NUSNET’s IoT and 5G enabling a borderless university

The National University of Singapore (NUS) has built an extensive network, called NUSNET, covering four campuses: Kent Ridge, Bukit Timah, Outram, and NUS High School. The edge network has a topology comprising a single Cisco Software-Defined Access (SDA) campus fabric network for both wired and wireless, with a non-Cisco SDA wired and Wireless@SGx access network at hostels. Wireless@SGx is Info-communications Media Development Authority’s (IMDA’s) connection app.

The network consists of 1,700 units of SDA edge switches with approximately 81,600 POE+ switch ports (and another 400 units of non-SDA edge switches at hostels). There are also 8,500 units of SDA Wireless Access Points (WAPs) (and another 6,500 non-SDA WAPs at hostels). Daily, the network sees 50,000 unique wired clients and 200,000 unique wireless clients, downloading 40TB of wireless data and 20Gbps of uplink throughput per edge switch stack.

The core and distribution network topology, made up of 6,700 ports with a mixture of 10Gbps and 40Gbps interfaces with an 80Gbps uplink throughput, is fully distributed across four locations connected with dark fibre and forms the underlay backbone for the campus fabric network.

NUS also hosts the Singapore Open Exchange (SOX), a neutral Internet Exchange Point (IXP). SOX is a Layer 2 connectivity platform with Layer 3 peering for direct connection access. SOX differs from other IXPs in Singapore as it operates at OSI Layer 2 and does not provide any transit traffic. SOX’s goal is to improve routing efficiency at a lower cost via a collective effort, providing a landing for foreign IP networks. It has 25 participating members, some of which are big industry names like Amazon (40Gbps), Google (20Gbps), and Microsoft (20Gbps).

credit: blog.apnic.net