How does a mountain city build an education "network"?

As an important part of the country's new infrastructure, the new education infrastructure is the basic support for achieving high-quality development of education. In 2021, the Ministry of Education and six other departments issued relevant deployment opinions and clearly stated that by 2025, a new education infrastructure system with optimized structure, intensive and efficient, safe and reliable will be basically formed.

Under this macro-guidance, the mountain city of Chongqing responded positively and, based on local conditions, embarked on its own distinctive exploration path.

In April 2023, with the convening of the Digital Chongqing Construction Conference, Chongqing Municipal Party Committee Secretary Yuan Jiajun pointed out that it is necessary to grasp the integrated intelligent public data platform, accelerate the formation of a "cloud" for computing power storage, a "network" for communication transmission, a "group of libraries" for data elements, and a "book" for digital resources, so as to reduce duplication of construction and resource dispersion. Since then, the construction of Digital Chongqing has officially sounded the clarion call.

Focusing on the digitalization of education, one network for education and one network for information services have become rigid needs.

To achieve efficient connectivity of digital infrastructure, it is necessary to build a dedicated education network, strengthen the connection between the national backbone network, provincial and municipal education networks, and school campus networks, and realize unified management of network addresses, domain names, and users; to open up the main arteries of digital infrastructure, it is necessary to promote the upgrade of campus LAN, introduce 5G, gigabit wireless LAN and other methods, and achieve full coverage of campus wireless networks.

So what challenges does Chongqing face in its journey of digital transformation of general education? What countermeasures have been taken in the process of building a network foundation? What implementation experiences can be used for reference?

At the 83rd China Education Equipment Exhibition, Hu Jubo, an information technology expert from the Ministry of Education and leader of the expert group of the Chongqing Education Equipment Association, shared his experience, allowing us to witness the Chongqing story of the transformation of the digital network base of education.

Overcoming three barriers: scattered resources, multiple applications, and security difficulties

Looking at the actual situation of Chongqing's education network construction, Hu Jubo believes that the first three challenges are faced.

First, educational resources are scattered. The construction of educational resource infrastructure is seriously decentralized, regional connectivity is insufficient, the education network architecture and construction conditions at all levels are uneven, and there is a lack of unified standards, which seriously affects the interoperability of education networks and the sharing of educational resources.

Second, the number of information-based education applications has increased dramatically. Large bandwidth, high reliability, high resilience, low latency, and low jitter have become key network requirements. Traditional education networks only respond to these requirements through QoS solutions, which are often insufficient.

Third, network security is difficult to guarantee. With the promotion of general education information-based teaching methods, the frequency of students accessing network resources has increased rapidly. How to ensure green and safe Internet access has become a problem. At the same time, the education network needs to implement the relevant requirements of network security level protection 2.0.

In response to these three major challenges, adhering to the principles of "intensive and efficient, structural optimization, safety and reliability", Chongqing General Education set corresponding goals starting from platform standards, business load, and network security.

• Unified standards : Infrastructure construction adopts a unified protocol architecture to build a unified large platform
• Flexible load-bearing : On the education-specific network, you can flexibly and quickly build an education subnet system that meets the requirements according to different business needs.
• Global security : meet the requirements of green Internet access, and ensure the security of the school's external network access and internal network, forming a comprehensive three-dimensional protection

In order to achieve the above core goals, Chongqing has focused on exploring several areas:

First, we will build an efficient and secure city-level education network as the city's education information highway, aiming to connect educational institutions at all levels in the city and form a unified education data exchange and resource sharing platform;

Furthermore, under the framework of the municipal education network, we will actively promote the construction and upgrading of district and county metropolitan area networks to accelerate the balanced distribution and efficient use of educational resources in grassroots educational units;

At the same time, the all-optical campus construction project was launched to achieve direct fiber optic connection from the core computer room to classrooms and offices, improve the bandwidth and stability of the campus network, and reduce maintenance costs by simplifying the network architecture.

Municipal Education Network: Creative Adoption of SDN+SRv6 Technology

Enabling multi-service carrying

So how was it done specifically? Looking back at the process of Chongqing's construction of a dedicated education network, we can clearly see the traces of change.

In 2017, the Chongqing Education Network entered the first phase of construction. At that time, the backbone education network jumped to 100G. The network design relied on 6 core nodes to achieve the connection of the education metropolitan area network of 38 districts and counties in the city, and at the same time included 69 higher education institutions and continuing education institutions to build an education "one network".

Hu Jubo mentioned: "In recent years, based on the cloud migration strategy uniformly implemented by the Chongqing Municipal Government, some key applications in districts and counties have been gradually migrated to the cloud, and the entire backbone network system has also undergone major changes. As a result, the application of the entire education network has become unsatisfactory."

In 2023, Chongqing launched the second phase of construction of the education-dedicated network, adding six new units including the Municipal Education Examination Institute, increasing the number of core nodes to eight, and building dozens of application systems such as video conferencing, office OA, Chongqing Education Cloud, and three classroom cloud platforms.

Chongqing City innovatively adopts SDN+SRv6 fusion technology and plans to build multiple business virtual networks on an education metropolitan area network. Related resources can be managed independently, multiple services can be run in parallel, and the overall performance of the city's education metropolitan area network can be improved.

