Agile Switch In Education Industry - objects.icecat.biz

Agile Switch In Education Industry

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. Bantian, Longgang District

Shenzhen518129, P. R. China

Tel:+86-755-28780808

2014

Agile Switch In Education IndustryAgile Switch In Education Industry

PrefaceWith entry into the new century, Information Technology (IT) has penetrated each aspect of the economy and

society, resulting in profound changes in people's ways of production, living, and learning. All-around, high-quality,

personalized, and lifelong learning has become one of the essential characters of education in the age of information.

Serving as the most important infrastructure that supports basic and higher education, educational networks have

become a key issue on which today's schools and educational organizations focus. Educational networks are also an

important element of educational IT construction and modernization.

However, current educational networks in many countries and regions across the globe are faced with multiple tricky

problems, such as out-of-date devices, low network security and reliability, low link utilization efficiency, and poor user

management and control. Due to these severe problems, the current networks cannot adapt to the modern education or

support new educational applications such as remote teaching, synchronous classroom, online communication, and High

Definition (HD) video conference. In order to smoothly implement a wide variety of educational applications and reach

the educational construction objectives, building a flexible, highly reliable, scalable, and secure, and easy-to-manage

educational network has become an inevitable trend during educational IT construction.

Huawei Agile Education Solution leverages Huawei's innovative Agile Network Solution architecture. The Agile

Network is the next-generation network solution developed by Huawei for enterprises. Based on Software-Defined

Networking (SDN) concepts, Huawei's Agile Network features three architectural innovations: full programmability, quality

awareness, and smooth evolution. The network core uses Huawei Sx700 series Agile Switches to work with Huawei's

smart policy center – Agile Controller, enabling networks to serve IT applications more quickly and flexibly than ever. In

comparison, the Agile Network enables service innovation that is up to four times faster than that of traditional networks,

helping enterprises stay ahead amidst fierce business competition.

The Huawei Agile Education Solution is intended to enhance user experience, optimize network management,

facilitate teaching innovation, and provide leading technologies, future-proof products and solutions featuring

smooth evolution. In addition, this solution aims at helping schools and educational organizations achieve a full-scale

virtualization of network resources as well as wired and wireless convergence in the real sense, implement dynamic,

flexible deployment of IT applications, improve resource utilization efficiency, and quickly support construction of a broad

variety of educational applications for basic and higher education. Moreover, Huawei is dedicated to building high-

quality campus networks and educational Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) for customers, achieving high-efficient

convergence of the Agile Network and educational resources, and enabling the Agile Network to better serve educational

services.

Huawei Agile Network Assists Tsinghua University in Improving Its Teaching and Research Activities

01

Agile Network Promotes Educational IT Innovation—— Huawei Agile Switch S12700 Helps Upgrade and Reconstruct the

Campus Network of Wuhan University

09

Huawei Agile Network Solution Upgrades the Campus Network of Southeast University

05

Unparalleled Campus Experience -- Huawei Agile Network Solution Applied in Southwest University for Nationalities

13

Agile Educational MAN Eliminating Spatial Obstacles—— Huawei Assists Jingyang District of Deyang City in Building an

Industry-Leading Agile Educational MAN

21

Building a Brand New MAN Network to Accelerate the Diversified and Leap-Forward Development of Education

17

25Southern Cross University Teams Up with Huawei to Build an “Agile Campus”


Tsinghua University is one of the world's top academic institutions. The University now has about 300 research organizations running,

implements about 200 academic achievements, and holds about 60 world-class academic conferences on a yearly basis, thus posing

unprecedentedly high requirements on its campus network. Building a stable campus network to ensure normal teaching and research as

well as international communication activities is the key task of the University.

In order to improve the security protection level and resource utilization efficiency and enhance the interoperation with other systems,

the campus security protection system must adapt to the campus environment and comply with the campus management mode. The system

must also deliver high bandwidth and be controllable, scalable, and future-oriented.

Tsinghua University covers a land area of 3.9397 square kilometers, with complex campus scenarios, many stadiums, and a large area

of green plants. Using merely Peripheral Unit (PU) cameras cannot ensure a good video surveillance effect. A high-bandwidth network is

required to transmit a large number of High Definition (HD) video service flows. The campus network of the University uses a dual-core,

dual-star, and hierarchical network architecture. Two agile switches S12712 deployed at the core layer form a virtualized cluster by directly

connecting to each other through switch fabrics, ensuring a highly stable and reliable core layer. A single S12712 device provides 576x10GE

line-speed ports. Six S12708 agile switches are deployed as level-1 aggregation nodes in the network core area to provide a 10GE Ethernet

that transmits HD surveillance video traffic. Huawei S12700 Agile Switch has been verified by Ixia, a well-known third-party test authority,

as the campus network switch that provides the industry's highest switching performance, enabling the HD video surveillance network of

the University to run smoothly.

Based on Huawei's leading hardware technology, Huawei's switch network products support GE/10GE/40GE/100GE cards. When

the network capacity is insufficient, the card capacity can be scaled up to implement 40GE/100GE switching capacity without network

reconstruction. So, it is safe to say that the network is highly scalable.

