National Broadband Network
The National Broadband Network (NBN) was established in the light of His Majesty’s initiative “Connecting Jordanians”. The NBN is a comprehensive Learning and Public Access Network that will connect public Universities, Public Schools, Community Colleges and Public Access Sites. The Ministry of information and Communication Technology took the responsibility in establishing the network.
The Jordanian Universities Research and Learning Network
The Jordanian Universities Research and Learning Network was implemented as the initial stage of the NBN to provide an advanced TCP/IP network for Jordan’s Research institutions and Public Universities. The specific objectives of the Jordanian University Research and Learning Network are:
- To provide the Jordanian Research and Learning (R&L) institutions with a first-class TCP/IP network which will facilitate communications, collaboration, experimentation, and learning.
- To encourage students, faculty members, and researchers to use high speed networks to increase productivity and foster a culture of innovation.
- To develop a Jordanian Research and learning community.
- To provide a platform for connecting the Jordanian R&L community to the global R&L community.
Coverage, Technology and Topology
The network was built using dark fiber leased from National Electricity Power Company (NEPCO) on indefeasible right to use (IRU) basis. The reason for dark fiber is the freedom of selecting the transmission technology as well as the communication speed. The fiber network now can connect the following sites:
| University | Location |
|---|---|
| University of Jordan | Amman |
| Yarmouk University | Irbid |
| Mutah University | Karak |
| Jordan University of Science & Technology | Ramtha |
| Al Al-Bayt University | Mafraq |
| Balqa Applied University | Salt |
| Balqa Applied University | Marka |
| Hashemite University | Zarqa |
| Al-Hussein Bin Tala University | Ma’an |
| Tafila Technical University | Tafila |
| German Jordanian University | Madaba |
| World Islamic Sciences and education University | Amman |
The core of the network consists of Juniper MX-960 routers with full redundancy in terms of Number of links, supervisor engines, power supplies,… The edge side of the network consists of a Cisco 7304 router at each university / campus. The gateway universities’s routers of University of Jordan and Jordan University of science and Technology in addition to the core mesh routers are equipped with 10G interfaces and the other universities now enjoys 1 Gigabit link to the core of the network.
The Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) was the selected technology to be used in the core of the Universities Network. MPLS was selected because of its Flexibility, Scalability, Security and Management.
The network will be expanded to add more redundant links for the Universities, connect the community colleges and the new public Universities in addition to the different satellites of these Universities and to serve the new coming connection requests from the new Universities or research centers.