Work has started on government's next-generation network (NGN), as partners scramble to meet an aggressive deadline.
The State IT Agency (SITA) announced recently that it would deploy the R454 million NGN, along with partners Neotel, Cisco Networks and Business Connexion (BCX). The network has to be implemented by October.
The NGN will replace the current government common core network (GCCN), which is a single, physical and fully-redundant wide area network infrastructure, consisting of routers, switches, firewalls and data lines, that services government.
Neotel confirmed work on the project has already started, with the second national operator extending its fibre network into SITA's 25 points of presence to meet the requirements of the new transmission network.
"Our national backbone is up and running, and SITA is one of our first customers," says Neotel executive head of strategy Angus Hay.
Run in parallel
Elton Fortuin, SITA'GM of communications, says the NGN will be developed as a completely new greenfield network, and will be implemented in parallel to the existing GCCN. He explains the current network will remain in place until the complete migration of customers to the new network has been concluded.
Fortuin says the proof-of-concept, to simulate the new network, was conducted at the Cisco laboratory, in San Jose, in the US, in September 2006.
The network is the largest deployment of NGN services in sub-Saharan Africa in the public sector.
"The deadline for the migration to the new network still has to be finalised in consultation with SITA's respective government clients to assess client-readiness for migration to the NGN," he notes.
Neotel has been awarded a five-year contract to provide national backbone transmission services to support the new NGN, while BCX will upgrade the GCCN backbone from Nortel to Cisco technology. BCX will supply, install and support the network equipment on the NGN for three years.
Bandwidth upgrade
Of the total investment of R454 million over a five-year period, the upgrade to Cisco technology is worth over R76 million, excluding maintenance. Meanwhile, Neotel's high-capacity links to connect SITA's key sites in major cities and towns across SA with nearly 700Mbps of transmission bandwidth will cost about R378 million. This is nearly twice the bandwidth SITA has procured in the past.
Speaking at the recent launch of the project, public service and administration minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said that, in the four years since its deployment, core capacity requirements on the GCCN have grown by 150% year-on-year, but there have been no major bandwidth upgrades, until now.
"At the time of the GCCN's implementation, the architecture and design were adequate to deliver the required services. As higher and newer services were deployed on the GCCN, it became evident that an upgrade was required owing to ever-increasing user demands for more advanced services," she said.
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