As one of the world's top universities, Tsinghua University holds a wide variety of international communication activities. In order to

ensure smooth running of the video surveillance network during various activities, the S12700 is configured with a large buffer card, with

each port providing a 200 ms buffer capability, ensuring zero packet loss when the video traffic bursts.

The smooth video traffic transmission network leads to the strongest video surveillance network in the industry.

Building the Strongest Video Surveillance Network in the Industry

02

Huawei Agile Network Assists Tsinghua University in Improving Its Teaching and Research Activities


As one of the best-in-class academic institutions in the world, Tsinghua University is always pursuing high

quality. The security protection network safeguards the campus in real time. However, how can the University secure

the network itself? To help the University monitor the network quality in real time, Huawei designs and deploys

Packet Conservation Algorithm for Internet (iPCA) in the campus network. By leveraging this technology, network

administrators can check the campus network quality in real time and precisely locate network faults. All these

functions are based on Huawei's in-line monitoring technology, which uses real-world service flows to detect the

network quality without additional bandwidth cost. However, traditional quality detection modes such as Operation,

Administration and Maintenance (OAM) and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) simulate traffic and send

detection packets, resulting in low fault detection efficiency and occupying additional bandwidth. Real-world service

flows mean that the detection packets strictly follow the paths of the detected packets, ensuring high detection

efficiency and precise detection results. Huawei's unique iPCA technology makes the campus network of the

University visible. The campus network has thus entered the era of fine-grained network operations.

When it comes to network reliability, people are likely to think of network simplicity. Complex systems are more

likely to fail, so the network design must be simple. Therefore, Huawei deploys Super Virtual Fabric (SVF) technology

in the campus network of the University. This technology virtualizes devices at different layers and wired and wireless

devices into only one Network Element (NE) for management. Access switches are virtualized into cards, and wireless

Access Points (APs) into ports. In this way, the entire network is virtualized into one switch device. Both the access

switches and APs are plug-and-play. Then IT personnel need to construct, maintain, and manage only one device

instead of the entire network. As a result, operations are simplified, and network stability is improved significantly.

In terms of stability design, both the network level and the device level must be taken into full consideration.

Huawei S12700 Agile Switch implements 1+N backup of MPUs in a cluster through Huawei's unique Cluster Switch

System Generation2 (CSS2) hardware clustering technology. Huawei deploys two S12712 agile switches that form a

cluster in the backbone network area of the security protection network. As long as one MPU in the cluster functions

normally, the entire cluster system works properly. In this manner, the system reliability is much higher than that of

traditional virtualized cluster systems. Huawei's leading virtualized cluster reliability guarantee mechanism ensures

high stability and reliability of the cluster system, preventing the cluster from splitting and causing IP address

conflicts and even network service interruption.

Huawei's unique virtualization mode uses switch fabrics to implement a direct connection, capable of saving

the valuable service slot resource. Traditional virtualization modes establish a cluster by using service cards to

implement a direct connection, occupying service slots. In addition, Huawei's CSS2 technology achieves Terabit-

class cluster bandwidth, multifold of that of traditional clustering modes. To accommodate the service demands of

Tsinghua University, Huawei configures 160 Gbps bidirectional cluster bandwidth.

High stability leads the high-quality campus network of Tsinghua University.

Stability Is the Foundation of Networks

03

Building an Open Network Platform Architecture

Campus security protection is one of the key tasks of Tsinghua University. To build a next-generation, smart campus network,

the University requires the campus network must use cutting-edge technologies. The University's monitoring center must be

capable of connecting to the one-card system, alarming system, and patrol system through the security protection network

platform. In this way, the monitoring center can implement multiple functions, such as snapshot and archiving of students' card

swiping behaviors, alarm association through alarm sensors, and association of card swiping behaviors of the campus police

during patrol. Additionally, multiple systems can seamlessly interoperate with one another.

Based on research of the actual service demands of Tsinghua University, the infrastructure network of the University of must

have wireless scalability. The University also requires data backhaul and monitoring through wireless bridging. To adapt to these

requirements, Huawei presets wireless Access Controllers (ACs) in the overall network solution so that the University only needs to

add APs subsequently.

Huawei S12712 core switch supports the native AC function so that the University does not need to purchase additional

wireless AC devices or cards. Service cards on the S12712 can implement the wireless AC function with a throughput of up to 1

Tbps, 50 times that of traditional ACs. The native AC can manage up to 4K APs, eight times that of traditional AC devices or cards.

04

Cutting-Edge

In terms of network architecture design, the overall campus network of Tsinghua University is based on Huawei's

SDN-ready Agile Network Solution. The University uses Huawei S12712 agile switches as the core devices, and Huawei

S12708 agile switches as the level-1 aggregation switches (type-1). Key advantages of SDN are high efficiency, smart data

forwarding, and separation among the service plane, control plane, and forwarding plane. The control plane manages

data forwarding through southbound interfaces, achieving more efficient data forwarding. The control plane can also

connect to application systems through northbound interfaces. The application systems can schedule the control plane in

a smart manner, enabling the network resource to automatically and flexibly match data forwarding requirements of the

service plane. In addition, Huawei S12700 Agile Switch uses fully programmable Ethernet Network Processor (ENP) chips,

seamlessly supporting innovative services and unknown protocols. About the full programmability feature, the world-

renowned third-party test authority Miercom has given this evaluation to Huawei: "Because POF applies to all protocols, in

the future it will be able to control traffic types that have yet to be introduced."

