Wireless Network Upgrade Solution for a College in Shanghai

With the rapid development of information technology, the teaching, research, and management activities of colleges and universities increasingly rely on modern information infrastructure. As one of the key components of this infrastructure, wireless networks play a crucial role in connecting faculty, students, and various devices. Therefore, upgrading the wireless network to meet the growing demands is a priority for any educational institution.

Customer Background:

A college in Shanghai, specialized in remote sensing, surveying, and spatial information engineering technology, boasts a strong faculty of 92 members, including academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the Eurasian Academy of Sciences, as well as professors, part-time professors, distinguished professors, and doctoral supervisors. Over the years, with the support of the "211" and "985" projects, the college has established a world-class scientific research and teaching environment, achieving significant research outcomes.

As the national economic construction strategy adjusts and the construction of "Digital Earth" and "Digital City" is needed, educational informatization and campus networking have become the direction of educational development in the network era. With the development of the college's informatization construction, the existing network system can no longer meet the current needs. Therefore, based on the college's situation, a plan is made to fully transform the information network environment and build a manageable, high-speed information network for teaching, scientific research, and experiments.

Construction Goals:

Drawing on the experience of successfully building large and efficient campus wireless network systems, and understanding the construction needs and preliminary technical research of the college in Shanghai, the following design principles have been established:

1. Stability: The overall network system design must have a carrier-level (99.999%) reliability, maintaining long-term stable operation and providing a quick business recovery mechanism in case of failure.
2. Advanced Technology: The network system design, from architecture to specific product selection and solution combination, should adopt leading-edge technologies and mature products to ensure the current design is advanced and has good scalability for the next few years.
3. Openness and Standardization: The products involved in the overall system design should adopt standardized protocols and open technical architectures to ensure the compatibility of the entire system and facilitate future expansion.
4. Scalability: The products selected for the overall network system must maintain technological leadership in the next few years and provide good support for future business. Additionally, the selected products must offer expansion modules over the next decade to ensure smooth upgrades and protect the original investment.
5. Rationality: The entire system design should follow the principles of economy and practicality, meeting current business needs and allowing for corresponding expansion in system capacity and functions as informatization continues to develop.
6. Manageability and Maintainability: The entire system should have good management and maintenance characteristics, enabling the network information center maintenance personnel to master the operation of the entire network system, including traffic, user behavior, equipment status, and security risks, after training by the manufacturer, and take effective preventive and avoidance measures before faults or risks occur.
7. Security: The overall system design should have a good security plan to ensure the network has excellent automatic prevention and threat handling capabilities in the face of external or internal security threats such as viruses and cyber-attacks, ensuring the normal operation of the business system.

Overall Design Overview:

After years of informatization construction, the college in Shanghai has built its own campus network. However, with the deepening of its applications, the robustness and security issues of the laboratory network have become prominent, directly affecting the school's teaching, management, and scientific research activities. Therefore, based on a comprehensive understanding of the current situation of the laboratory network, it is urgent to build an advanced, strong, and secure system architecture and improve the network application environment.

The overall design of the wireless coverage construction for the college in Shanghai is based on the principles of high performance, high reliability, high security, good scalability, manageability, and a unified network management system, considering the advanced and mature design methods of technology.

The H3C brand selected by Netcom Communication is designed based on a pure IP technology network platform to meet the changing needs of the college's wireless network construction. It provides an optimized solution from the network architecture to effectively and efficiently utilize network resources, making the wireless network construction of the college more reliable and controllable, and making the network structure and layout more rational in combination with the actual business distribution.

Overall Solution:

The overall design of the wireless network construction solution for the college in Shanghai is based on the principles of high performance, high reliability, high security, good scalability, manageability, and a unified network management system, considering the advanced and mature technologies, and adopting a modular design method. The network diagram is as follows:

As shown in the figure:

1. The wireless coverage solution for the college in Shanghai adopts an AC+802.11N FIT AP for networking, facilitating unified management and configuration of APs. This wireless coverage is for indoor deployment, all using 802.11N access, providing high-bandwidth wireless access for students and faculty to meet user needs and future development requirements.
2. It is expected to deploy a total of 60 802.11n wireless APs in the college, with APs connected to POE switches via 1000M links, and all switches are centrally powered by Gigabit POE+ power supply switches.
3. A wireless controller is deployed in the core room, which is modular in design with plug-in cards, managing all wireless APs uniformly. APs are configured by the AC, and APs themselves are zero-configured, simplifying the complexity of configuration.
4. All wireless APs are finely managed by a unified wireless network management system deployed in the network management area.

Product Recommendation:

The H3C WA2600 series wireless access points are a new generation of 802.11n Draft2.0 compatible gigabit wireless access points (hereinafter referred to as APs), which can provide more than six times the wireless access rate of traditional 802.11a/b/g networks, covering a larger range. The WA2600 series APs use gigabit Ethernet interfaces for upstream access, breaking through the limitations of 100M Ethernet interfaces, making wireless multimedia applications a reality.

The WA2600 series APs include enhanced and indoor types. The enhanced type includes WA2610E-AGN (single-frequency) and WA2620E-AGN (dual-frequency) wireless access point devices, mainly for application scenarios with high requirements for temperature and dust-proof environment such as warehouses and factory workshops. The indoor type includes WA2610-AGN (single-frequency), WA2612-AGN (single-frequency), and WA2620-AGN (dual-frequency) wireless access point devices, mainly for indoor environments such as office areas and smart buildings.

Project Highlights:

The overall design of the wireless campus network construction solution for the college in Shanghai is based on the principles of high performance, high reliability, high security, good scalability, manageability, and a unified network management system, considering the advanced and mature technologies, and adopting a modular design method. For this network, the unified planning of the network IP has facilitated the management of the network. The corresponding access control and quality of service ensure the overall practicality of the network and play an important role in the security and management of the network. The entire system is built on an IP network (transmitted through the network), with high performance, strong reliability, and the system failure rate is minimized. The IP-based system is convenient for expansion, laying a good foundation for future system expansion and the addition of other systems. The selected products are all first-line brand products, with good system stability and product after-sales support, which is convenient for users' use and management. In terms of product selection, mature technologies are chosen, without adopting overly advanced products. This system is designed from the perspective of applicability and practicality, saving investment for the client.