BNIX, the Belgian internet hub through which a large proportion of Belgian internet traffic passes, and NaWas, are joining forces for a more reliable Belgian internet. Thanks to a connection with NaWas, content providers, hosting companies and internet service providers connected to BNIX enjoy greatly increased protection against DDoS attacks.
Distributed Denial of Service attacks, or DDoS for short, are a growing threat to organisations in terms of both frequency and complexity. In recent years in particular, governments, public services and critical infrastructure have come under frequent attack. This makes adequate DDoS protection of great importance. Belgian ISPs, hosting providers and content providers now have a reliable high-capacity option at their disposal with the NaWas.
The NaWas was created 10 years ago on the initiative of a group of ISPs who wanted to jointly tackle the problem of DDoS. The service now has more than 130 participants, all active in the Internet world. As a result, there is a large concentration of knowledge and experience at NaWas. To mitigate DDoS attacks, the service uses centrally managed advanced anti-DDoS equipment. NaWas’ engineers ensure daily that NaWas is up to the latest types of attacks.
Connection with BNIX
Now that NaWas is available through BNIX, customers of the Belgian internet hub – some 70 national and international content providers, internet service providers and hosting companies – can also take this service from NaWas via a private VLAN.
If they are attacked, the traffic is routed to NaWas’ network via BGP and the mitigation process starts. The dirty traffic is filtered and the clean traffic is then routed back over a private VLAN from BNIX to the customer. Meanwhile, the customer’s systems and services remain available as usual during the attack. Once the DDoS attack stops, the ‘BGP announcement’ can be retracted and all traffic runs back to the customer as normal.
Frank Dupker, European Network Manager NaWas: ‘The cooperation with BNIX is an important step for the protection of the Belgian digital infrastructure against DDoS attacks. Providers can get modern, on-demand DDoS protection at an acceptable price without compromising the availability of their services for their own customers. The collective nature of NaWas, where the focus is really on parties offering internet infrastructure such as hosting, makes NaWas very effective precisely for these types of parties. We speak each other’s language and understand what is needed.’
Frédéric Libotte, Senior Relationship Manager BNIX: ‘By offering NaWas on BNIX, we are giving our participants the opportunity to make the most of their port and are also helping to make the Belgian internet more secure.’
More information about the service can be found on the BNIX website.