Smooth Evolution

When designing the overall campus network, Tsinghua University took network compatibility and cutting-edge

network technologies into consideration. The new campus network is seamlessly compatible with the traditional network

and supports smooth transition to the SDN network. In this way, the SDN network coexists with the traditional network.

The new campus network can forward data through the data forwarding mode of the traditional network, and can also

perform data forwarding and traffic scheduling through the forwarding mode of SDN. If the SDN plane fails, the new

campus network can seamlessly switch to the traditional data forwarding mode, implementing a smooth evolution from

the traditional plane to the SDN plane. This innovative deployment mode of "dual planes on one network" ensures easy

incremental deployment for subsequent service expansion. Moreover, the entire campus network can seamlessly evolve to

the future network.

By leveraging the Huawei Agile Network Solution featuring many innovative technologies, Huawei has helped

Tsinghua University build the world's best-in-class campus network.


Southeast University is a

comprehensive university under the direct

administration of China's Central Government

and Ministry of Education, and is listed as a key

university in Program 985 and Project 211 that are

funded by the Central Government to build world-class

universities. Established in 1902, Southeast University

is one of the oldest and highly renowned higher education

institutions in China. The university's campus network is an important

communication platform and a bridge to connect the university to the world. After decades of development, the

campus network provides information services for more than 30,000 teaching staff and students in the university,

and connects almost 100 level-2 websites as well as 15 application systems such as the teaching and scientific

research platforms. Southeast University faces the challenge of constructing a campus network that can support

teaching, learning, and research activities. As a leading information and communications technology (ICT) provider,

Huawei provides an innovative Agile Network Solution to help Southeast University construct an advanced, highly

reliable, and scalable campus network.

06

Huawei Agile Network Solution Upgrades the Campus Network of Southeast University


As a famous university in China, Southeast University has three national key laboratories, three national engineering research centers,

two national research centers for engineering technologies, one national professional laboratory, and multiple key scientific research

centers. The university conducts some high-end research projects focusing on cutting-edge technologies every year. The campus network

must be a unified platform that supports research innovation and continuous evolution in the future.

Traditional network devices that can provide extensive bandwidth lack flexibility in functions, whereas those with abundant functions

are too expensive. These traditional devices cannot adapt to evolution of network applications.

As the saying goes, "one must first sharpen one's tools to do a good job". Advanced network devices are necessities for innovative

universities. Among the products and solutions from many major network equipment vendors, Huawei‘ s Agile Switch S12700 and Agile

Network Solution stand at the forefront.

Innovative University Requires a Leading Campus Network

The digital era starts a new stage for knowledge and culture dissemination. On the one hand, new teaching modes such as distance

education, interactive classroom, and online examination bring pleasant surprises to higher education. On the other hand, these new

teaching modes require a stable, unified, and highly efficient campus network to support teaching, learning, and scientific research services.

Huawei‘ s Agile Switch S12700 leverages industry-leading, hardware-based switch fabric clustering technology: Cluster Switch System

Generation2 (CSS2). The S12700 features the industry's lowest inter-chassis forwarding latency and implements innovative 1+N backup of

Main Processing Units (MPUs) in a cluster system, ensuring that the cluster system can work properly even if only one MPU is functioning.

CSS2 technology significantly improves stability of core devices. The S12700 also provides end-to-end hardware Operation, Administration,

and Maintenance (OAM) and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) technologies to implement fast protection switching within 50 ms,

minimizing the impact of network faults on the university's services.

Robust Network Requires Reliable Core Devices

07

Wired and wireless networks of Southeast University are deployed separately. As more 802.11ac Access Points (APs) are used and

mobile office increases in popularity, gigabit wireless access becomes a trend. Traditional Access Controllers (ACs) have become traffic

bottlenecks due to limited forwarding capability and ports. Although wired network devices can provide sufficient forwarding port and

management resources, the wireless network cannot share these resources, causing a waste of network resources. In centralized wireless

forwarding mode, all wireless traffic is sent to the independent AC device or AC card before being forwarded upstream, creating an

unnecessary failure point on the network.

To overcome the preceding problems, Huawei provides a wired and wireless convergence solution for Southeast University. The wireless

AC function is integrated into service cards on agile switches, removing the need of deploying independent AC devices or AC cards. With

the native AC function, the agile switch provides unified management, authentication, and policy control for wired and wireless networks,

realizing convergence of wired and wireless networks. The agile switch also functions as an AC and provides 1 Tbit/s forwarding capacity.

The native AC function solves the wireless forwarding bottleneck problem, lowers Capital Expenditure (CAPEX), and reduces failure points.

Such convergence at the network element (NE) level solves the problem of separate traffic control and forwarding for wired and wireless

networks. The high switching capability and scalability of the agile switch eliminate the bottleneck in centralized traffic forwarding on

independent AC devices or AC cards.

