HARNET/Internet Upgrade

C.Y. Kwok

A tender has been awarded to Hong Kong Telecom for the upgrade of HARNET, which consists of the HARNET backbone and its Internet connection to the U.S. The upgrade is targeted to finish by the end of October. The HARNET backbone is centered around 2 Cisco routers with each HARNET member institution connecting its campus network to each of these routers using the public ATM service of the Hong Kong Telecom. The upgrade will increase the bandwidth of the ATM circuits (12Mbps guaranteed, 24Mbps maximum) between each member institution and the 2 routers. It will also provide additional redundancy for the ATM circuits. The Internet connection to the U.S. via MCI will be upgraded from 6Mbps to 12Mbps. As before, Hong Kong Telecom’s Netplus service will continue to serve as a backup for the MCI Internet connection and it will also provide HARNET with bandwidth of up to 8Mbps for accessing the local and regional ISPs, as well as the global Internet. Apart from this upgrade, each member institution will install room videoconferencing systems locally and be able to use them to establish videoconferencing sessions over the HARNET with each other. The following is a simplified diagram of the proposed upgraded HARNET network connection:

Computing Services Centre City University of Hong Kong ccnetcom@cityu.edu.hk