University of Southampton
University of Southampton underpins its commitment to learning with a state-of-the art campus backbone network
The Client
The University of Southampton has an outstanding record of success in the provision of high-quality teaching across the range of university subjects. It is widely recognised for its leading-edge research and scholarship, its commitment to innovation in teaching and learning, and its support for business and industry through consultancy, research partnerships, and technology transfer.
Recently ranked in the top ten of UK universities, the University of Southampton has over 130 departments, research centres and associated consultancy units, based at its seven main campuses in Southampton and Winchester. The University has more than 20,000 students in full and part-time education, and more than 4,400 staff, making it one of Southampton's largest employers
To support the needs of such a large user base, the University has a campus-wide backbone network comprising 132 Distribution Areas (DAs) serving Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and Gigabit connections to end-systems over a structured wiring system with over 5,000 connections. Many of these connections have larger LANs behind them, bringing the total number of attached end-systems to approximately 12,000.
An extensive fibre-optic cabling infrastructure interconnects the DAs within each campus. The campuses themselves, and other remote sites, are linked together by either University owned fibre-optic cables, or by leased lines running at speeds of up to 34Mbps.
The Challenge
The existing backbone infrastructure was based on obsolete 3Com ATM equipment, which as well as becoming costly to manage and maintain, would not provide the future-proof solution that the University required.
Southampton University Computing Services (SUCS) therefore went out to tender for the supply of high performance data networking equipment, management software and maintenance services to provide a campus-wide backbone infrastructure capable of meeting the University's needs into the foreseeable future.
In addition to meeting the technology requirements, the successful bidder had to demonstrate the ability to seamlessly migrate the University's DAs and Host Systems into the new infrastructure with minimal impact to users, against tight time constraints and prior to the start of the academic year. Against stiff competition, the contract was awarded to Logicalis.
The Solution
For the new network infrastructure, Logicalis proposed a hybrid solution of Extreme Networks LAN switches and Cisco routers to provide the University with a best-of-breed network solution. In addition to the hardware supply, a bespoke package of professional services was delivered including network design, pre-staging, project management and implementation.
Extreme Black Diamond chassis-based switches were installed in 4 core backbone locations and interconnected using a 3 x 1 GB trunk (3GB) to each and every other HUB node. These three trunks were routed over separate fibre cables to provide an increased level of resilience. This design provides a high performance, high availability and flexible core network infrastructure.
Connected into this core are the DA's, which are linked using Gigabit Ethernet and Extreme's Summit 5i concentration switches. From here connections are made back into the retained 3Com edge devices. This solution allows the University to migrate edge locations to higher spec systems on an "as required" basis. WAN services were also provided using Cisco equipment to outlying sites, including the neighbouring Southampton General Hospital
In order to satisfy the University's tight time constraints to get the network in and running before the academic year began, Logicalis pre-staged the infrastructure at its Ascot headquarters. This had the benefit of identifying design and configuration issues at an early stage and allowed staff from the University to gain valuable experience of the equipment and its management.
Project Successes and Benefits
The new network provides the campus with the improved performance, flexibility and resilience it requires to ensure that users throughout the University benefit from the highest possible level of service.