Open Network Architecture Supports Smooth Evolution to an SDN Network

This project is a successful practice of the popular technology Software-Defined Networking (SDN). Huawei uses the Agile Network

Solution to help Southeast University upgrade its campus network and deploys agile switches S12700 as core devices on the network. Agile

Switch S12700 supports dual-mode forwarding: protocol-based packet forwarding that is supported by traditional switches and broad-

sense flow forwarding that supports user-defined table entries. The S12700 is compatible with the industry's latest OpenFlow standards

and adapts to the elastic SDN network architecture. Traffic can be forwarded using the traditional forwarding mode or scheduled using the

SDN-based forwarding mode. When the SDN plane fails, traffic is automatically and seamlessly switched to the traditional plane, ensuring

uninterrupted traffic forwarding and smooth evolution from the traditional plane to the SDN plane.

08

Wired and Wireless Convergence Accelerates Smooth Transition to the 802.11ac Era


Ever developing network technologies make campus networks more open and promote resource consolidation on campus networks.

Campus networks are evolving to an integrated platform supporting teaching, scientific research, and entertainment activities.

Wuhan University is a comprehensive university under the direct administration of China's Ministry of Education, and is listed as a key

university in 985 and 211 projects for Chinese university construction. Wuhan University is listed as "one of the most prominent universities

in China" by the authoritative Science Magazine. After decades of development, the university's campus network is now covering four

campuses and provides information services for more than 50,000 teachers and students. The campus network connects over 80 level-2

websites as well as 15 application systems such as the teaching and scientific research platforms. As various applications are more and more

dependent on the campus network, performance of the campus network is critical to routine activities of the university. Therefore, campus

network reconstruction is taken as an important task in recent years.

Challenges Facing the Campus Network

10

Agile Network Promotes

Educational IT Innovation

—— Huawei Agile Switch S12700 Helps Upgrade and Reconstruct the Campus Network of Wuhan University

With sharp increase of data in the teaching, scientific research, and office applications systems, the campus network is facing great challenges.

The university has thousands of network terminals and many service application systems. How can the network remain reliable

and stable ?

The Operations and Maintenance (O&M)for almost one thousand devices on the campus network is very complex. During new

device deployment or software upgrades, each access switch must be manually configured or upgraded. Manual operations are

labor-intensive and easily cause incorrect configurations. How can all devices be configured and upgraded easily ?

How can the network platform be scalable and adaptive to application innovations to maximize return on investment (ROI) and

fully utilize IT resources ?

1

2

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A reliable network requires high device reliability and network reliability. All key components of Huawei devices,

including main processing units (MPUs), power supplies, fan modules, and switch fabric units (SFUs), work in redundancy

mode to ensure high device reliability. To ensure high network reliability, Huawei adopts a loop-free network structure to

construct a highly reliable network for Wuhan University. The entire network is divided into multiple logical modules based

on the network characteristics and campus layout. Huawei Agile Switches S12700 are used as core switches in the teaching

center, which is the core of the university campus network. Two S12700 switches set up a cluster using Cluster Switch

System Generation2 (CSS2) switch fabric hardware clustering technology. The cluster system is not split even if only a single

MPU in the entire system works normally. The 1+N backup of MPUs ensures reliability of core nodes. Access switches and

aggregation switches form two stack systems respectively using intelligent stacking (iStack) technology. The entire network

uses a tree structure, which ensures high network reliability and avoids forwarding bandwidth waste because no loop

prevention protocol is required and no port is blocked.

The S12700 switches also provide end-to-end hardware OAM and BFD technologies to implement 50 ms fast

protection switching, minimizing the impact of network faults on the university's services.

The campus network has a large number of access nodes, multiple network layers, and a complex topology. Wireless

networks are also deployed in the four campuses, making network management much more difficult. To resolve the

customer's pain points, Huawei provides Super Virtual Fabric (SVF) technology based on the Agile Switch S12700.SVF

technology virtualizes wired and wireless network devices at different network layers into one network element. The entire

campus network is virtualized into a switch, which significantly simplifies network deployment and management. Huawei

Huawei Agile Network Solution Addresses the Challenges

also provides unified configuration templates for access switches and APs based on typical scenarios. The configuration

templates are configured in advance and automatically delivered to access switches and APs during site deployment. The

access switches and APs can automatically upgrade without manual intervention, greatly improving management and O&M

efficiency at the access layer.

Besides, this project is a successful practice of the popular technology software-defined networking (SDN). Ethernet

Network Processor (ENP) chips used in the Agile Switch S12700 provide full programmability to support future development

of the campus network and evolution to an SDN network.

In this campus network upgrade project, Huawei focused on challenges the campus network is facing and fully used

its rich network construction experiences to build a new campus network following

the mainstream network development trend. After scientific network

planning and ordered project implementation, Huawei delivered

a user- and service-centered agile network that is easy to manage and smoothly

upgradable, allowing teachers and students in Wuhan University to surf freely on

the campus network.


Ever developing network technologies

make campus networks more open and

14

Unparalleled Campus Experience-- Huawei Agile Network Solution Applied in Southwest University for Nationalities

promote resource consol idat ion on campus

networks. Campus networks are evolving to an

integrated platform supporting teaching, scientific research,

and entertainment activities.

