Lancaster University has completed a £5m
network upgrade to cope with rising bandwidth demands and to enable
next-generation services such as
IPTV and
voice over IP.
"We plan to film lectures and make audio and video viewing
available over the network directly to students' PCs and laptops.
Traffic volumes are therefore climbing, and we needed an
infrastructure to cope with these ever-increasing bandwidth
requirements," said Barry Forde, deputy director of computers in
Lancaster University's department of information systems.
The upgrade involved the installation of
Category 6 cabling and
Foundry Networks'
BigIron RX backbone switches with 10Gbyte upgradeability, IPv6
compatibility and multicast capabilities.
With 15,000 students accessing its 100mbps network, the
university's old infrastructure was starting to struggle, with high
levels of latency, jitter and packet loss when using applications
such as video.
The university identified the need for a network that could
sustain high bit rates and deliver up to 10gbps feeds to different
buildings on the campus.
Because the university needed to manage bandwidth but did not
want to prevent students from using the network for legitimate
purposes, it introduced a rating system to determine who its
heaviest users were.
The system can be used to determine whether the network is being
used for
illegal downloads of films, for example, which could contribute
to high levels of traffic. Network managers can then take immediate
action to prevent such activities.
Optimising network
performance >>
Networking: the Category 6 question >>
Steer clear of category 6 cabling, says BT >>
Lancaster University
>>
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