The speed of light leads the future: Hubei Sports Vocational College upgrades its all-optical network

As a sports vocational college integrating sports vocational teaching, sports training, and sports scientific research , Hubei Sports Vocational College actively promotes the construction of campus network and uses all-optical network technology to start the first phase of campus network construction, achieving full wired and wireless coverage of teaching and office areas, canteens, student dormitories and other areas, meeting the needs of high-speed Internet access and fully controllable management, and providing strong support for the high-quality development of school education and teaching.

Campus network usage encounters bottlenecks and upgrading is imperative

Hubei Sports Vocational College is located in the prime location of "Wuhan China Optics Valley" . It has many buildings including office buildings, teaching buildings, comprehensive buildings, shooting halls, athlete canteens, student apartments, etc., with a large management span. Before the campus network transformation and upgrade, the dormitory area was mainly invested and built by operators, and the campus teaching and office areas lacked overall wireless coverage. With the popularization of mobile terminals, the traditional wired implementation has a long life, the equipment has a long operation life, the network bandwidth is insufficient, and the operation and maintenance are complex and inefficient. Problems have become increasingly prominent.

In recent years, with the application of new teaching modes such as smart classrooms and online teaching platforms, the demand for network bandwidth has increased significantly, and higher requirements have been placed on the stability and flexibility of school networks. The original traditional Ethernet architecture has gradually exposed problems, and the optical upgrade of campus networks is imperative.

Introducing colorful light into the campus network brings new vitality to the school

In view of the complexity and diversity of the school's actual teaching and office operations, the school has set high standards for campus network construction: it must support high bandwidth to cope with large data transmission volumes, and simplify maintenance processes to reduce operating costs; at the same time, it must also have multi-business carrying capabilities to support diverse teaching applications; in addition, flexible network scalability is also indispensable to cope with possible future technology upgrades and business expansions.

"Simplified Network" Redefines Campus Network

Combining the experience of optical network construction and transformation solutions of many universities in Wuhan and the actual network usage needs of the school, the school finally adopted Ruijie's minimalist Ethernet color light solution to transform the all-optical network and tailored a high-speed, stable and intelligent all-optical network for the school.

The whole network architecture design adopts an advanced large two-layer minimalist architecture mode, and deploys Ruijie RG-N18010-E high-performance core authentication gateway at the core layer, forming a powerful campus network data core processing capability, supporting wired and wireless integration, IPv4/IPv6 integration, network traffic analysis and IoT management and control and other multi-service integration functions. The whole network architecture design is simplified, reducing the difficulty of information center operation and maintenance management, while reducing the fault handling cycle.

By collecting the access nodes of users of the entire campus network to the core authentication gateway device, the high-performance core authentication gateway is responsible for the campus network security authentication access control and enhanced security functions. A single device supports 9W Ipv4 / Ipv6 dual-stack terminal centralized authentication access capabilities , meeting the needs of the school 's flat optical network architecture.

Stable and smooth network full coverage

All wireless AP devices in the entire network support the latest 802.11ax (Wi-Fi6) technical standards and support optical port uplink. They can be flexibly deployed according to the characteristics and user density of different scenarios such as teaching, office, and outdoor squares. The office area adopts a centralized power supply solution with optical and electrical hybrid cables to achieve unified and safe power supply and data transmission, ensuring that the campus network wireless network is stable, smooth, and secure.

Cooperate with the network authentication system to realize flexible access control of internal and external networks and provide functions of different identity authentication strategies. Teachers and students only need to log in once to access the wireless campus network to meet the school's access needs. Through the cooperation of the core gateway device and the authentication system, management strategies can be set based on multiple elements such as user identity, location, time, terminal type, etc., to meet the various refined management needs of the campus network, and support user-unaware authentication functions, improve user authentication convenience and meet management requirements. Users do not need to repeat authentication multiple times within a specified time period. Support visitor QR code authentication to facilitate visitor access and visitor information management. After the construction of the campus wireless network, it can provide applications in a variety of scenarios and provide strong network support for teaching and office services.

Secure and passive simplified operation and maintenance

The teaching area uses CWDM wavelength division multiplexing technology to achieve 80G transmission rate on a single optical fiber, supporting 80G backbone bandwidth, ensuring fast and stable data transmission. Passive transparent convergence to the room uses optical fiber to enter the room, ensuring that the room has exclusive 10G bandwidth.

The network architecture has been changed from three layers to two layers, and optical fiber is deployed directly to each classroom and office room, reducing the space occupied by traditional network equipment in the weak-current room and weak-current well.

The design of the entire network architecture not only takes into account the current network needs, but also foresees the trend of informatization development of sports vocational colleges in the next 8-10 years, providing strong support for the long-term development of the school.

Fast and flexible information point expansion

Transparent convergence is connected to the core authentication gateway through optical fiber, which saves the deployment of backbone optical fiber lines. In addition, since the equipment is a passive design, the difficulty of network transformation construction is reduced. The subsequent launch of new services is also more flexible. It only needs to connect the internal network cable of the room to the POE all-optical switch at the entrance to achieve fast network access, and no complicated wiring work is required. The overall transformation was originally expected to take several months, but it took less than a month in the end, ensuring the continuity and stability of the school's teaching business.

Improve performance bandwidth by 10 times

After the optical network was built, it was measured that the wired access bandwidth increased from 90Mbps to 960Mbps, an increase of nearly 10 times. The wireless network bandwidth has reached a stable 450 Mbps . This upgrade ensures that every user can enjoy high-speed network connection, providing high-bandwidth support for daily office, resource access and other services. At the same time, it can be easily and smoothly upgraded by upgrading and replacing the optical modules at both ends in the future, and future expansion interfaces are reserved, which facilitates the implementation of future network expansion and reduces expansion costs.

A campus network that breaks boundaries

The campus network is not only a bridge connecting teachers and students, but also an important engine to promote the development of school information technology. Through the construction of this all-optical network, a set of unified authentication and management of wired, wireless, on-campus and off-campus accounts has been realized. Teachers and students can access the campus network conveniently and safely in any corner of the dormitory and campus, no longer restricted to specific areas or specific network environments, initially realizing the vision of "one network" on campus, and laying a solid foundation for the future development of campus networks.

The construction of the all-optical network has enabled Hubei Sports Vocational College to upgrade the entire campus network and update the office and teaching area network, which is a good practice of campus network optical transformation. The all-optical network is the "highway" for school information transmission. Its construction and commissioning provide a solid network foundation platform for school management innovation, teaching reform and management services, marking a key step in the school's journey of digital transformation in education, helping the school to improve its quality and upgrade its education.