On September 9, 2025, the Norwegian internet community gathered in Oslo for the sold-out NONOG-7 / NIX-2025 conference. The event, hosted by the NONOG and Norwegian Internet eXchange (NIX), featured in-depth discussions on critical digital infrastructure, resilience, new network technologies, and AI innovations.
NIX Developments and National Robustness
Marius Malaia welcomed attendees, tracing NONOG’s history from a voluntary board in 2016 to its current management of the nonog.no and nonog.net domains.
Herman Loennechen provided NIX updates, including the upcoming launch of a new member portal, completed 100G regional upgrades in Tromsø and Stavanger, and noted ongoing delays in 400G upgrades due to software instability.
Kjetil Otter Olsen outlined NIX’s strategic plans (2024-2026) to enhance Norway’s internet robustness, a mandate reinforced by the new NIS2 law. These plans focused on localizing DNS root servers (with the first in Tromsø), developing GNSS-independent time synchronization, and improving certificate system resilience. NIX also introduced a new 100G port pricing model for 2026, while discontinuing 25G ports.
Arctic Connectivity and Modern Observability
Frank Tuhus from Cisco highlighted the crucial role of Precision Time Protocol (PTP) in critical sectors, discussing its advantages over GPS and the benefits of the ITU-T G.8275.1 standard for easier deployment.
Jens Olav Frorud of Space Norway detailed the “Arctic Way” project, a new submarine fiber cable to Svalbard and Jan Mayen. This became a strategic imperative as the existing 2004 Svalbard Cable System, which experienced damage in January 2022 and was repaired by summer 2024, approached its technical end-of-life. The Norwegian Parliament approved “Arctic Way” in March 2025, with a SubCom contract signed to deliver the world’s northernmost repeatered subsea cable, projected for service by 2028 despite Arctic operational challenges.
David Flores presented on “Modern Network Observability,” distinguishing it from mere monitoring by focusing on “why it happened”. He proposed a modular architecture to overcome traditional tool limitations, enabling AI-enhanced insights through structured data, correlation, and event-driven automation for network operations.
Resilience, Optical Transport, and AI Networking
Mattias Karlsson from Netnod underscored the importance of operational resilience in the Nordics, built on redundant systems, dependency awareness, and secure design. She cited the 2013 Stockholm tunnel fire as a case of lacking resilience and highlighted Netnod’s “Robust Region” and “Fem-små-hus” initiatives for local and national redundancy.
Freek Van Roon of Ciena discussed coherent optical transport, positioning the Nordics as a prime investment region due to political stability and renewable energy. He showed how coherent technology significantly scales capacity while reducing power, space, and cost, supporting open IPoDWDM architectures and achieving record performance in the region. Gerhard Stein from FlexOptix analyzed network reliability up to 800G, concluding that coherent transceivers exhibited more stable Bit Error Rates (BER) primarily affected by fiber length, unlike non-coherent transceivers, which were sensitive to both temperature and fiber length.
Henric Arvidsson of Arista Networks addressed “Networking for AI,” advocating for a unified “AI Center” Ethernet architecture over traditional silos. He introduced “Smart AI Load Balancing” and the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC), aiming to advance open, high-performance Ethernet for AI/HPC.
Advanced BGP, Hybrid Cloud Policies, and IPv6 History
Donatas Abraitis from BalticNOG explored lesser-known FRRouting BGP features, including using reserved IPv4 blocks, remote-as auto, and the Dynamic BGP Capability for non-disruptive configuration changes.
Marius Hole of ATEA presented on Cisco Isovalent Cilium, which leverages eBPF to make the Linux kernel programmable for high-performance networking, observability, and security in hybrid cloud environments, offering L3/L4/L7 policies and native encryption for Kubernetes.
Jan Marius Evang recounted “A Lightning History of IPv6 in Norway,” tracing its journey from early adoption in the 6bone network to national mandates for widespread implementation.
Maja Enes briefly presented the NUUG Foundation’s mission to promote open infrastructure and open-source development.
Bjørn Rønning of the Norwegian Data Center Industry outlined Norway’s “bold ambition” for exponential AI-driven datacenter growth, projecting significant economic value by 2031, and highlighted new trans-Arctic cable projects landing in Northern Norway.
Lasse Haugen presented his “WhyNoIPv6? Shame As A Service” project, which publicly shames websites lacking IPv6 connectivity to combat slow adoption and poor user experience with CGNAT. After seven years, the project observed only a 12% total increase in IPv6 adoption, suggesting it would take approximately 60 years for monitored domains to transition.
The day concluded with a Q&A, quiz, and networking dinner, solidifying Norway’s proactive stance in shaping the future of digital infrastructure.