|
|
 |
|
Customer at a glance
| |
|
|
|
| Yorkshire's Keighley College (UK) caters for 1,000 full time and 7,000 part time students and employs up to 400 staff. Computers are central to their daily lives so the performance and resilience of Keighley's campus network is vital.
|
| |
| | |
|
|
|
|
Computers are central to the daily lives of Keighley College students and staff so the performance and resilience of Keighley's campus network is vital. Recently, the network started to lose performance and that had a significant effect on the work of the college.
"The network was periodically running quite slowly and we felt that there were lots of collisions and broadcast storms," said David Wilson, head of ILT (Information and Learning Technology) Development at Keighley College. "This meant that it took users a long time to log on to or use the Internet and that was unacceptable, particularly for part time students. It is vital that we have no downtime but we would have to restart the network which meant it could be down for 30 minutes."
» Return to top
Keighley College called in HP reseller and network specialist Systems Integration and Cabling Ltd (SICL) of Leeds and following a full audit, SICL installed HP's ProCurve Routing Switch 9315 at the core of the network, making Keighley the first 9315 installation in the UK.
"The college needed some control and manageability and a performance uplift and that's exactly what ProCurve allowed us to do," said Ashley Woodman, MD of SICL, which now maintains the network.
» Return to top
A main benefit to Keighley is that the ProCurve Networking Routing Switch 9315 is a layer three switch with routing capabilities. That allows IT staff to direct traffic and to segment the large network into separate broadcast domains or VLANS (Virtual Local Area Networks).
"Creating VLANS gives us more control and allows us to monitor what is going on," added Wilson. "Now, if a particular machine is causing a problem it is restricted to one area rather than right across the network."
"The HP ProCurve 9315 gives us more flexibility and better network management capabilities because the switch information allows us to analyse the traffic so we can isolate problems. Now, the network will cope with our needs for the next five years. We are likely to see more sophisticated e-learning and video editing and ProCurve Networking layer three switches will enable us to control that traffic."
» Return to top
As well as installing HP rack mounting, Keighley is maximising the use of the network by putting in an HP MSA1000 SAN (storage area network) with an initial 400Gb of storage and future capacity of 6Tb.
It used to take nearly two hours to download a 500Mb file at Keighley but with the significant increase in performance, that has been slashed to just seconds. Unplanned downtime for restarting the network has also been eliminated.
"With the help of HP ProCurve 9315 switching, we are now providing a much better service for both students and staff," said Wilson.
» Return to top
- ProCurve Networking routing capabilities mean that staff at Keighley now have better control and management of the network
- They can track down and rectify problems more quickly
- There has been a significant improvement to performance and to the service that students and staff enjoy
» Return to top
Hardware
Software
HP services
» Return to top
Industry sector: Education
Name: Keighley College
Headquarters: Keighley, UK
Founded: 1825
Telephone: +44 (0)1535 618555
Number of employees: 500
» Return to top
To learn more about ProCurve Networking's Adaptive EDGE Architecture solutions, visit our home page.
Purchase: HP business solutions, products, and supplies can be purchased at your local HP partner or bought directly from HP online.
Accessibility: HP is committed to providing products and services that are accessible to people with disabilities. For more information, please visit the HP Accessibility web site.
» Return to top
|
| |
|
|
|
