Deploying networking solutions from Allied Telesis has enabled Assam Valley School to experience a hassle free network across its residential campus
By KTP Radhika
The Assam Valley School (AVS) is one of the exclusive coeducational boarding schools in the North East of India. Spread over 203 acres at Balipara in Sonitpur district of Assam, AVS is affiliated to the Council for Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE). The school has about 900 students, and features state-of-the-art infrastructure to cater to the growing needs of the students. It also has the latest IT infrastructure to facilitate all educational needs. All of the 900 students and the teachers use laptops and access the Internet. The residential school sees high demand for Internet consumption as the students and faculty need huge amounts of Internet bandwidth for their academic activities.
In its initial days, the school was using solutions from a popular networking gear maker for all their network infrastructure needs. However, the management soon found out that the solutions were not suitable for their expansion plans. Rupjyoti Das, System Administrator at Assam Valley School, states, “Those products are very entry level. We used to give students online assignments and when all the 900 students start accessing Internet, we would experience a network drop and disconnection of devices.” And when it rains with lighting and thunder, these devices would get damaged.
With these difficulties, AVS started using products of an American multinational company for quite a while. But support was a major issue with this networking solutions provider. Describes Das, “It provided good products, but the problem was support.” Moreover, its products were very costly too.
The school needed a solution that offers them high availability for data network on a wireless media. They also needed fiber-oriented backbone for a secure, highly resilient and scalable network for future expansion. AVS also looked out for a solution that can provide interoperability with existing products and also can keep the legacy network intact without degradation of services. Thus, in 2011, after a rigorous market research, the management decided to go for Allied Telesis networking solutions.
The solution
Allied Telesis offered four switches to cater to the school’s needs. Subhasish Gupta, Country Manager – India & SAARC at Allied Telesis, says, “AVS required high availability of bandwidth with sufficient coverage and anticipated further expansion. Conceiving this, Allied Telesis catered the suitable product from our product portfolio. In this network, we used the x900 series switch, which is an advanced Layer 3 switch with built-in radius server for user authentication, which is appreciable for a wireless network.”
This switch supports Ethernet Protected Switching Ring (EPSR) technology that provides true carrier-class network for a highly resilient network topology. Virtual Chassis Stacking (VCSTACK), a unique technology for the Allied Telesis’ switch, provides high density bandwidth for all users simultaneously instead of keeping the standby resource absolutely unused. With stacking capability, the requirement of scaling further can be met seamlessly without disturbing the network operation. They also installed other switches like AT-8000S/24 series that run on the same open software platform. Another AT-8000/8 POE – Fast Ethernet switch was installed along with. “The 8000 series POE enabled switch provides the option to put the access points properly as the building aesthetics are also taken into the account,” says Gupta. Allied Telesis fiber-supported switches minimize the need for multiple distribution boxes or patch panels which require extra space and attention from a maintenance perspective. The switches have built-in fiber ports to provide an end-to-end solution. For providing high quality and efficient coverage to all users, several access points of Allied Telesis have been successfully deployed inside the campus. The company’s media converters were also used to incorporate the existing network.
The benefits
“Now all our hostels are getting individual fiber for connectivity. Students are not complaining about connectivity issues anymore,” says Das. AVS is also getting good support from Allied Telesis. “Allied products are very cost effective. We are getting three year warranty and support from them for Layer 3 switches and 10 year warranty for our Layer 2 switches,” adds Das. All the switches have stacking capacity to expand further. “Addressing all our network issues, Allied Telesis has provided us with a hassle free, reliable and a scalable network which will help us in further expansion whenever needed,” comments Das. AVS is planning to go with Allied Telesis for its future networking initiatives too. As its next venture, the school is planning to enable Wi-Fi connectivity in the entire campus. “Right now, all our connections are wired. We are removing them and will create a wireless campus by next year,” says Das.