Southwest University for Nationalities (SWUN) is located in Sichuan

province of China, and is one of the six universities of nationalities directly managed by the State Ethnic Affairs

Commission. The university has three campuses and a high-tech research and demonstration center. After 11 years of development,

the SWUN campus network is now covering the three campuses and connecting over 80 level-2 websites as well as 15 application

systems such as the teaching and scientific research platforms, serving over 30 thousand staff and students in the university. As various

applications are more and more dependent on the campus network, performance of the campus network is critical to routine activities of

the university. Therefore, campus network construction is taken as an important task in recent years. With sharp increase of data in the

applications systems, the campus network is facing great challenges.

First, the campus network adopts a three-layer architecture. During new device deployment or software upgrades, each access

switch must be manually configured or upgraded. Manual operations require huge workload and can cause misconfigurations easily.

Second, to manage increasing wireless users, the university purchased multiple independent ACs and attached them to aggregation

switches in bypass mode. Configuration and user management on the wired and wireless devices are separated, and service data needs

to be synchronized between wired and wireless devices. This method of simply adding a wireless network to the wired network increases

network management costs and degrades network service quality. Third, faults often occur on the network, and it is difficult and time-

consuming to locate network faults. To support the fast growing service data and to reduce network management costs, the university

has an urgent demand for campus network upgrade.


15

After a systematic evaluation of the current campus network, Huawei made a network solution to meet the

university's requirements.

The campus network has hundreds of network devices on multiple layers. To simplify the network structure,

Huawei designs the innovative Super Virtual Fabric (SVF) solution. This solution virtualizes each access switch into a

line card and virtualizes each wireless access point (AP) into a port. In this way, the entire network is virtualized into

a virtual switch. Through automatic topology discovery and uniform configuration templates for wired and wireless

devices, the access layer realizes zero-touch configuration, automatic upgrade, and plug-and-play deployment, making

network management simpler and service deployment more convenient.

Huawei Agile Switch S12700 is used as the core switch on the campus network to provide uniform user

management. Using Ethernet Network Processor (ENP) chips that provide native AC capability, the S12700 integrates

functions of an AC and an Ethernet switch, and provides Tbps-level wireless data forwarding capability. This agile switch

applies policies to user groups to provide centralized user management and supports differentiated accounting for

access users with different IP addresses. The SVF networking implements uniform authentication for wired and wireless

users, uniform forwarding of wired and wireless service data, and uniform configuration management for wired and

wireless devices. In this way, the number of APs and access users supported on the network is increased by several

folds.

Huawei agile network solution also uses Packet Conservation Algorithm for Internet (iPCA) to monitor performance

indicators on the core and access layers hop by hop. When a fault occurs, iPCA can identify the port or even the

chip where the fault occurs. This technology helps locate failure points quickly and precisely, enhancing network

troubleshooting capabilities.

Huawei Agile Switch S12700 is the world's first switch that supports switch fabric hardware clustering – Cluster

Switching System Generation2 (CSS2). Multiple S12700 switches can be connected through hardware channels between

switch fabric units to set up a cluster, which shortens the inter-chassis forwarding latency to as short as 4 μs. The cluster

supports 1+N backup of the Main Processing Units (MPUs) and can work as long as one MPU is running normally. Inter-

chassis link redundancy in the cluster further improves reliability of the network.

"We chose Huawei agile network solution after comparing products of multiple vendors," says Mr. Xu Mingsheng,

head of SWUN information center. "Huawei agile network did a good job in three aspects. First, it realizes uniform

management of wired and wireless networks. Second, it provides powerful user management to deliver free mobility.

Third, it realizes quality awareness on the network, and its unified security capabilities help us monitor security of the

entire campus network."

Besides, this project is a successful practice of the popular technology software-defined networking (SDN). ENP

chips used in the Huawei Agile Switch S12700 provide full programmability to support future development of the

campus network and evolution to an SDN network.

In this campus network upgrade project, Huawei focused on challenges facing the campus network and fully

used its rich network construction experiences to build a new campus network following the mainstream network

development trend. After scientific network planning and ordered project implementation, Huawei delivered a user-

and service-centered agile network that is easy to manage and smoothly upgradable, allowing staff and students in the

university to surf freely on the campus network.

16


In China, education for all-around development has been rapidly developed. Educational transformation and civil participation are

inevitable trends. Both teachers and parents hope to create a fun, high-efficient learning classroom environment to stimulate students'

autonomous learning, proactive exploration, and all-around development. "New Classroom", "Online Classroom of Elite Schools", and

"Online Learning Space", and "Home-School Interaction" have become the practice direction of modern basic education. Fast-growing

Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) such as smart terminals, mobile Internet, cloud computing, Software-Defined

Networking (SDN), and Big Data provide a reliable technological environment. In addition, the Chinese government has put forth guidance

for national educational IT construction. In 2104, the Ministry of Education of China clearly pointed out that China would deploy broadband

18

Building a Brand New MAN Network to Accelerate the Diversified and Leap-Forward Development of Education

networks to interconnect over 80 percent of primary and secondary schools

throughout the country, with the aim of laying a solid foundation

for educational IT construction. The Ministry of Education also

planned to allocate high-quality digital education resources

for each qualified class, with the aim of deeply

integrating IT and educational activities and further

accelerating IT-based educational management and

application. Therefore, educational Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) that supports broadband networks

interconnecting schools has become the most

important infrastructure in an educational

region. Moreover, MAN network construction

is the most important phase of overal l

construction of "Three Interconnections and

Two Platforms."


