Sdnog Hosting Project

By Sara Alamin, sdnog team

Who We Are?

From Day One, it has always been SDNOG’s goal to improve the state of inter-networking for the Sudanese community, and to provide an example for other NOGS to build on. We’ve learnt from our engagement and friends across the world, and our most fervent wish is to “give back”. To achieve this, we conducted numerous workshops, engaged in weekly activities, hosted forums, organised annual conferences, and actively participated in national IT events in Sudan, such as SDv6TF. Additionally, we took strides in developing the Sudan Internet Exchange (IX), among other initiatives. Above all, our commitment to document all plans, ideas, and reports pertaining to each activity has been paramount. By sharing our experiences in written form, we aim to enable other communities to benefit from our experience and insights.
For a comprehensive overview of all SDNOG activities, please refer to our wiki page at SdNOG Workshops

What is Happening in Sudan?

Unfortunately, due to the prevailing conflict in Sudan, engaging in traditional NOG activities has become impractical. Workshops, events, and even online sessions are challenging for many people, as a significant portion of the population resides in areas where internet access is scarce. Additionally, a substantial number of Sudanese citizens and SdNOG collaborators have fled the country and are now residing abroad.

It is a terrible thing to leave your established life behind, and I'm fortunate to work for an international organisation that allows me to work remotely from any location. This meant that when I had to flee my home, I still had income. But for many Sudanese, it has been a challenge to (a) find safety, and (b) find employment to sustain their families and loved ones. For many, this means repositioning themselves completely to find new employment and starting afresh in unfamiliar places.

How to support

Starting anew, one of the foundational building blocks of a new life is the ability to find employment. And if you’ve unfortunately, misplaced academic documents during your flight, it’s doubly difficult. Recognising this need, we at SDNOG brainstormed ways to support local universities to bring their services back online, so that displaced individuals can retrieve their academic transcripts.

Working with several friends, we have established an affordable cloud infrastructure tailored for universities and other community-serving institutions facing challenges in bringing their services online. Our aim is to provide Virtual Servers to each institution for hosting websites, running databases, and facilitating various student/community centric services.

Special Thank you

This initiative wouldn't have been possible without the invaluable support of friends in our extended community; notably INX-ZA (https://inx.net.za), who generously agreed to assist with the setup, procurement and hosting of our infrastructure at the Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX) facilities.

We would also like to extend our gratitude to the .SD registry team for their support in providing a portion of their public address space (v4 and v6) to be used in this project. This generosity ensures that our beneficiaries can access their resources remotely.

We sincerely hope that this project will positively impact many individuals and make a real difference during this challenging time that we are all currently facing. Like everything that we do, we’ll provide documentation on our wiki, and, when feasible, make a detailed presentation to the community.

This project has been funded from contributions saved over the years from previous SDNOG events, and donations from individuals who prefer to remain unnamed. Given the current circumstances where onsite engagements are not feasible, we have redirected this budget towards initiatives aimed to also supporting the community during these challenging times.

Let's get in touch

If you wish to contact us, please feel free to reach out via: info@sdnog.sd
and if you need any help and would like us to host some services for you ; please mail us at support@sdnog.sd