Algeria’s Academic Network: How CERIST Connects Universities and Why Research Infrastructure Matters

CERIST and the Academic Research Network

CERIST — the Centre de Recherche sur l’Information Scientifique et Technique — is Algeria’s primary institution for scientific information infrastructure. Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Algiers, CERIST operates under the authority of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. Among its many mandates — managing the .dz domain registry, hosting national digital libraries, and conducting research in information science — its most infrastructurally significant role is operating Algeria’s Academic and Research Network, known as ARN (Algerian Research Network).

ARN connects 124 research and academic institutions across all 58 wilayas, serving over 800,000 users including students, faculty, and researchers. The network provides internet connectivity, inter-institutional communication, and access to international academic resources. CERIST serves as Algeria’s National Research and Education Network (NREN), the equivalent of RENATER in France, JANET in the UK, or Internet2 in the United States. NRENs globally play a critical role: they provide the bandwidth and peering arrangements that allow researchers to download datasets, access journals, participate in video conferences with international collaborators, and contribute to global scientific projects.

Algeria’s ARN has undergone several generational upgrades since its inception in the early 1990s, when it provided dial-up connectivity to a handful of research institutions. The current network is built on an MPLS backbone with Gigabit Ethernet connectivity between nine Points of Presence (PoPs) distributed across the country. All universities are connected at 100 Mbps dedicated links. CERIST connects to the global internet through two international links totaling approximately 3.1 Gbps: a 2.5 Gbps link to GÉANT — the pan-European research network — and a 622 Mbps commodity internet link. This international capacity represents a 50-fold increase from the initial 45 Mbps circuit established in 2004, partly funded by the European Commission through successive EUMEDCONNECT projects and, since 2016, the AfricaConnect2 initiative.

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Bandwidth, Access, and the Daily Research Experience

On paper, 100 Mbps per institution with 3.1 Gbps international capacity sounds workable. In practice, the research experience varies dramatically depending on institution, time of day, and what is being accessed. A university like USTHB (Université des Sciences et de la Technologie Houari Boumediene) in Algiers, with over 30,000 students and 2,000+ faculty, shares its allocated bandwidth across thousands of concurrent users. During peak hours — mid-morning to early afternoon — effective per-user bandwidth can drop to single-digit Mbps. Downloading a large dataset from an international repository, or streaming a video lecture from Coursera or MIT OpenCourseWare, becomes frustratingly slow.

The more acute issue is access to scholarly databases and journals. Algerian universities subscribe to journal databases — IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, Elsevier ScienceDirect, Springer, and Wiley — through national consortium agreements negotiated by CERIST and the Ministry of Higher Education. These subscriptions are critical: without them, researchers hit paywalls that block access to the scientific literature essential for their work. Algeria’s consortium access covers a significant portion of major publishers, but gaps exist. Smaller publishers, specialized databases, and newer open-access repositories may not be covered by institutional subscriptions.

A common workaround among Algerian researchers — openly discussed in academic circles — is the use of Sci-Hub, the shadow library that provides free access to paywalled research papers. Sci-Hub’s usage data consistently shows North Africa and the Middle East as high-usage regions. This is not a reflection of disrespect for intellectual property but of insufficient institutional access infrastructure. When a PhD student in Constantine needs a paper from a journal not covered by the national consortium and the university has no mechanism to purchase individual articles, alternative access becomes a practical necessity. The research infrastructure question is not just about bandwidth pipes — it is about what flows through those pipes.

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Eduroam, Identity, and Inter-Institutional Services

Eduroam (education roaming) is the global WiFi roaming service that allows students and researchers from participating institutions to access WiFi at any other eduroam-enabled institution worldwide using their home credentials. Visiting a partner university in France, Germany, or the UK? If your home institution participates in eduroam, you connect to WiFi automatically. The service is managed globally by GÉANT and regionally by NRENs.

Algeria’s eduroam deployment has progressed but remains incomplete. CERIST has established an eduroam infrastructure — an official portal exists at eduroam.arn.dz — and selected institutions participate. However, as of 2026, deployment is not universal across all 124 connected institutions. Many universities still rely on local WiFi networks with institution-specific credentials that do not interoperate. This contrasts with Morocco, where MARWAN (the Moroccan NREN) has deployed eduroam at scale across its network, and Tunisia, where RNU (Réseau National Universitaire) similarly participates. For Algerian researchers traveling internationally, the absence of eduroam at their home institution means they cannot benefit from automatic WiFi roaming at conference venues and partner universities abroad.

Beyond eduroam, inter-institutional digital services are underdeveloped. There is no national academic single sign-on (SSO) system that would allow a researcher at the University of Oran to seamlessly access resources at the University of Annaba. Institutional email domains vary in quality — some universities provide reliable .edu.dz email through modern systems, while others run outdated mail servers with poor spam filtering and deliverability. A unified national academic identity infrastructure — similar to what InCommon provides in the US or UK Access Management Federation in the UK — would enable federated access to journals, cloud services, and inter-institutional collaboration platforms. CERIST has the technical capability to build this; what is needed is the institutional mandate and cross-university coordination.

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Regional Comparison: MARWAN and RNU

Morocco’s MARWAN (Moroccan Academic and Research Wide Area Network) provides a useful benchmark. Operated by CNRST (Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique et Technique), MARWAN 5 — the current generation (2022-2026) — connects over 250 institutions through 133 links covering 51 cities, with backbone bandwidth up to 10 Gbps using SD-WAN technology built on VPN/MPLS infrastructure. MARWAN has deployed eduroam at scale, provides national video conferencing infrastructure, and offers HPC computing resources for research connected via a dedicated 5 Gbps link. Morocco’s NREN participates actively in GÉANT projects and AfricaConnect, maintaining robust international research connectivity.

Tunisia’s RNU (Réseau National Universitaire), operated by the Centre de Calcul El Khawarizmi (CCK), similarly connects universities and research centers across the country. RNU provides eduroam, a national digital library platform, and HPC resources for computationally intensive research. Tunisia was among the first North African countries to join GÉANT’s AfricaConnect initiative, securing subsidized high-bandwidth international connectivity.

Algeria’s ARN, despite connecting 124 institutions with over 800,000 users, lags on these value-added services. The gap is not bandwidth alone — it is the ecosystem of services built on top of the network. MARWAN connects 250+ institutions at up to 10 Gbps with HPC, eduroam, identity federation, EduVPN, and software mirrors; ARN connects 124 institutions at 100 Mbps with basic internet transit. The AfricaConnect program continues to expand — in February 2026, the EU announced a €40 million boost for digital infrastructure for research and education networks in Africa. CERIST’s continued participation could significantly enhance Algeria’s international research connectivity. The strategic question is whether CERIST will be empowered and funded to evolve from a connectivity provider to a full-service NREN offering identity federation, cloud resources, HPC access, and collaborative tools — the model that Morocco and Tunisia have already adopted.

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Sources

• CERIST Networks & Internet Services — CERIST
• Algeria NREN Profile — ASREN
• Major Boost for Algerian Scientists through AfricaConnect2 — EUMEDCONNECT3
• New Network Topology at MARWAN — AfricaConnect3
• MARWAN HPC Infrastructure — MARWAN
• Morocco NREN Profile — ASREN
• Eduroam Global Coverage — eduroam.org
• Algerian Research Network — ARN
• AfricaConnect EU Funding Boost — GÉANT Connect
• GÉANT Network and NREN Directory — GÉANT