The Eko-Konnect collaboration with Sweden’s premier technical university, KTH Sweden to connect four institutions in Lagos in a capacity building exercise and set the groundwork for the Nigerian REN has received support from Google Inc, as part of the Google University Access Program – http://www.google.com/university/africa/index.html

The Eko-Konnect collaboration with Sweden’s premier technical university, KTH Sweden to connect four institutions in Lagos in a capacity building exercise and set the groundwork for the Nigerian REN has received support from Google Inc, as part of the Google University Access Program – http://www.google.com/university/africa/index.html

The grant will be used to develop the telecom grade open source routers and servers required to connect the first Eko-Konnect nodes in a redundant ring and host a network operating centre in the University of Lagos.  Peering at the Lagos internet exchange will connect the pilot with counterparts in Sweden, emerging research and education networks like ngREN and WACREN and to the Internet. 

The Eko-Konnect network will support IPv6 from inception and will be part of the Afrinic training in IPv6 and LIR/IP Addressing scheduled to hold in Lagos from September 6 – 9, 2010.  The Nigerian Carenet-WACREN team is also exploring the possibility of a preliminary bootcamp in IPv4 addressing, routing and forwarding and dynamic routing protocols so that the impact of the Afrinic training can be maximized.  More details will be provided in the coming week.

Networking labs for configuration of routers and and server software have been set up in Lagos and Stockholm for the teams who will utilize the grant to move the planning to implementation stage.  The pilot network is expected to be commissioned  by the end of September 2010.