19 20

A broad variety of educational applications, such as sharing of educational resources of elite schools, synchronous and

interactive classrooms, construction of massive learning resources and courseware database, teacher training and ability

improvement, rely on the educational MAN network. A stable, reliable, flexible, secure, and easy-to-manage educational

MAN network can help resolve the problem of imbalances in educational resource allocation, bridge the gap among schools,

improve the regional education level, and achieve the leap-forward development of regional education. The following aspects

must be taken into consideration to build a brand new, high-quality educational MAN network:

An educational region usually has dozens of or even hundreds of schools located. Tens of thousands or more teachers

and students access resources through the educational MAN network. To adapt to such a large number of users and a

growing number of educational applications, the MAN network backbone platform must use an industry-leading network

architecture that can provide powerful service transmission and expansion capabilities and support educational service

innovation. Huawei's SDN-based Agile Network Solution adapts to the basic education development. The openness

of Huawei's Agile Network enables new services of schools to be loaded on the live network through open interfaces,

supporting new protocols through user-defined forwarding processes. In addition, the powerful service expansion capability

of Huawei's Agile Network accommodates the requirements of the educational MAN network over the next five to ten years.

Nowadays, a wide variety of information such as online examination, school roll, teacher information, school assets

management as well as home-school interaction services have been born on the educational MAN network. Parents can

also access part of the educational resource. How to secure the network in such complex environments has become one of

the important factors for educational IT construction. First of all, network access rights must be controlled. Identity of users

who want to access the network must be authenticated. Resource access is controlled based on different user identities.

In addition, antivirus, anti-DDoS, intrusion detection and prevention, and user behavior analysis must be performed on the

network. To accommodate these requirements, Huawei's Agile Network Solution based on the SDN concept of centralized

management and control provides united security protection on the entire network. For example, the Agile Controller in the

Agile Network can identify teachers, students, and parents in a certain educational region. Working with Huawei devices

such as Agile Switches, Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs), and security access gateways, the Agile Controller performs

centralized management and control of policies such as network access rights, service priority, bandwidth, achieving access

control of different users. Additionally, the Agile Controller together with Huawei's security devices including the NGFW and

security access gateways composes a security resource center. The Agile Controller diverts suspicious traffic to the security

resource center for detection and associative processing, implementing dynamic security protection over the entire network.

With a sharp increase in the numbers of educational applications and network devices, how to quickly complete

configuration, ensure network quality, and locate network faults is tricky question for network maintenance personnel.

One of the important advantages of a new, high-quality educational MAN network is simplifying network maintenance

and management. Huawei has enhanced its Agile Network architecture based on SDN and put forward two competitive

features: Packet Conservation Algorithm for Internet (iPCA) and Super Virtual Fabric (SVF). Huawei's unique iPCA technology

allows the network maintenance personnel to easily locate which device fails. For example, a senior teacher from an elite

school is making a demonstration lecture which is synchronized to another school in a town. Such remote, synchronous

video can be secured by using the iPCA technology. Once a network node fails, the fault can be quickly located and

troubleshot. Huawei's SVF technology makes network management easier than ever. Multiple switches and wireless Access

Points (APs) can be virtualized into cards or ports on a switch, and configurations can be quickly delivered to these cards or

ports via one click.

New technologies such as SDN and Huawei's Agile Network can create a high-quality educational MAN network for

basic education, resolving the problem of a lack of educational methods and promoting learning mode transformation and

innovation. Huawei has assisted multiple educational regions, such as Changping District in Beijing, Pudong District in

Shanghai, Wuxi City in Jiangsu Province, Deyang City in Sichuan Province, and Shilin City in Yunnan Province, in building a

new educational MAN network. By leveraging Huawei's devices and Agile Network Solution, educational organizations and

schools in these regions can easily achieve many teaching management applications, such as Office Automation (OA) for

teaching affairs, school roll management system, interactive classes, online Video on Demand (VoD), online communication,

online examination and assessment, and electronic schoolbags. In addition, educational resources in these regions have

been allocated in a more balanced manner than before. The overall educational level in these regions will be improved

significantly. Furthermore, these regions will achieve the diversified and leap-forward development of education.

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To adapt to the exponential growth of educational

system bandwidth and access users over the next few

years, Jingyang District must build the industry’s best-in-class, highly

reliable IP MAN as a unified backbone communications platform, which will allow educational departments to offer a full array of new

educational IT services to accommodate the high requirements of broadband multimedia applications. First, self-built Internet egresses

distributed in the district’s primary and middle schools must be connected to the educational bureau in a unified manner, and then an

independent, secure, and reliable MAN egress must be built. Second, a unified educational organization authentication platform must be

created to implement identity authentication and security protection for both teachers and students. Teachers from different schools often

must communicate with each other and visit students and parents outside of schools. High-quality service experiences must be provided

for teachers and students as they access the MAN from different places using different access modes and devices. Finally, inter-school

communication must be secured to prevent the spread of viruses among schools. Services across the entire education system must be secure

and smooth.

