Stackable Hubs Selected for High-Speed Campus Connectivity
Approximately 4,000 students attend the University of Indianapolis, a private college located in the city's suburbs. Before this school year, the university's network delivered connectivity to their many administrative buildings and one of four on-campus dormitories. Since its original installation in the early 90's, demands on the network have increased dramatically as more and more professors have opted to use it for course-related applications.
Approximately 4,000 students attend the University of Indianapolis, a private college located in the city's suburbs. Before this school year, the university's network delivered connectivity to their many administrative buildings and one of four on-campus dormitories. Since its original installation in the early 90's, demands on the network have increased dramatically as more and more professors have opted to use it for course-related applications.
The use of Internet, multimedia applications and e-mail had been growing heavier. "A lot of course material is made available online," says Rauf Khalid, the university's network administrator. "Students can visit a professor's Web site to download notes and other materials for the class. Assignments can even be submitted online." It became obvious that the school was rapidly outgrowing its available bandwidth. The university's former network configuration connected the campus's buildings at 100 Mbps and branched out to its many hubs with 10 Mbps connections. In early 1999, the decision was made to deliver more bandwidth and many more network nodes.
Time for Change
"We had been buying new PCs capable of 10/100 capacity, but the network couldn't support dual-speed to the PC. We knew the time was right to do something," says Khalid. "The demand for nodes was also growing rapidly among students and administrators, a new Health Sciences building was being built, and our Science hall was being renovated."
The new building would require over 200 nodes, while the building being renovated called for approximately 450 ports. To meet the student demand for network access, the university would wire its three other dormitories with an additional 550-plus connections.
The university network was redesigned with gigabit backbones between high traffic buildings. Asante NetStacker II hubs were used to supply dual-speed connections to most desktops. "Asante was our first choice because we worked with their equipment for a long time and have received really good service and support from them. The new hubs would give us 10/100 auto-negotiable capability and 100-meg fiber uplink ports," explains Khalid. "The pricing I was offered on the NetStacker II products fit into the picture really well."
To deliver dual-speed capability across the campus, the university bought 57 NetStacker II hubs, two with 12-ports and the remainder with 24-ports. The hubs offer optional management modules that allow performance status to be easily monitored with a Web interface. Khalid was satisfied with the simple installation process. "I programmed each hub with an IP address, gave it its description, took it over to the wiring closet and they were ready to go. It was that simple."
Contact Information
Asante Technologies, Inc.
San Jose, CA
(800) 303-9121
www.asante.com
This article originally appeared in the 12/01/1999 issue of THE Journal.