China: Lingnan University Hostel Residents Can Now Enjoy High-Speed Network Access H3C provides a secure, scalable, and easy-to-manage network solution

As a university with a distinctive and unique mission of providing liberal arts education to students in Hong Kong, our goal is to provide a supportive learning environment where students can realize their potential, develop their flexibility and learn the skills required to succeed in a rapidly changing society. To accomplish our educational mission and meet the needs of its 1,500 students residents, development of a fast, high performance and highly available hostel network across all six of the university's hostels is essential.

The Challenge
Edmund Wu, Director of Information Technology Services Centre of Lingnan University explained the importance of hostel life to their student, "We consider that broad-based education in the best liberal arts tradition is crucial for the future success of our graduates. We strongly believe that diversity, flexibility, and cultural literacy that characterize liberal arts education will allow graduates more options when they consider their career paths, and that these qualities are essential to their success in any working environment. "

However, the 10 Mbps shared hostel network was no longer powerful enough to handle the heavy demand for large-file downloading or on-line applications which slowed down the overall network response time.

The old network was also more vulnerable to virus attacks. Students frequently complained about slow response times due to the presence of infected machines on the network. This was due to the difficulty in identifying and isolating infected machines in a timely manner, and the whole shared network hub was flooded with broadcast network traffic, resulting in insufficient bandwidth for users located in the same shared network.

Additionally, along with aging, some of the network equipment began to get unstable. The failure rate of network equipment increased drastically, resulting in more downtime issues and presenting a serious impediment to future scalability and upgrades.

Technology Solution
Upon formal tendering, H3C's solution was selected after thorough evaluation. It was determined during the process that H3C had demonstrated professionalism and a good understanding of Lingnan University 's expectations and requirements. In addition, it provided quality pre-sales support, and was willing to offer a wide range of equipment for pre-installation testing.

The upgraded network includes six Power-Over-Ethernet (PoE) switches (S3952-PWR-EI), which will pave the way for the Hostel Network Phase 2 Upgrade. The Phase 2 Upgrade will provide full coverage wireless LAN service for the six hostels and lay a foundation for future deployment of multimedia teaching and research services.

The Benefits
The new 100Mbps switched network - gives users 20 times greater bandwidth over a dedicated line. The H3C network has also accelerated Internet browsing response time with availability reaching a level of 99.995 percent. The built-in layer 3 features and security features of H3C's products have also helped to simplify the hostel network topology and enhanced overall network security.

H3C's network management solutions and equipment have provided Lingnan with an interoperable network with flexible future upgrade path to meet growth. In addition, the overall stability of network services has been improved.

"The upgrade project has solved the performance problem of our previous hostel network and facilitated the respective network management effort. With the deployment of PoE switches in each hostel, it also paves the way for the implementation of full coverage for a wireless LAN service on the hostel network," said Wai-man Cheung, Senior Information Officer II of Information Technology Services Centre of Lingnan University.

"Unlike other universities, we do not have a big team for supporting network services. The human resource savings is significant to us, as these saved resources can now be redeployed to other important areas of concern. We are pleased with the work H3C has done for the project. The implementation was on schedule and the overall system performance has met our expectations," Wu concluded.

(2008-03-18)