Towards an Architecture for e-Learning Infrastructures on a National Level: A Case Study of AfgREN

National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) are for sharing resources between member organizations. NRENs play an important role in e-learning activities as they provide necessary communication. Heterogeneous infrastructures used for e-learning are a challenge for system design, integrity and interoperability. This paper proposed a NREN e-learning reference model and affiliated NREN e-learning architectural patterns that considered communication, reliable access, cooperation between e-learning infrastructures and interoperability. Research exists about different architecture including services oriented Cloud computing, For example, the E-School Systems and other institutional e-learning systems use traditional client server architectures. However, no research has been carried out on NREN e-learning architectures. For deeper insight, we investigate and compare in this paper the Estonian Education and Research Network (EENet) as an NREN example of a developed country, the Pakistan Education and the Research Network (PERN) as an example of a developing country and the Afghanistan Research and Education Network (AfgREN).