Bandwidth Management and Optimisation: Strategic Planning Workshop
Strategic planning and management decisions are essential issues in bandwidth management and optimisation. A bandwidth management and optimisation strategic planning workshop was held 29-30 April 2008 in Nairobi, Kenya. It was jointly organised by INASP, Aptivate and KENET. It brought together selected professionals working in the areas of bandwidth management at African universities, Research and Education Network (REN) development and invited experts.
Bandwidth Management and Optimisation Strategic Planning Workshop report and recommendations by Martin Belcher, Alan Jackson, Liz Fearon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
The key recommendations and outcomes from the workshop were as follows:
- Bandwidth management and optimisation is an urgent requirement in all of the university sectors and countries represented at the workshop.
- Capacity development activities that have been undertaken in this area by a range of organisations have had a positive impact but there is still an enormous demand and requirement for more capacity in this area.
- Capacity development activities require the right enabling environment if they are to be effective.
- (National) Research and education networks (NRENs or RENs) could be well placed, have the appropriate remit, stakeholder base and interest from which to effectively build capacity in bandwidth management and optimisation. However, many RENs are not in a position to immediately begin supplying services and supporting activities themselves and so would benefit from support in this regard. Strengthening RENs is therefore an important requirement in itself.
- The key areas of capacity development to enable effective bandwidth management and optimisation are:
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- Strengthened policy and management environments at institutional and national levels.
- Technical skills capacity building at all levels.
- Improved ICT Leadership at institutional level.
- Strengthened RENs and their services.
Strengthening policy and management environments at institutional and national levels is the critical issue on which successful bandwidth management and optimisation is based. Without changes in these areas, technical developments and effective and sustainable capacity enhancement in bandwidth management and optimisation is unlikely. Capacity development in this area is critical.
RENs need to act as key enablers and drivers of change in the areas of ICTs in general and bandwidth management and optimisation in particular. They should organise and undertake capacity development and training activities for their members as part of their service delivery to members. Such services delivered in the early stages of an REN formation process may significantly strengthen the REN in terms of the value placed on it by member institutions. However, many of the emerging RENs do not have the organisational or human capacity to undertake such activities. Developing such capacity and then undertaking such activities are key priorities.
Advocacy and lobbying for ICTs in general and bandwidth management and optimisation in particular, should be undertaken at all levels where there is an opportunity to engage with senior institutional managers and policy makers. Advocacy and lobbying should be undertaken by RENs, the UbuntuNet Alliance, AAU, INASP and other interested parties. A number of forthcoming events should be actively targeted in this area and existing and emerging RENs should pursue these issues at national level when ever possible.
Adequate technical skills at institutional level remain a real challenge for practical bandwidth management and optimisation. Skills development and training activities should be undertaken in this area. Such activities should be led by RENs and based on determined training needs via consultation with individual institutions. Where ever possible technical trainers should be drawn from the relevant REN community or from neighbouring communities. Encouraging skills sharing, exchange programmes and locally facilitated training is important to help build the REN based communities, strengthen the REN and help base such activities on a locally resourced and sustainable footing. Engagement of external technical experts should also be considered where skills, resources and the reality of the situation demands it. The involvement of technical capacity development organisations such as AfNOG, Aptivate and others should be considered in such instances. Such organisations can be used to support and build local capacity.
Enhancement of various ICT management skills is an important pre- or co-requisite for technical skills capacity. Such enhancement can and should be undertaken using professional and management training organisations from within an RENs community. For example, this could mean engaging a business school in advocacy and lobbying skills development training for ICT managers within a particular REN. Engagement of such local capacity is important for building sustainable and appropriately tailored activities.
The experiences and resources used in capacity development and training activities in the areas of bandwidth management and optimisation should, where ever possible, be captured and shared amongst the community working in this area. Such resources will go on to build an important library of resources, case studies and experiences that can be shared amongst interested parties. If all content is made available with an open access license (e.g. a flavour of one of the Creative Commons licenses) then it will enable rapid sharing and adoption of approaches amongst members of this community. A number of options for such sharing mechanisms already exist and it may be useful for an organisation such as the UbuntuNet Alliance to play a role in facilitating access to these resources.
In many places these recommendations involve a significant input or role for RENs in the required capacity development. It should be recognised that most RENs in the region are not presently in a position to actually deliver in this regard. They do not generally have the capacity or resources to do this at present. Therefore strengthening the RENs will often be a prerequisite to enable them to lead or contribute to capacity development in these areas at the level that is required.
In addition, it should be recognised that bandwidth management and optimisation is only a part of ICT services provision. The strengthening of bandwidth management will be best delivered as a part of wider ICT services provision/network administration strengthening. A holistic approach to bandwidth management is required. This should sit within the wider ICT services and infrastructure management system. For bandwidth management to have maximum impact, it should be approached in view of these wider issues.
