Business Connexion (BCX) has won a R100 million tender to install Cisco equipment for the SA National Research Network (Sanren), says Geoff Daniell, a consultant at the Meraka Institute.
Speaking at the 3rd Annual Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) Conference, in Cape Town yesterday, Daniell said the Sanren network would be operational nationally by the end of next year. Cisco equipment, such as routers, switches, etc, will be used to link up the network.
Managed by the Meraka Institute, Sanren is a high-speed network that will inter-connect research councils, other research institutes within statutory bodies, and government departments and universities. Sanren will connect all these centres at high speed to global research networks via connections to G'eant, in Europe, and possibly to Internet2's Abilene network in the US.
Sanren will run in conjunction with the CHPC to make high-performance computing available to South African research institutions and companies nationally.
Daniell said the decision to appoint BCX to supply the equipment was finalised on 30 November, by the Council for Scientific and Industrial research (CSIR), which is the governing body for the Meraka Institute.
Other bidders
Three other companies - IBM SA, T-Systems and Dimension Data - were asked to bid for the contract.
"T-Systems indicated early on they would not respond to the tender. These companies were asked to tender in October and selected according to the CSIR's purchasing policies. The respondents were given two weeks to submit their tenders," he said.
The Sanren network will have a capacity of 10GBps and will consist mainly of dark fibre being rolled out across the country to around 25 core sites and about 107 secondary sites.
The nodal core sites are planned to be located in Cape Town (exact location not yet decided), Tshwane (CSIR), Johannesburg (to be co-located with Jinx and the University of the Witwatersrand), and Durban (CSIR).
Alliances
According to Daniell, Sanren will work with Tenet (The Tertiary Education Network - a non-profit organisation that buys bulk Internet connectivity for the universities) to ensure high-capacity international bandwidth is obtained.
"Tenet signed a deal with the Seacom/Neotel alliance earlier this year and Sanren will probably have some kind of agreement with government's Broadband Infraco, when it builds its undersea links."
Daniell noted it makes sense for Sanren to have access to at least two high-capacity undersea cables for redundancy purposes. The Seacom cable caters for the East Coast and the Broadband Infraco cable is aimed at West Coast connectivity.
Related stories:
Academia gets high-performance computing
Tenet signs deal with Seacom
Share