In 1995 the consortium consisting of HOCHTIEF, ABB and KRANTZ-TKT won the order to build New Athens International Airport. Hirschmann partnered ABB in the design of a high-availability high speed network to meet the complex communication requirements of a modern airport infrastructure. The construction costs were to be US$1,7 billion. This consortium will also operate the airport for the next 30 years.
Altogether, 95 Hirschmann MACH 3000 backbone switches are in use in the airport. By incorporating a special architecture with redundancy mechanisms, the modular high-performance switches guarantee high protection against airport network failure. Should a data connection fail, the network is designed so that an alternative data connection is established within a fraction of a second. Extensive configuration options guarantee maximum network security.
Network topology
The backbone is a switched full-duplex Gigabit and Fast-Ethernet on single mode fibre-optic cable, redundant building link via dual homing, redundant linking of all floor distribution points via link redundancy to different modules.
Network extent
Fourteen buildings were connected on an airport site of over 37 km2.
Airport statistics
The airport has two 4 km runways and an annual passenger capacity of 16 million. The maximum passenger dispatch capacity is 6000 passengers/hour, making use of 89 aircraft positions. Construction began in January 1996 and was completed in October 2000; the official opening was March 2001.
For more information contact Industrial Automation & Control, 012 664 4481, john@iacontrol.co.za
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