BARQ Systems Wins EUN Contract

BARQ Systems was awarded a contract valued more than 15 million EGP to supply, install, operate and maintain the network infrastructure equipment and security for the Egyptian Universities Network (EUN) and national research institutes.

The project is aimed at linking Egypt’s 16 universities and 9 research institutes together with the Egyptian National Scientific and Technical Information Network (ENSTINET), EUN, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), and Bibliotheca Alexandria by installing the latest technology networking based on (IPV6 + MPLS) and IP Network security solutions.

Mahmoud Soliman, President and CEO of BARQ Systems said that only eight of the ten bidders responded to the public tender called by MCIT in cooperation with Ministry of Higher Education and Ministry of State for research; reached the final negotiation stage.

BARQ Systems was selected because it reached the best price performance ratio required by the ministry,” he added. BARQ Systems went to the bid with its Partners Juniper Networks for the Routers and Firewalls and Foundry Networks for LAN Switches. It was the only bidder using Juniper/Foundry equipments while the seven others were using the same competitive brand of equipment.

Soliman declared that the network would be using a Gigabit Ethernet connection from each university/research institute to the Core Network. There will be 2 core networks, one: linking the universities with EUN, and the other: linking the research institutes with ENSTINET. At which point EUN and ENSTINET will connect using a double Gigabit Ethernet for interconnectivity. Each entity connected to the network will be secure using a 2-Stage Firewall. Ultimately this will be linked to the “Internet 2″ by a high speed 155 Mbps line to the USA.