Shenyang University: All-optical wireless optimizes application experience and creates a "easy-to-use and easy-to-use" campus network

Shenyang University is one of the universities with the longest history and the most comprehensive disciplines in Liaoning Province. In recent years, our school has successively become a university in the Ministry of Education's Excellent Engineer Training Program and the first batch of demonstration universities in Liaoning Province that have transformed into application- oriented universities () , demonstration universities for innovation and entrepreneurship education, demonstration schools for labor education, and demonstration universities for overseas study education. Faced with the goal of building a first-class university in the country among similar institutions and the new requirements for promoting high-quality development of schools, our old traditional wired Ethernet campus network is unsustainable. How to adopt more advanced and mature IT technologies to achieve a comprehensive renewal of the campus network has become an urgent challenge we face.

Say goodbye to "old wired"

End the bad experience

Before the campus network upgrade project was launched, our campus network was mainly built by operators, creating a traditional wired Ethernet network for teaching and office use, with only sporadic wireless network coverage. After years of operation, the "bottleneck effect" of this old wired network has become increasingly prominent.

Carrying capacity encounters bottleneck

In order to achieve the goal of building a first-class university in the country among similar institutions, our school has actively built a number of modern industrial colleges, and has carried out in-depth school-enterprise cooperation and school-institute linkage with many well-known enterprises and research institutes, and established a series of advanced teaching facilities such as experimental training centers and virtual simulation experimental teaching centers. These new teaching and service applications have put forward higher expectations for the network's carrying capacity and scalability. The transmission carrying capacity of the original network has obviously lagged behind the actual application needs. After years of intermittent construction, most of the wired Ethernet network of the school at that time was relatively old, and the difficulty of operation and maintenance gradually increased. The bigger shortcoming was insufficient carrying. At that time, the network bandwidth export was less than 2G, and the equipment capacity was mostly 1000M, and only 100M reached the desktop. Due to the bottleneck of bandwidth and carrying rate, when there were many network users, the utilization rate of high-bandwidth applications increased, which often caused conflicts in the overall network environment, and it was more difficult to support the requirements of large data flow and high-definition video applications such as virtual simulation laboratories.

Application experience needs to be improved

In recent years, the use of desktop computers by freshmen has become less and less common, and has been replaced by a wider range of mobile access needs. However, our campus network has long been wired, with only some student dormitories covered by wireless, and there is a lack of systematic overall planning and optimization of wireless networks. Limited by the overall campus network environment with insufficient bandwidth, the network we can provide to students can only be limited to a maximum speed of 10 megabits, and mobile devices are difficult to use. We often hear students complain that "there is no signal here, there is no signal there" or that they can never connect to the Internet. The poor experience also leads to students rarely using the campus network, and they only access it when they need to handle necessary on-campus business.

For a university with 19 teaching colleges, a building area of ​​500,600 square meters, and more than 17,000 full-time students, how to quickly and smoothly upgrade and transform the campus network and, while improving network capabilities, make our campus network "easy to use and enjoyable" for teachers and students is something we must actively do.

Embracing “All-Optical Wireless”

Start the comprehensive upgrade and transformation of the campus network

According to the requirements of high-quality development of the school, combined with the actual needs of teaching applications, management services and campus applications of teachers and students, we are committed to achieving the goal of "two increases and one reduction" through the implementation of campus network upgrades and renovations: improving the convenience of teachers and students to access the Internet, making the campus network easy to use and love to use; improving the network carrying capacity, so that the business experience is significantly improved; reducing the burden of network operation and maintenance, making management more efficient and accurate. Based on this goal, and combined with the development trend of 5G and other communication technology applications, our school decided to gradually stop using wired and fully embrace "all-optical wireless" technology during the campus network upgrade and renovation process. When choosing a solution, we comprehensively considered the technical advancement, architecture sustainability, expansion convenience, security and reliability, compatibility with the original network equipment, and full reuse, and finally chose Ruijie Network's minimalist Ethernet color light solution to start the upgrade and renovation of our school's campus network. This is also the choice made based on the good experience of network solution capabilities and after-sales service since the continuous cooperation with Ruijie Network in 2008.