District and county education metropolitan area network: realize "1 network resource center,

1 identity management center, 1 security operation and maintenance center"

District and county education metropolitan area network: realize "1 network resource center, 1 identity management center, 1 security operation and maintenance center"

The district and county metropolitan area network is also an important part of the digital base of education. The district and county metropolitan area network is more focused on the specific implementation and maintenance of network construction at the district and county levels, paying attention to the stable operation of the network within the region, user access management, and efficient interconnection and data sharing with the municipal network.

Regarding the construction of the metropolitan area network for education in various districts and counties in Chongqing, Hu Jubo pointed out the typical difficulties encountered in the transformation process: With the evolution of digital education, a large number of mobile devices introduced in teaching activities have put a severe test on traditional terminal management and authentication methods. At the same time, teachers' increasing dependence on wireless networks has prompted the metropolitan area network to accelerate the deployment of wireless network coverage.

Therefore, how to build an on-demand, intelligently orchestrated ubiquitous access network environment, break boundaries, and realize networking as soon as people access it, has become a core issue that needs to be urgently addressed in the district and county education metropolitan area network.

Around this center, Chongqing City relied on advanced technology foundation to weave a large business orchestration network, and through the two-network and four-in-one strategy, successfully built a 5G+ borderless education private network, and finally realized the networking solution of "one network resource center, one identity management center, and one security operation and maintenance center."

The so-called "two networks and four integrations" refers to "5G network and district-level education network" and "four integrations" refers to "fixed-mobile integration, network integration, data integration, and identity integration". In other words, this strategy achieves comprehensive network coverage and intelligent management through the 5G+ global education network based on identity integration, unifies equipment and application management, and ensures unimpeded data flow. It not only provides flexible and high-speed network access for education management departments and schools, but also provides teachers and students with the ability to easily access educational resources both inside and outside the school.

Hu Jubo emphasized that the deep integration of 5G slicing and optical network slicing has laid a solid foundation for building a network resource center. Ruijie Network's 5G+ education private network integration solution integrates 5G network slicing with education private network service slicing, realizes the collaborative construction of 5G network and education private network all-optical network, creates a network resource center with flexible service end arrangement, and realizes the intelligent allocation of network resources.

Taking the Chongqing Shapingba District Education Metropolitan Area Network construction project as an example, Ruijie's 5G+ global education private network solution successfully built a network resource center and achieved full coverage of 5G networks by integrating 5G, all-optical, IPv6, SDN and other technologies. By building a unified identity middle platform and a security operation and maintenance management center, it meets the needs of the education industry in terms of connection, computing and security.

All-optical network enters campus: the transformation from optical fiber to copper fiber is in progress

Under the general trend of optical fiber replacing copper, the introduction of all-optical networks into campuses is also an inevitable development of the times.

Hu Jubo said: Optical network construction has developed rapidly in recent years, including FIRST optical network, campus POL, and GPON all-optical network. Later, the emergence of Ethernet optical network technology provided more options for optical network transformation.

Ethernet all-optical network does have its unique advantages in campus construction. As a passive optical network technology based on Ethernet standards, its high-speed data transmission and low latency characteristics can fully meet the needs of applications such as video teaching and online examinations; the all-optical network uses passive optical splitters instead of active devices, which reduces failure points, improves reliability, and also reduces power consumption and maintenance costs; in addition, as the demand for education grows, the all-optical network can flexibly expand network coverage and the number of users, while supporting smooth upgrades to higher rates without replacing existing infrastructure.

It is worth mentioning that Ruijie Networks, as an ICT infrastructure provider, has been committed to promoting the innovation of Ethernet all-optical network technology. For example, in 2022, Ruijie released the color optical solution, introduced wavelength division technology into the campus, and then in 2023, integrated wavelength division technology with switches to further simplify the physical layer design of the network.

Hu Jubo pointed out that the color optical network system has the characteristics of few failure points, high stability, large bandwidth, strong compatibility and flexible expansion. In the space-constrained weak current room environment, color optical technology can maximize the use of limited optical fiber resources and support more users and services. Therefore, it has gradually become one of the most trusted and preferred solutions in campus network construction.

"In this way, we changed our intermediate active equipment into passive equipment. After the change, the network structure became simpler and the equipment became better, so management became more and more convenient."

Chongqing Guangyangwan Coral Middle School, located in Nan'an District, adopted Ruijie's simplified Ethernet all-optical network solution during the construction of the all-optical network, and successfully realized the construction of a campus network that integrates wired and wireless networks and network security.

In terms of bandwidth, this solution provides 1:1 fiber optic access to the room and exclusive 10 Gigabit bandwidth, which can carry any high-performance business. In terms of experience, the Aurora switch has a multi-rate 5G POE electrical port, which can optimize Wi-Fi 6 performance and enhance the wireless experience. In terms of deployment, it is plug-and-play with no configuration required and can be quickly put online in 1 minute. In terms of upgrades, business expansion does not require the use of fiber optic links, and the upgrade is smooth and once and for all.

Conclusion

From the transformation and upgrading of the municipal education network to the comprehensive coverage of the district and county education metropolitan area network, coupled with the rapid development of all-optical networks on campus, Chongqing's story in the process of digital transformation of education has only revealed a corner.

But by glancing at some of these threads and the smart benchmarks that stand among them, we can also understand that building a digital foundation for education is never a one-day job. It is a protracted battle involving technological innovation, resource integration, and the reshaping of educational concepts.

Chongqing's practice is not only a typical example of new local education infrastructure, but also a microcosm of the entire education industry's experience in the new wave of technology, and it has written a prelude to the opening of a new era of smart education.