The Ubuntunet Alliance in collaboration with TENET and the Africa Connect project successfully organized the first network operations meeting in Johannesburg South Africa from January 28 – 29, 2015. Representatives from four (4) connected National research and Education Networks (NRENs), including those from Uganda (RENU), Zambia (ZAMREN), Kenya (KENET) and the hosts, the Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa (TENET), attended the event. KENET was represented by Mr. Kennedy Aseda, the Lead Network Engineer-Operations
Discussions among the 13 participants focused on Ubuntunet Network operations, with emphasis on the technical and administrative operations structure of both the Ubuntunet NOC and the connected member NRENs. The technical operations discussions touched on network monitoring andanomaly detection while the administrative discussions focused on incident management, problem management, reporting, escalation matrix, hours of operation for the NOC among others.
The meeting was very interactive with input from all the participants, updates from the NRENs on the status of the respective national networks and a clear framework was laid out to ensure improvement of the services and response of the Ubuntunet Network Operations. New shared services like shared video conferencing and cyber security coordination center were also delved into so as to increase the value and security of the network.