Markus Sadeniemi
Director of FUNET
Member of NORDUnet Board
Markus.Sadeniemi@funet.fi

To Break Borders

The Øresund Link

A general tendency in networking is that more and more of the basic network services become so standard that they can be bought from commercial network operators. We in FUNET or NORDUnet who provide services to the research community can concentrate our efforts on higher levels of services. We don't dig our own cables, we buy line capacity. And we expect to be able to buy ATM and even Internet services in the years to come. This year NORDUnet noticed that it was not so straightforward. We had to start making our own connections.

NORDUnet is a limited company owned by the national research networks in the five Nordic countries (or the ministries in those countries). NORDUnet takes care of the international connections of these networks connecting Nordic countries to each other and to the rest of Europe, to the USA and to the rest of the World.

Monopolies are broken up - or are they?

As Finland and Sweden had deregulated their international data communications some years ago, it was, strictly speaking, legal to lay a sea-cable from Finland to Sweden. Denmark changed its laws in summer 1996. NORDUnet made a request for tender for a 34 Mbps line between Stockholm and Copenhagen soon afterwards.

The new line was taken into use in March 1997. The price of the line was something we could expect. As usual after deregulation the price level decreased but not as much as one would have hoped. The new competitors put their prices only a little below the former monopoly prices. NORDUnet was not particularly satisfied with the situation.

Let's do it ourselves!

At the same time, the Universities of Copenhagen and Lund were actively building "The Virtual Øresund University" with the intention of providing distance education, telemedicine etc. across the sound between the universities on the Swedish and Danish side of Øresund. The respective national research networks and NORDUnet were involved in the project. Jan Engvald, network specialist at the Computing Centre of Lund University had come up with the idea of making a microwave link from Lund over the Øresund Strait that separates Sweden and Denmark, to Copenhagen University.

A fairly small, but highly competent Danish company called Zone Systems made a detailed report and found that it was indeed possible to make the connection.

The connection would consist of two links, one from the Copenhagen University premises in Lyngby to a tower in Barsebäck on the Swedish side and from there another link to Lund University. The microwave links could have multiple channels with a speed of 155 Mbps.

An agreement was made between NORDUnet and Zone Systems. Zone Systems built the links and leased two 155 Mbps connections to NORDUnet. NORDUnet used one channel Lyngby-Barsebäck for its production traffic and leased the other 155 Mbps channel Lyngby-Barsebäck-Lund to the universities of Lund and Copenhagen. Zone System could then lease more channels to other customers if they found them. Of course, there was a market for these connections.

NORDUnet then needed a connection to Stockholm. Prices for internal Swedish connections are reasonable, so the connection Barsebäck-Stockholm was no problem.

What did we learn?

First of all NORDUnet and the two universities got connections between Sweden and Denmark at a reasonable price. What might be more important is that we now know how such a connection can be done and how much the real costs for such a project are.

Although we still think that building physical lines is not the main job of research network organizations, it definitely is one possibility. NORDUnet will soon upgrade the lines to the other Nordic countries too and also to other parts of Europe. Germany is not so far from Denmark really.

But if the network operators in our countries have also learned a lesson, then perhaps NORDUnet will not need to build its own links anymore!

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