Figure: Shenyang University wireless network topology

In the construction of this all-optical wireless campus network, our school adopts a large two-layer architecture, and the optical fiber is directly connected from the core switch to the access device. The solution innovatively applies color light technology, based on wavelength division multiplexing to improve the transmission efficiency on a single-core optical fiber, save campus trunk optical fiber, and achieve 1:1 bandwidth into the room. In large-scale office buildings, teaching buildings and dormitory buildings, passive transparent convergence equipment is used to replace the active equipment of traditional networks, reducing the number of fault points. Then, a new type of optical-electrical hybrid cable is used to connect the wireless AP through the star host. An optical-electrical hybrid cable completes data transmission and POE power supply at the same time. While giving full play to the performance of the wireless AP, it also saves weak current wiring space, improves the original messy indoor wiring environment, and ensures simple deployment and power safety indoors. At the same time, some of the original wireless devices in use are also successfully connected to the new network by fully reusing the old ones, with better compatibility and flexibility.

Figure: The actual deployment effect of the all-optical wireless campus network Ethernet color light

This upgrade and renovation installed more than 4,400 wireless AP devices of various models, more than 200 wireless centralized power supply hosts, and more than 30 passive transparent aggregation devices in buildings, covering all student dormitories, teaching and office buildings, and major public areas. The teaching and office of faculty and staff use dedicated line exports to ensure stability; students use the operator's Internet link to facilitate operation and have a clear network structure.

Unleashing “Diverse Value”

Build a new digital foundation for high-quality development

The upgraded all-optical wireless campus network has brought us a brand new application experience in actual use.

Experience upgrade - better and more enjoyable to use

The most tangible feeling of teachers and students is that the campus network has become easier to use and they love to use it more. Through upgrades and renovations, the bandwidth of the campus network has been increased from a maximum of 100 megabits to 2.5G. After the optical network is introduced into the room, the guaranteed bandwidth for students in the teaching and living areas to access the Internet can be upgraded to 200 megabits. Through full wireless coverage and non-perceptual authentication, the network application experience of teachers and students has been greatly improved while meeting the basic requirements of network security. The campus is basically fully covered by wireless signals, and both online training courses and learning and life applications in the dormitory can be carried out smoothly. Teachers and students will not only use the campus network to handle school teaching applications and daily service management and other related businesses, but are also willing to access life applications through the campus network more.

Figure: Actual measurement of students’ internet speed

Load-carrying upgrade - higher energy, more powerful

While providing teachers and students with ubiquitous, anytime, anywhere campus Internet access services, the upgraded campus network uses optical fiber transmission instead of traditional twisted pair cables, and cooperates with high-speed APs that support Wi-Fi 6, breaking through the bottlenecks of incomplete network coverage, low bandwidth, and insufficient equipment carrying capacity. The use effect and carrying capacity of the campus network have been greatly improved. It has achieved 10G to buildings and 1G to terminals, which can better support a variety of new teaching methods such as smart classrooms, regular recording and broadcasting, online, offline, and online and offline integrated synchronous teaching. At the same time, it also provides a more powerful basic network support for the smooth operation and use of applications such as teaching affairs, OA, assets, finance, and one-stop services. The comprehensive wirelessization of the campus network has also made us ready in advance to meet the various wireless access application needs such as 5G in the future.

Management upgrade—more efficient and more convenient

Due to the large area and many buildings of our school, the original campus network cross-connected more than 100 weak current rooms through multiple handover boxes, which made daily maintenance difficult. Whenever a fault point appeared, maintenance personnel had to check it step by step, and could not locate it quickly, and could not respond to and solve user problems in time. The current Ethernet color light solution uses passive transparent convergence equipment to connect the star host, which greatly reduces the number of fault points. Through the wireless network management software WIS, operation and maintenance personnel can quickly locate the fault location, which reduces the pressure of daily operation and maintenance, and at the same time greatly reduces the complaint rate of the campus network. Moreover, the visual operation and maintenance management method of the entire network and direct management of APs have significantly improved the granularity of our network management. In addition, the realization of zero-configuration online equipment and mobile operation and maintenance through SDN has also reduced the difficulty of operation and maintenance and improved the efficiency of operation and maintenance.

Through this upgrade and renovation project, our school has completed the construction of an all-optical wireless campus network covering the entire school. At present, our campus network is moving towards a more optimized network, more sophisticated management, more convenient maintenance, and more timely repair response to further improve and perfect this new digital foundation that supports the high-quality development of the school. At the same time, based on this network, we will further improve the system software from the perspective of the overall informatization of the school, realize a unified portal and overall one-stop service, and contribute new digital power to support our school in promoting the construction of a first-class university in the country among similar institutions.