Answering the University challenge

From NetworkComputing Magazine Vol 17 Issue 01 - January/February 2008

Students, faculty and staff at Reading University go extreme networking

The University of Reading is committed to the highest standard of research and scholarship, across a full range of academic activities. It was established in 1892, and received its Royal Charter in 1926; the University has a long tradition of research, education and training at a local, national and international level. Educating around 3,000 students from 130 countries, Reading is a dynamic multi-cultural environment.
The University wanted to upgrade its core network infrastructure to something it could build on. The existing network wasn't delivering the reliability or resiliency that it needed for its teaching and research environment. The existing network delivered a mere 100 Mbps and the University wanted to deliver a minimum of a gigabit to every building - and more long term.
"The Extreme Networks solution did everything we were looking for, most cost effectively," explains Hilary Vines, assistant director of IT services. "In the end, our choice came down to our confidence that Extreme Networks could support and deliver the solution we needed. We expect the strong relationship between Extreme Networks to deliver continuity for the University, long down the line."

The Core of the network, the heart of the campus
The increasing demands of students and faculty, whether for faster network performance or new collaborative applications, required a network capable of delivering stringent Quality of Service (QoS). Without QoS, and the associated traffic management and bandwidth allocation, students and staff would experience unacceptable interruptions in application performance. With Extreme Networks Policy-Based QoS capabilities, the University can easily meet the demands of real-time video and other sensitive applications with enforceable bandwidth and latency guarantees.

Campus needs grow - and the network keeps pace
Reading initiated two projects designed to replace existing infrastructure and improve student access. The E-Infrastructure project replaced the edge with Extreme Networks switches, brought two computer rooms on-line, and created more than one connection point for buildings to improve resiliency.
The Student E-Communications project provided connections into 5,000 rooms in the halls of residence, which formerly relied on slow dial-up access. With Extreme Networks BlackDiamond 6800s in place, the student E-Communications project is able to deliver faster, more reliable service to the University's students, without compromising the security of campus resources.

Securing a campus - simply
In addition to student and faculty data, the University has to protect its corporate systems, such as payroll and financial applications, from unauthorised access. Reading selected Extreme Networks for its ability to provide stringent security, simply.
The security features inherent in the Extreme Networks platform, including Access Control Lists (ACLs) at wire speed, access profiles, user authentication using RADIUS and TACACS+, encryption and key exchange with SSH2, ensure that network resources are properly protected, at all times.

Reducing management requirements and cost of ownership
Total Cost of Ownership is always a concern in an educational environment, and for Reading this concern played a role in the decision making process. With limited resources available to maintain the network and limited funding for on-going maintenance and upgrades, they needed to find a solution that could handle today's applications, while capable of supporting tomorrow's network requirements.

Planning for the future of education
The University has recently upgraded to Extreme Networks BlackDiamond 10808 core switches to deliver even greater scalability and faster links. The BlackDiamond 10808 core chassis switches deliver an innovative infrastructure for education networks that demand a backbone capable of supporting high volumes of traffic, a large number of users, and high-performance computing applications, delivering the extensibility and investment protection needed. NC