SURFnet5: Building the Next-Generation Internet in The Netherlands

Erik-Jan Bos, SURFnet

SURFnet, the national network for research and higher education in The Netherlands, is engaged in the GigaPort Project with the aim of building the next generation Internet in The Netherlands. SURFnet is handling all traffic for its research and higher education users, as opposed to the model in North America, where universities have to have a commercial ISP to handle commodity traffic and can have an Abilene and/or vBNS connection for just research traffic.

One of the sub-projects in the GigaPort Project is the building of SURFnet5, which is undertaken in partnership with Telfort, a wholly-owned subsidiary of British Telecom, and Cisco Systems. The final network of SURFnet5 will consist of a backbone at two locations in Amsterdam and 15 concentrator locations connected to the backbone using IP-over-DWDM with POS framing at 20 Gbit/s (2x OC-192c). The backbone and 14 concentrator locations will be ready for pre-production during the end of the calendar year 2000. Features such as MPLS fast reroute (FRR) will be key in this network. Key topics in this talk are:

  • Inside the GigaPort Project we see applications and application development as an integral part of the project. Much work is being done on video over IP, with live multicasting of the three Dutch public channels over our infrastructure, with MPEG-1 quality.
  • MPLS TE fast reroute will be elaborated on since SURFnet5 will be 10G IP-over-lambda without any restoration facilities on the DWDM layer. We have to rely on FRR to successfully build and operate our network. Besides MPLS TE fast reroute, we are heavily involved in MPLS VPN testing. I plan on giving the latest results of the testing.
  • Lessons learned during the Pilot phase of SURFnet5 in which we connected four Cisco 12016 (GSR+) routers located at four different locations in The Netherlands using dark fiber and DWDM sections at OC-48c. IP performance testing at multiple gigabit/s level using two clusters of Suns and Dells and FRR testing are amongst the topics touched upon. Also the plans for further extending this network are presented, e.g., the plan to move to 80 Gbit/s in the core during calendar year 2002.

    • About the Presenter
    Erik-Jan Bos is head of the network services department of SURFnet, and is responsible for building SURFnet5 in the context of the GigaPort Project. Erik-Jan has been involved in building IP networks since early 1989.

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