To adapt to the exponential growth of educational system bandwidth and access users over the next few years, Jingyang District must

build the industry’s best-in-class, highly reliable IP MAN as a unified backbone communications platform, which will allow educational

departments to offer a full array of new educational IT services to accommodate the high requirements of broadband multimedia

applications. First, self-built Internet egresses distributed in the district’s primary and middle schools must be connected to the educational

bureau in a unified manner, and then an independent, secure, and reliable MAN egress must be built. Second, a unified educational

organization authentication platform must be created to implement identity authentication and security protection for both teachers and

students. Teachers from different schools often must communicate with each other and visit students and parents outside of schools. High-

quality service experiences must be provided for teachers and students as they access the MAN from different places using different access

modes and devices. Finally, inter-school communication must be secured to prevent the spread of viruses among schools. Services across the

entire education system must be secure and smooth.

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Agile Educational MAN

Eliminating Spatial Obstacles

—— Huawei Assists Jingyang District of Deyang City in Building an Industry-Leading Agile Educational MAN


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After network technology experts from Chengdu and Deyang made multiple rounds of analysis and deliberation

surrounding various educational MAN construction solutions, the Jingyang District Education Bureau eventually selected

Huawei’s solution, which features a two-layer architecture: core and access layers. The core layer uses Huawei S12700

series agile switches as backbone nodes, which centrally manage access authentication of teachers and students. Primary

and middle schools can select between Huawei S7700 and S5700 series switches based on the size of their campus. The

S7700 and S5700 connect to core devices through firewalls. Huawei’s Next-Generation Firewalls (NGFWs) are deployed at

the Internet egress for security isolation. In addition, professional Virtual Private Network (VPN) devices are deployed to

enable remote access for students and parents.

Huawei’s solution features an industry-leading architecture, free mobility, dynamic security resource allocation, and

three-dimensional security protection, as well as high reliability, by leveraging a hierarchical design and Software-Defined

Networking (SDN) concepts and technologies.

• Industry-leading architecture supports an SDN-based, high-speed core backbone network: Huawei’s high-

performance agile switches are deployed as backbone devices. Network core nodes use 10GE links for interconnections,

providing future-oriented strong service transmission and capacity expansion capabilities. Additionally, Huawei’s agile

switches use a fully programmable architecture, which supports new protocols through user-defined forwarding processes.

The strong service scalability of Huawei’s agile switches adapts to the educational MAN’s rapid development requirements

for the next 5 to 10 years.

• Free mobility ensures a consistent service access experience for users: By leveraging SDN concepts, Huawei’s

solution can authenticate all teachers, students, and parents in the district through Huawei’s Agile Controller. Working with

Huawei’s core agile switches, NGFWs, and security access gateways, the Agile Controller centrally manages and controls

policies, including network access rights, service priorities, and bandwidth, allowing a user to access the educational

resource sharing platform from different places using the same account, access control rights, service priority, and

bandwidth. These policies can migrate based on user location. In this way, users can gain a consistent service experience

across the entire district.

• Dynamic security resource allocation and three-dimensional security protection: The firewalls deployed at schools

and data center ingresses provide security isolation and routine defense functions. High-performance NGFWs deployed

at the Internet egress provide advanced security application capabilities, such as attack defense, Intrusion Prevention

System (IPS), antivirus (AV), and online behavior audit. In addition to Internet egress protection, a security resource center

covering the entire MAN can orchestrate suspicious traffic using tunneling technologies through the Agile Controller.

Suspicious traffic can also be diverted to the security resource center for virus detection, application attack detection, and

access behavior audit. In this way, security resources such as NGFWs can be reused to lower network construction and

management costs.

• High reliability for educational IT service continuity: Huawei’s solution uses a full-scale redundancy structure,

including redundant devices, links, and routes to eliminate single-point failures, ensuring high reliability across the entire

MAN backbone. Core backbone devices implement network virtualization to simplify network management using Cluster

Switch System Generation2 (CSS2) hardware clustering technology. Moreover, through a 1+N backup of Main Processing

Units (MPUs), the entire cluster system can work properly as long as one MPU is functioning normally, ensuring that the

core backbone network runs stably.

Aiming at rapidly balancing educational resources across its jurisdiction, the Jingyang District

Education Bureau has attached great importance to its educational MAN project. Upon

completion of this project, all primary and middle schools in the district will enjoy

the benefits of Huawei’s solution, implementing a wide variety of teaching management

applications, such as Office Automation (OA) for teaching affairs, school roll management

system, interactive classes, online Video on Demand (VoD), online communication,

online examination and assessment, and electronic schoolbags. The agile MAN

will not only enrich teaching methods but also promote resource sharing among

teachers and educators, while improving their effectiveness in the classroom, as

well as improving the quality of education in the district.


Overview

Southern Cross University (SCU) is an innovative research intensive Australian public university. Campuses are located

on the North Coast of New South Wales, Australia and southern Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. It also operates The Hotel

School Sydney in partnership with Mulpha Australia. Close to 15,000 students are enrolled at SCU, studying on campus and via

distance education. International students come from 80 countries to study onshore and it collaborates with institutions offshore

in Singapore, China, and New Zealand. SCU International ranked No. 1 in Australia based on the 2013 International Student

Barometer (ISB) for international student support with a 98.8 percent satisfaction level.

