During a training of the maintenance staff, we get to know the head of the Ethernet network infrastructure that drives the Grand Port Maritime de Dunkerque (seaport in the fat north of France) who wished to have an audit.

The port of Dunkerque in a few words:

France’s third-ranking port, Dunkirk is well known as a port handling heavy bulk cargoes for its numerous industrial installations. It has also built its reputation in other sectors such as cross-Channel Ro-Ro traffic to Great Britain, containers, fruit, etc.

Classified as the 7th seaport of the North Europe Range which extends from Le Havre to Hamburg, it is also France’s leading port for ore and coal imports; France’s leading port forcontainerised fruit imports; France’s leading port for copper imports; and France’s second-ranking port for trade with Great Britain.

We participate, during annual audit, to make the network evolve. Interesting to note that it still integrates Hirschmann devices from the early 2000, cohabiting with more recent switches.

The next major change will involve an speed increase in speed by increasing some optical links towards Gigabit/s while using multimode fiber (and with distance more than 550m). We will conduct operational tests and reflectometry measurement to ensure that the use of multimode over long distance with specific Hirschmann’s SFPs will be painless while keeping existing optical infrastructure. This network also includes a Hirschmann BAT, WiFi access involved in the transmission of control data seaport (for sluices) when the optical connections are not feasible points.