SHERN Syrian Higher Education and Research Network: Current State and Challenges

1
SHERNSyrian Higher Education and Research
NetworkCurrent State and Challenges

• Moussalam Al-Homsy
• Ministry of Higher Education
• (MoHE)
• Damascus, Syria

2
Outline

• SHERN Project
• SHERN Expansion
• Current State
• Services
• Challenges
• Conclusion

3
SHERNSyrian Higher Education and Research Network

• Established in 2001 Thanks to the Cooperation
  between UNDP, UNESCO and the Ministry of Higher
  Education
• Has 3 goals
• building a modern core network within the
  different Syrian universities and the Ministry of
  Higher Education
• Providing connectivity between the Syrian
  universities and other education and research
  institutions
• Providing Internet connectivity to SHERNs users

4
SHERN Project

• Project budget (650.000 )
• UNDP 300.000
• MHE 300.000
• UNESCO 50.000
• The pilot network
• 200 points (network outlets) at each of the 4
  universities
• 100 points at MoHE
• 2 Mb/s link between universities (10 Mb/s for
  Damas-Univ).
• 1 Mb/s Internet connection

5
SHERN Expansion

• SHERN Project finished but the network, financed
  by the MoHE, keep on working and expanding
  continuously.
• New Institutions joined SHERN
• LANs inside Universities expanded
• Internet connection was upgraded
• Backbone upgraded

6
Current State(Connected institutions)

• 10 Institutions are connected to SHERN
• 4 universities MoHE 2 Higher institutes 2
  research center
• One more university and tow institutions will
  join SHERN next year.

• Research and Education e-Infrastructures 5-6
  September 2007 Damascus - Syria

7
Current State(Connected hosts)

• Over 11000 network outlets distributed within
  student training rooms, research labs. and
  academic staffs offices (almost all these
  outlets are used).

8
Current State (Internet connection)

• 12 Mb/s via private ISP 8 Mb/s via EUMEDCONECT
• Tender book is announced to upgrade the internet
  connection to 56Mb/s

To be Done
9
Current State (The backbone)

• Connecting Damascus Univ. with Fiber (1 GB/s)
• It is planed to upgrade the connection to 34 Mb/s
  for Tishreen and Al-Baath and Aleppo univ.

To be Done
10
Current Picture
MoHE LAN
11
Services

• Internet Browsing
• E-Mail, DNS, FTP, etc (under shern.net domain)
• E-learning
• Videoconferencing
• Access to e-libraries
• Access to EUMEDCONNECT
• Used mainly by cooperation projects (EUMEDGRID,
  AVICENNA, MEDFORST, etc).
• New service (access to grid applications through
  HIASTs EUMEDGRID RC)

12
Challenges

• Many Challenges need to be overcome
• Number of qualified technical stuffs in
  universities and MoHE
• Increasing the bandwidth of inter university
  links (backbone)
• Increasing the bandwidth of EUMEDCONNECT link
• Increasing the operational budget for
  infrastructure

13
Conclusion

• SHERN provides network connectivity to Syrian
  education and research institutions
• SHERN promote collaboration between education and
  research Community in SYRIA and with
  Mediterranean and European countries
• Many Challenges need to be overcome

14
Thank You