10 Gbps Telkom SaNREN network details
The CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) yesterday announced that it has awarded the contract for the installation of the national backbone network of the South African National Research Network (SANReN) to Telkom.
The national backbone will interconnect Pretoria, Johannesburg, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban on a 10 Gbps (Gigabits per second) optic fibre ring network. The SANReN network will interconnect all research and tertiary educational sites in South Africa.
The exact details on how Telkom will deliver the additional bandwidth are not clear, but it is likely that Telkom will expand their current network to accommodate SANReN’s requirements.
Questions have been asked about selecting Telkom to build the SANReN network, and SANReN Project Manager Christiaan Kuun explains that a strict tender process was conducted according to the CSIR’s procurement policies. Telkom stood out in terms of technical merit and cost.
“Numerous aspects were considered, but the award was made primarily based on the technical merit of the response and financial considerations. Telkom scored very well on both and won the tender on merit,” said Kuun.
High speed connectivity
SANReN’s metro networks have been designed to provide sites with bandwidth upwards of 1 Gbps, but currently most of the research and educational sites will be provided with 10 Gbps connections.
“To make statements about the long-term international and local bandwidth requirements are very difficult, but the basic SANReN philosophy is that if a site can use all the bandwidth we provide them, then it’s time to give them more,” said SANReN Project Manager Christiaan Kuun.
“Our national network will be a 10 Gbps network that will interconnect all the major metropolitan networks to one another. Tertiary Education and Research Network’s (TENET) international bandwidth will be distributed to institutions using the national backbone.”
SANReN and TENET will work closely together, and TENET has been appointed to provide operational services to SANReN. “SANReN and TENET are working together to provide all research and tertiary educational institutions in South Africa with the bandwidth they require,” said Kuun.
International bandwidth
TENET has been allocated very affordable bandwidth on SEACOM in the form of an STM-64 link, which will provide the institution with 10 Gbps of international connectivity.
SANReN’s backbone will be used to back-haul TENET’s SEACOM bandwidth to institutions. “Where the SANReN network is available, TENET institutions are ‘migrated’ onto SANReN,” said Kuun.
MyBroadband forum member SlowJoe explains the process: “TENET will pick up SEACOM bandwidth at the Mtunzini landing station, where it is then backhauled to a point of presence in Durban over Dark Fibre Africa’s infratsructure. At this same point of presence will be one of the backbone nodes on the SANReN 10 Gbps backbone.”
“Traffic will then be carried out of Durban to the various points of presence on the backbone, and distributed to institutions from those points of presence, via a mixture of technologies. Some of it will be via SANReN fiber, some of it will be via Neotel MPLS, and whatever other access mediums are being used to the closest point of presence.”
Lower cost
The SANReN and TENET networks promise to not only increase bandwidth capacity to educational and research institutions, but also significantly reduce the cost of bandwidth.
These institutions will continue to pay an operational cost to TENET, but SANReN will not be recovering the capital invested, thereby lowering the price of bandwidth for all institutions.
According to Kuun the Durban-Pretoria-Johannesburg-Cape Town links will be operational by 1 December 2009 while the entire ring is projected to be closed by 1 February 2010.
Telkom-SANReN network discussion
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