Network

Federal Public Services (FPSs) are connected by Belnet to one another and to the Internet via FedMAN (Federal Metropolitan Area Network). FedMAN is an essential part of the federal government's IT infrastructure and was fully integrated into the Belnet network about 10 years ago. Recently, in line with the rest of the Belnet network, the FedMAN ring has been running entirely on new equipment from Ciena. Tom De Clercq, one of our network architects, explains the benefits of this renewal and how the network team brought this project to a successful conclusion.

As part of its new connectivity strategy, Belnet launched a large-scale public tender in 2021. This aimed at concluding a five-year framework agreement with a single contractor that will provide WAN connectivity for federal government services.

The number of DDoS attacks has increased significantly worldwide in recent years. They are also becoming more complex and powerful.

From January 2023, your institution, whether or not it is a G-Cloud member, can access Belnet FedSender thanks to Belnet's implementation of a discovery service that directs to your authentication system.

To meet the increasing demand for higher bandwidths, Belnet has modified the design of its network. The heart of our backbone now features new hardware that allows us to upgrade our other Points of Presence in a scalable manner.

As part of our Service Improvement Programme, in early October we initiated a series of changes to make the Belnet network more resistant to DDoS attacks. The cooperation of all our member organisations is crucial to the success of this project.

The statistics from the DDoS Mitigation service offer us some interesting insights into the rapidly changing DDoS landscape. For example, in the first quarter of 2022, among the things we saw was an increase in the number of large-scale, targeted attacks.

Belnet is currently working on implementing a Service Improvement Programme to improve the resilience of our network to cyber-attacks. Our Technical Director Dirk Haex explains why it is crucial that the entire Belnet community is engaged with this task.

A new dynamic procurement system that went into operation in June 2021 facilitates the search for the most suitable leased line to a gateway on the Belnet network. In addition, Belnet has launched a new framework agreement for WAN connectivity in order to connect and provide connectivity to the various federal sites as efficiently as possible.