A presentation at AfgREN-WS-6 in Dubai on May 10, 2014 - describing the progress of Internet in Estonia and giving some ideas for developing online infrastructure in Afghanistan.

1. EeNET: development and lessons
Kaido Kikkas
AfgREN-WS-6
May 9-11, 2014
c Kaido Kikkas 2014. This document is distributed under the Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (or newer) Estonia license.

2. Estonia: a little fact sheet
Located here:
~45k sq km
~1M people
Since 1918/1991
EU, NATO, €, Schengen

3. Estonia vs Afghanistan
Different
Size, terrain
and location
language(s)
and ethnic
diversity
Period of
stability
Similar
Some points in
history
Rapid changes
International
cooperation
Limited resources
Emphasis on
education
Better technology
than expected

4. EeNET – the Estonian NREN:
a timeline
1993 – the beginning (MoCE)
1994 – first broadband connection to a
school; 15 HE facilities connected
1995 – Tallinn-Helsinki 256 kbps;
~1500 connected computers; Tiger
Leap
1996 - MoE; cleanup among customers;
first domestic backbones (Tallinn-Tartu
256 kbit, others 64 or less); EeNET joins
TERENA

5. ...
1998 – 305 facilities connected
1999 – Tallinn-Tartu 8 Mbps
2000 – ATM 20Mbps, Tallinn-Tartu 16
Mps (others less); 542 connected
facilities; IPv6 connection to Sweden;
beginning of GÉANT
2001 – Tallinn-Tartu 80 Mbps; FOSS use
2002 – 100 Mbit optical cables to 23
educational facilities in Tartu as well as
all major universities

6. ...
2003 – ATM 155 Mbps
2004 – outer link 622 Mbps, Tallinn-Tartu
1 Gbps; 25k domains in .ee
2005 – 1 Gbit connections to many HE
facilities; BalticGrid; Eduroam; GÉANT2
2006 – some paid services; outer link
1Gbps
2007 – nature cameras; 50k .ee domains
2008 – outer link 2.4 Gpbs; BalticGrid II;
HAVIKE – FOSS SaaS for education

7. ...
2010 – Tallinn-Tartu 10 Gbps; 79k+ .ee
domains transferred to EIF
2011 – outer link 5 Gbps
2012 – outer link 10 Gbps, major
upgrade to domestic backbones (1 to
10 Gbps); TAAT authentication service
2013 – EeNET turns 20; EITSA + TLF +
EeNET = HITSA

8. EeNET 2014
4 sections (general, networks, services,
grid) with 22 employees
Service agreements with 1027 facilities
(education, research, culture; a few
local authorities (mostly served by ASO)
Backbone: 1200km in Estonia + 100 km
to Espoo (near Helsinki)
Up to 10 Gbps channels
HAVIKE: Joomla, WordPress, Moodle,
MediaWiki and LimeSurvey; 570 sites

9. ...
610 websites
1300 mailing lists
600 .ee domains
7000 mailboxes
302 TCS certs
10 hosted servers

10. Besides EeNET
National ID-card infrastructure
(authentication + digital signatures)
e-voting
emta.ee – Tax and Customs Authority
ois.ee – a Learning Management
System service by HITSA
OER (supported by HITSA) and FOSS
Moodle – de facto LMS standard
Echo360 lecture recording service
I-Tee distance lab system (under dev)

11. Things to consider
Rapid changes, flexibility, new tech
Open standards
FOSS as a major focus; CC framework
E-learning
Net neutrality
Open market, lack of monopolies

12. Things to avoid
Computers vs networks – for a while,
THF focused on delivering computers
instead of networks
Lack of training:
specialists (“I only know N!”)
users (“where is this button?”)
Closed standards and systems, vendor
lock-in (the Microsoft lesson)
Neglect of security and safety
(especially among youth)

13. Thank you!
These slides will be available under CC BY-
SA at http://www.slideshare.net/UncleOwl
Also, many thanks to EeNET for hosting a
bunch of visitors on April 22 and sharing a
lot of data that ended up in these slides.