning resources : e.g. e libraries, course material, etc.• Communication between learners• ICT enhanced classrooms: smart board, computers, etc.

Connecting Universities: Scientific and Research Centers• Promote affordable and reliable high-speed Internet connection for all

universities and research institutions to:• Support their critical role in information and knowledge production,

education and training, and to support the establishment of partnerships, cooperation and networking between these institutions.

• Promote electronic publishing, differential pricing and open access initiatives to make scientific information affordable and accessible in all countries on an equitable basis.

• Promote the use of peer-to-peer technology to share scientific knowledge and pre-prints and reprints written by scientific authors who have waived their right to payment.

• Promote the long-term systematic and efficient collection, dissemination and preservation of essential scientific digital data, for example, population and meteorological data in all countries.

• Promote principles and metadata standards to facilitate cooperation and effective use of collected scientific information and data as appropriate to conduct scientific research.

What we can do with it• Data sharing and management• High performance computing• Visualization

e-infrastructure – a wish list• Open deposit, allowing user-community centers to store data easily.• Authenticity will be guaranteed• Metadata support to allow effective management, use and

understanding• Maintaining proper access right as the basis of all trust• A verity of access levels and services that will vary between scientific

disciplines and overtime.• Execution services that allow a large group of researchers to operate

on the stored data.• High reliability and availability• Regular quality assessment to ensure adherence to all agreements.• Distributed and collaborative authentication, authorization and

accounting• A high degree of interoperability at format and semantic level

challenges• Collection• Trust• Usability• Interoperability• Diversity• Security• Education and

training

• Data publication and access• Commercial

exploitation• New social paradigms• Preservation and

sustainability

Beneficiaries• Citizens• Funder and policy makers• Researchers• Enterprise and industry

Required• A good framework for the governance of data• Additional funds for scientific e-infrastructure• Develop and use new ways to measure data value, and reward

those who contribute it.• Train new generation of data scientist and broaden public

understanding• Create incentives for green technologist in the data

infrastructure.• Establish a high-level inter ministerial group on global level to

plan for data infrastructure.

Examples of using Research and Education Networks• 2.5 petabytes (million billion) data stored

away each year for mammograms in the US alone.

• Smart meters for electricity consumption (now being installed in Europe) produces about one CD-ROM for each Household every year.

• Monitoring A square kilometer of astronomical equals 1 petabyte of data every second.

Applications

Example of Research and Education Networks

• Internet2• Janet •GEANT•AARNet•CERNET

Internet2• Internet2 is an advance technology

community, owned and led by the U.S research and Education Community.

• 200 higher education institutes, over 40 members from industry, 30 research and education network, over 50 affiliated members.

• Operates next generation Internet protocol and optical network for high-performance demands of education and research.

• Goals:• Enable new generation of applications• Re-create leading edge research and education

network capability• Transfer technology and experience to the

global production internet.• Why Internet2

• Real-time access to remote resources• Large scale multi site computation and data

mining• Interactive collaboration• Rich, multimedia digital libraries.

JANET and super Janet

• Private, government funded computer network dedicated to research and education in the UK for connecting research councils, further and higher education

• in 1995 SuperJanet2 started, adding 155 Mbit/s ATM backbones and a 10 Mbit/s SMDS network encompassing some of the original Janet nodes. Janet's mandate now included running metropolitan area networks centred on these sites.

• In April 2011 Verizon helped Janet upgrade 4 central locations to run at 100Gbit/s bringing it to a national research and education network performance parity with Internet2 (which upgraded its backbone to 100Gbit/s in October 2007).

• As of October 2011 they have over 18 million end-users

GEANT• Pan-European data network for

the research and education• It links national research and

education networks (NRENs) across Europe

• Plans to support 2Tbps across 50,000km backbone and end-users to access 100Gbps.

• Co-funded by EU

CERNET

• China Education and Research Network

• Funded by the Chinese government and managed by the Chinese Ministry of Education, and operated by some Universities.

• Connected to US, Canada, UK, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong.

• Use to test next generation Internet applications.

Future of Connecting Universities

• Mobile devices and learning• Social networks and learning• Cloud computing

Thank you!

mohamedbaqer@qaa.edu.bh