The South African NREN

The National Research and Education Network of South Africa (South African NREN or SA NREN)

The roles and responsibilities of the de facto South African NREN (SA NREN) are distributed between the South African National Research Network (SANReN) group at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET).

The SANReN group and TENET co-operate closely in building and supporting the South African NREN as a research, education and innovation platform for the benefit of its customers and users, and for the realisation of associated national development objectives.

The South African National Research Network (SANReN) group

The SANReN group is responsible for the design, acquisition and roll-out of national and international capacity for the SA NREN, as well as the development and incubation of advanced services. It forms part of a comprehensive South African government approach to cyberinfrastructure, geared at ensuring the successful participation of South African researchers in the global knowledge production endeavour.

SANReN is managed and implemented by the CSIR’s Next Generation Enterprises and Institutions (NGEI) cluster and is a key component of the National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System (NICIS), alongside the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) and the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA).

The Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET)

TENET’s main purpose is to secure, for the benefit of South African universities and associated research and support institutions, Internet and Information Technology services. TENET is a service organisation and is committed to service excellence and to services that are strongly aligned and consistent with the organisational requirements of the user community. TENET operates the SANReN network under the terms of a collaboration agreement with the CSIR.