The 20th Internet2 (I2) Global Summit was held at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile Hotel, Illinois, USA from May 15 to 18, 2016. There were more than 800 people in attendance, with representatives from over 40 countries globally. KENET was represented by Prof. Abraham Idowu (Management Board Member), Mr. Luke Matere (Shared Services Manager) and Mr. Hillary Cheserek (Senior Network Engineer).

The theme of the summit was “Then, Now, Beyond” in connecting people and accelerating progress in the new era of global innovation driven by the Research and Education community and building a new unified, global platform of advanced network, cloud, security and trust solutions that will propel a new era of innovation—and transform the human live. The theme focused on honoring the members who have shaped and developed internet2 over the last 20 years. It also showcased visionaries whose work and strategies will shape the next 20 years for internet2 and the global research and education community.

The 2016 summit marked the 20^th anniversary of the founding of internet2. The summit gave an opportunity for internet2 members to showcase the community’s rich history and bright future.  Chicago city was chosen as the venue of the summit as it is the site of the community’s first official meeting which was made up of 34 individuals representing 34 Universities that become the founding members of the internet2 community. Since then Internet2 has connected people, networks, technologies and communities across the Research and Education community globally.

At the meeting various technologies were showcased that can be emulated by African NREN’s to improve the quality of services to its Members. Among the lessons learned is the transition to modern network technologies in which the Network is made more elastic and flexible to networks demands of the future. The technologies that facilitate such flexibility in networks are SDN (Software Defined Networks) and NFV (Network Function Virtualization). Currently internet2 supports SDN in their Network therefore enabling researchers in the networking field to have a network wide testbed for SDN and other technologies that will not affect the production network. We learned that over time our network needs to be upgraded in future to fulfil such needs.

The key lessons learned from the KENET can adopt are; constantly innovating and creating new ideas that will benefit KENET members and serve their unique needs and building new skills in new upcoming technologies in areas such as SDN and NFV.