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Northland College places a unique emphasis on environmental issues and interdisciplinary studies, with a great deal of collaboration between departments and dependence on outside resources for both student instruction and faculty research. At the same time, the college's physical location is quite isolated, making communication with the outside world a top priority. These factors mean that Northland College's network technology must provide an especially high degree of flexibility, reliability and performance.
Northland College previously had a flat network, with a mixture of switches and hubs in the student residences and a Nortel/Bay Networks switch environment for administrative and mission-critical operations. Starting in late 2004, in anticipation of a planned network expansion into new buildings, the college began a search for replacement technology, spending eight months evaluating offerings from Nortel (the existing vendor), Cisco and ProCurve Networking by HP. In the end, Northland College chose ProCurve to deploy a campus-wide network that was able to fully support Northland College's existing and future networking and communications needs.
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A key component of Northland College's existing communications infrastructure was its Mitel PBX phone system, which it wanted to keep. Mitel's traditional PBX and advanced voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) telephony solutions run extremely well on ProCurve networks.
Once it started looking at ProCurve Networking, Northland College found a number of advantages compared to the other vendors under consideration. With reliability a major concern, ProCurve's lifetime warranty* made a big impression, according to Terry Mongrain, Network Administrator for the college. "We were also impressed by the technology behind the ProCurve equipment," says Mongrain. "And overall, the ProCurve solution was more cost-effective than the other alternatives we considered."
Northland College retained its existing Mitel PBX system in the student resident halls and
deployed a new Mitel-and-ProCurve-based VoIP solution elsewhere on campus, over a weekend, with minimal impact to the campus users. The ProCurve network includes a ProCurve Switch 5308xl with various fiber and copper modules in the data center; ProCurve Switch 2800 Series in all buildings, providing
edge access; ProCurve Switch 2600 Series in the wiring closets for end-user access; and
ProCurve Wireless Access Point 420 devices for wireless access throughout the campus.
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"We are pretty isolated here in northern Wisconsin, and students who live on campus rely entirely on our network to communicate with the outside world," explains Mongrain. "With our previous flat network, broadcasts frequently took down the entire network. Clearly, we needed to address reliability."
Before, every time a user doing broadcasts brought the whole network to a halt, Mongrain and his staff had to physically isolate the affected switch to solve the problem, a time-consuming process during which the network was useless. Since installing the ProCurve-based network, communications have been maintained continuously.
Security is another important issue for Northland College, particularly now that wireless access has been established and the college has 802.1x in its wiring closets. "ProCurve's strong support for 802.1x standards makes it easy to enhance the security of our network," says Mongrain.
In addition, Mongrain and his staff can establish guest access for wireless users,
requiring guests to log onto the network through the secure wireless infrastructure. That means that visitors to the campus - from parents of students to Board of Trustees members attending three-times-a-year meetings - can be restricted to Internet-only access via the campus network. As a result, the college's network stays secure while still permitting appropriate access to campus
visitors.
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Northland College set up its ProCurve network so that wireless hotspots could be established
easily in any location on campus. "With ProCurve Switch 2600s in all the buildings, plus the ProCurve Wireless Access Point 420s, I can set up a hotspot anywhere in an hour," says Mongrain. "The new network infrastructure and Wi-Fi capabilities enable users on campus to roam seamlessly to any
spot."
In addition to the ability to "add wireless at will," Mongrain says the ProCurve network
also means "we can expand to new buildings whenever we want to." With future building
expansion in its cards, Northland College will be able to make good use of this capability.
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ProCurve Manager Plus (PCM+) network management software gives Mongrain and his staff much better control over all their network's operations, from a central location. "We can identify problems immediately and emotely correct or shut down individual switches," says Mongrain.
They have used PCM+ to set up virtual local area networks (VLANs) that segment the network processing load between student and faculty/staff use. "We have far more granular control over what students in their residence halls do with the network at various times of the day and night, and we can make sure administration has the necessary resources and bandwidth to meet the demands of the 9 to-5 business day," he says.
One of the most dramatic areas of time savings with the new network has been in phone changes. With the old system, every time a staff member switched offices the college's IT staff had to physically rewire the jack. "Now, people just pick up their phones and plug in at the new office," says Mongrain. Similarly, upgrading phones or setting up phones in new buildings can be done quickly, without the detailed planning and intricate wiring strategies of the past.
"ProCurve has decreased our overall workload in managing the network," Mongrain says. "That means we can get caught up on back burner projects and take on new ones. We can focus on providing services, versus keeping the network running or switching phone lines."
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"Internally, the biggest advantage of the ProCurve network is to the student body, who have voiced their appreciation for the vastly improved network," Mongrain continues. "They're really our customers. And at a small private school like this, the relationship with the students is close and quite special."
Northland College believes that the new network will help directly with recruiting top students to the prestigious but out-of-the-way campus. "With our location in a small town in northern Wisconsin, it's a huge plus for admissions to have a modern, impressive network and communications infrastructure," says Mongrain. "Parents of prospective students often ask about computer use and network access, and now we can assure them that we offer the best available resources in this day and age. Having a cutting-edge,
reliable network will help us compete with larger colleges."
- The reliable, high-performance ProCurve networking solution, backed by ProCurve's industry-leading lifetime warranty, brought an end to Northland College's frequent network outages.
- Using ProCurve Manager Plus networking management software, the college's IT staff can remotely control all aspects of the network, leaving them free to focus on projects of direct service to students.
- A PBX and VoIP telephony solution from Mitel running on the ProCurve network has eliminated the time-consuming task of physically switching phone lines every time a staff member moves offices.
- Installation of an advanced, reliable and secure ProCurve network is expected to help the prestigious but isolated college compete more effectively with larger institutions for top students.
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The ProCurve Networking business unit of HP delivers enterprise networking solutions comprising wired and wireless LAN and WAN networking products, services and solutions. Recognizing the necessary migration of intelligence and functionality to the network edge, the ProCurve Adaptive EDGE Architecture™ strategy is the industry's only comprehensive and inclusive network design strategy that is adaptable, scalable and completely interoperable for achieving command from the center with control to the network edge. ProCurve was positioned in the challenger quadrant in research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc.'s 2004 Magic Quadrant Report for Global Campus LANs.
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Hardware
Software, Services & Support
*Available in most countries, on most products, for as long as the original customer owns it. The ProCurve 9300m and 9400sl series routing switches, 8100fl series Interconnect Fabric switches and
700wl series access devices have a one-year limited warranty with extensions available.
**For the most up-to-date information, go to www.procurve.com.
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When you are ready to explore the benefits a ProCurve Networking solution can offer you, call HP at 1-800-975-7682.
To learn more about ProCurve Networking's Adaptive EDGE Architecture™ solutions, visit our home page.
Purchase: In the US, HP business solutions, products, and supplies can be purchased at your local HP partner, or bought directly from HP either online or by calling 800-613-2222.
Finance: HP finance plans provide all the benefits of new technology without the risk or cost of ownership. For details, call 888-999-4783.
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 or call 888-259-5707.
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