Sheremetyevo Airport's critical local network level moves from Cisco to Russian switches

In March 2024, Sheremetyevo International Airport announced a request for proposals for the supply of network equipment for import substitution of the core module of the local area network, certificates for technical support of network equipment, as well as the design and configuration of network equipment. The initial price of the project is about 131 million rubles^[1].

The core module of the local area network is an object of critical information infrastructure (CII).

As follows from the published technical specification, the contractor will be required to carry out work on the technical design of the data transmission system, its deployment and commissioning. Among the documents that the contractor will have to prepare is a high-level migration plan for the target design solution, a migration and integration plan with the existing data transfer system.

The commissioning of the data transmission system for commercial operation, according to the documentation, will begin from the pilot zone - terminal E. There it is planned to put into operation switches of the terminal core level, integration at the L2 level with the existing equipment of the terminal data transmission system, after which it is planned to migrate the terminal E subnet termination point and routing to a new topology.

After the pilot, it is planned to commission the segments of the local area network located at the sites of the PBX, terminals B, C, D, F, and then - migrate the segment of the data center of the local area network to the target architecture.

The work within the framework of this project is carried out in the amount of no more than 16 switches of the core level of terminals and no more than 2 central switches of the core level.

The specification states that Sheremetyevo Airport requires domestic B4Com switches. They are produced by Biforcom Tech. However, there is a reservation that equivalent network equipment is also allowed.

The delivery period for equipment and certificates for technical support is no later than October 1, 2024, and the performance of the work specified in the contract is no later than December 28, 2024.

From the earlier purchases carried out by Sheremetyevo Airport for the modernization of the computer network, it follows that it uses switches at the core level Cisco^[2]

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