Campus Network Upgrade

 

C. Y. Kwok

The three-year network upgrade project has just passed its deadline (30 June 1998) yet its work has not been fully completed. There has been an unexpectedly substantial increase in the number of staff PCs during the upgrade period; therefore further budget has to be sought for upgrading the network connections of about 1,000 additional PCs. However, the delay is minor and the upgrade has been progressing quite well despite various problems encountered in the last couple of months. The project can be finished by the end of September 1998, based on the current progress.

The new network consists of 3 ATM core switches, 4 central routers, and 68 ATM edge switches. Around 3,000 staff PCs are connected to the ATM edge switches and each of them is provided with a dedicated switched Ethernet port at 10 Mbps. Likewise, the staff LAN servers (around 60) are each provided with a dedicated switched Fast Ethernet port at 100Mbps. Virtual LAN technology is deployed to segregate the whole network into multiple logical networks for better network traffic control and also for facilitating the frequent moves and changes of networked devices. The central routers are used to pass and control network traffic between the various virtual LANs. The simplicity of the new network infrastructure delivers greatly improved scalability, reliability and availability. It also allows bandwidth intensive applications (e.g. multimedia applications) to run on the network and makes troubleshooting of network problems much easier. The end result is that all network users will benefit from the overall improved performance of the various network services.

Furthermore, a separate video network will be set up shortly to allow the network traffic carrying video data to be exchanged over this network instead of going through the ATM-based data network. This will ensure video applications can be run with optimal performance, but will not affect the network traffic of other services. The video network will be built using high-speed Gigabit and Fast Ethernet switches. The data network and video network will be interconnected, and therefore all users can enjoy the services on both networks as shown in the diagram on the right.

Computing Services Centre City University of Hong Kong ccnetcom@cityu.edu.hk