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Southern Cross University Teams Up with Huawei to Build an “Agile Campus”


ICT and University Challenges

The current campus network of SCU is six years old and covers all the campuses of SCU and supports all teaching, researching, and website

services whilst also providing information services for the students and teachers. As the pace of development and innovation at the University has

grown, the network has had to cope with increasing data traffic and accessibility challenges for students, teachers, and IT staff.

A number of challenges were apparent for SCU during the development phase of the project. The performance of the current network was

highlighted as being too low (100 Mbps to desktop and 1 Gbps backbone, with minimal resilience and fault tolerance), while Australian Academic

and Research Network (AARNET) has been upgraded to 10 Gbps.

The network is also very complex, with configurations and version upgrades being deployed in silo causing a strain on resources and workloads.

The wireless and mobile usage has also exploded and the increase of wireless users has seen SCU purchase several independent Access Controllers (ACs)

and connect them to the aggregation switches in bypass mode. This has a knock-on effect as the wired and wireless user configurations and data

management must be synchronized separately, which causes an increase in cost and a reduction in performance of the whole network.

Solution & Performance

At the heart of Huawei’s Agile Network Solution is strong performance. In order to satisfy the bandwidth requirements and the evolution of

the network, Huawei has deployed GE switches and 802.11ac Access Points (APs) at the access layer. The access switches connect to aggregation

switches with 10GE ports, and the aggregation and core switches all support upgrade to 40GE and 100GE in the future. Huawei’s newest 802.11ac

general AP devices AP5030DN and AP8130DN are used for wireless coverage of the whole campus. The 802.11ac provides a high switching capacity

of up to 1.75 Gbps and high-speed wireless connections for all the users, especially in the high-density areas such as conference rooms and stadiums.

To simplify the network structure, Huawei employed an innovative Super Virtual Fabric (SVF) based solution. This solution virtualizes each access

switch into a line card and virtualizes each wireless AP into a port. Using SVF, the entire network can be virtualized into a single yet redundant, highly

available virtual switch. By enabling automatic topology discovery and uniform configuration templates for wired and wireless devices, the access

layer gained zero-touch configuration, automatic upgrades, and plug-and-play deployment, making network management and deployment much

simpler.

For wired and wireless users to access the network, a Huawei Agile Switch S12700 was deployed as the core switch on the campus network to

provide unified user management. Ethernet Network Processor (ENP) chips provide native WLAN AC capability, and the S12700 integrates and unifies

the functions of an AC and an Ethernet switch while still providing terabit-level wireless data forwarding capability. In addition, Huawei’s Agile

Switch can work with Huawei’s Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) for security association, implementing user-based security management and control

and allowing wired and wireless users to access networks in a more secure and reliable way.

By working closely with SCU to understand their needs, requirements, and challenges, Huawei was able to successfully deliver an Agile Network

Solution that enriches the user experience and supports simple service deployment. Through the innovation of Huawei’s Agile Network Solution,

SCU’s campus network will now be easier to manage, seamlessly scalable, and provide a smooth upgrade path.

Customer Benefits

Professor Lee welcomed the partnership: “This is a major project which will ensure our information and communications technology

infrastructure is of the highest possible quality and capable of meeting the needs of a rapidly changing digital world. Huawei is a world-leader in the

provision of this technology and we are pleased to be their first major university partner in Australia.”

Mr. Zhao Xichu, CEO of Huawei Australia, said: “We are very proud to partner with Southern Cross University and deploy our new Agile campus

technology. Our solution enables the management of increased data traffic and improves capacity and performance for students and teachers to

enjoy a high-speed IT network, wherever they are, in the classroom, in laboratory or coffee shop.”

With the growing information-based economy and increasing maturity of cloud computing, Internet, and smart devices, ICT has penetrated

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every aspect of campus life. Centered on Huawei’s Agile Switch, Huawei’s Agile Network

Solution will continue to aid SCU to build a better connected campus in the future.

A Joint Partnership with Huawei

On October 10, 2014, SCU and Huawei Australia announced a new partnership which will enable a major overhaul of the University’s

communications and campus security systems. SCU would team up with Huawei to build an “Agile Campus.” SCU Vice Chancellor Professor Peter

Lee and CEO of Huawei Australia, Mr. Zhao Xichu, signed the project agreement. Huawei provided its Agile Network Solution – a next-generation

network solution leveraging the latest ideas and technology, which can help SCU address considerable challenges.

Key features of the project are:

Upgrade to a next-generation, high-speed data network at the University’s four campuses, enabling the telecommunication network to

improve performance and productivity for students and teachers

Provide world-class cloud engine technology to deliver the University’s applications and services, bringing Southern Cross University to the

leading edge of cloud computing in the Australian tertiary sector

Huawei’s Agile Network Solution including High Definition (HD) Telepresence, interactive classrooms, cloud communications technology,

and a new Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system across all campuses

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Agile Switch In Education Industry

HUAWEI TECHNOLOGIES CO., LTD. Bantian, Longgang District

Shenzhen518129, P. R. China

Tel:+86-755-28780808

2014

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