Technology

FNN consists technically of four main components:

Core nodes, equipment located at customers’ premises (CPE), dark fibres and wavelength division (WDM) in order to provide several services via one fibre.

Nodes in the core network:

FNN is currently based on three Avaya VSP8000s in three different geographical locations. The Avaya VSP8000 is intended by its supplier to be part of a large telecoms operator’s network and is duplicated with regard to critical components such as routing engine, power, etc. The Avaya VSP8000 can be extended if there is a need for more capacity or ports.

Customer-premises equipment (CPE)

The CPE is based on Avaya VSP 4450SX. This has simple switches with router functionality and in an FNN context this is part of the Shortest Path Bridging (SPB) network. In addition, the CPE handles UDP Multicast well. The Avaya VSP 4450SX has 2 x SFP 10 G port uplinks, 36 x SFP 1G ports and 12 x 10/100/1000 BaseT PoE ports.

Dark fibre/Ethernet

With the exception of some suppliers and financial enterprises outside Norway, all communication in FNN is based on the use of dark fibre. In addition to providing almost unlimited capacity, the price of fibre over short distances is now in line with that of dedicated Ethernet-based links.

WDM utilisation

A communication network based on dark fibre means that utilising WDM technology provides several opportunities. FNN utilises this technology to use one dark fibre for several purposes. Typical examples of this are LAN2LAN solutions and disk mirroring between customers’ primary and secondary sites.

Security – FNN, a Stealth Network

FNN is a Stealth network, also called a dark network, and provides the following:

  • It cannot be reached/attacked from either the outside or inside.
  • Full service separation based on SPB – IEEE 802.1 aq
  • L2 Stealth
    • L2 VPN without visible IP addresses
    • Invisible MAC addresses in the core
    • Ethernet UNI completely without visible MAC addresses
  • L3 Stealth
    • L3 VPN in an IP network
    • Without routing tables or visible IP addresses in the core.
  • Traffic separation by using VRF