Published in SmartXchange Newsletter, Volume 4, 10 November, 2008

True to her word, SmartXchange has become the first building in the eThekwini Municipality - other than municipal offices – to be linked to the City’s vast fibre-optic network giving tenants high speed bandwidth of a world class standard at no cost.

Jacquie Subban, Head of GIS & Policy of the eThekwini Municipality pledged that connecting SmartXchange to the City’s fibre network was a priority in the roll out strategy announced at a press conference in August this year.

The fibre-optic cable terminates on the fourth floor of the SmartXchange building from which an Ethernet cable feeds the server room on the sixth floor. From there the wireless functionality covers the entire fifth floor which is populated by the SMMEs.

A new server has been donated by Thusa whose flagship product Vulani manages the network.

Vulani, which means “Open Up” in isiZulu, is Thusa’s own locally developed network management platform targeted  as an alternative to products like Microsoft Small Business Server, routers and firewalls and a wide range of other Internet and networking solutions. Vulani is also used in specific rolesfor larger organisations who take advantage of advanced features such as update caching, email security and VPN management.

Warwick Chapman, MD at Thusa says Vulani provides secure Internet gateway, firewall, proxy, mail, file sharing, backup and additional services and can be integrated with existing Windows, Linux, Mac or Novell network environments. 

“It forms the platform for the development of many bespoke solutions delivered and maintained by Thusa.”

“The Internet access solution at SmartXchange now comprises the original uncapped 1MB ADSL line which is supplemented by the new Metro-fibre link. While the performance of the ADSL varies depending on traffic and the stability of the Telkom ADSL network, the fibre cable is a guaranteed ‘pipe’ between SmartXchange and Internet Solutions with uptime guaranteed.”

The Vulani server ensure traffic is load balanced across the two links and ensure failover to the Metro-fibre in the event the ADSL service is interrupted.

Bandwidth management  is also controlled by the Vulani server and all computers on the network have unique IP addresses and usernames, making it possible to monitor which computers and users are utilising the most bandwidth. Content filtering such as the blocking of undesirable web sites is an option to be managed by SmartXchange.SmartXchange SMMEs may also change their e-mail domains and make use of the Vulani server as their ISP at no cost.

Further to their sponsorship of the Vulani server license, Thusa is providing support and maintenance of the Vulani server to SmartXchange at no charge and is working with Khanya Africa to rebuild the infrastructure node on the sixth floor - where the routers, switches and servers are hosted - to ensure data integrity and uptime of the entire solution during power outages.

Chapman, who also serves on the Durban University of Technology Information Technology Advisory Board, says Thusa’s commitment to SmartXchange is rooted in a desire support the development of skills in South Africa, “At Thusa, which is also an SMME, we experience first-hand the shortages of skilled engineers and technicians in South Africa.  The solution to this problem lies in public-private partnerships and we believe SmartXchange is the best such partnership in South Africa.  Our support of the SmartXchange initiative is a no brainer – and we are not alone in that thinking.”