Ether color light empowers the implementation of smart campus construction standards

Starting with the "optical fiber replacing copper fiber", the information and communication network has been continuously accelerated through "optical fiber transformation", laying a solid foundation for the development of the digital economy and becoming a "new driving force" for various industries to achieve high-quality development and digital transformation. In this context, the education sector, as an important part of the country's informatization construction, the upgrading of its network infrastructure is particularly urgent and important.

In 2021, the Ministry of Education and six other departments issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Construction of New Education Infrastructure and Building a High-quality Education Support System" (hereinafter referred to as the Opinions), covering 20 key construction directions in six categories, including new infrastructure for digital resources and new infrastructure for smart campuses. The Opinions propose to build a dedicated education network, expand the school export bandwidth as needed, and achieve requirements such as 10G to the county, 1G to the school, and 100M to the class for fixed broadband networks in primary and secondary schools. Secondly, the Opinions propose to promote the upgrade of campus LANs to ensure high-speed access to campus resources and applications. Through 5G, 1G wireless LAN and other means, full coverage of campus wireless networks can be achieved. In 2022, the "Key Points for the Work of the Ministry of Education in 2022" was released, proposing the implementation of a strategic action plan for the digitalization of education. It emphasizes the need to strengthen the construction of network platforms and create an environment conducive to the development of digital education.

Standards guide campus networks towards a new stage of Ethernet-based all-optical networks

Driven by strong policies, my country's digital campus construction is in full swing, and the business of primary and secondary school campuses is constantly evolving, and the business access requirements of various subdivided scenarios are becoming more complex. For example, in a typical digital campus of primary and secondary schools, office scenarios usually require frequent data sharing and transmission, cross-room printing, etc.; classroom scenarios need to support comprehensive teaching terminals such as podium computers, multimedia large screens, tablet teaching, and three classrooms, and there are as many as several to more than a dozen information access points in the classroom; student computer rooms are an important support for current information technology teaching. There are usually 50 to 60 internal terminals in the computer room, and the internal data forwarding traffic is large; in campus security and broadcasting scenarios, there are also needs for access to multiple terminals such as broadcasting and cameras. Therefore, traditional campus network solutions face more and more challenges in supporting the informatization construction of primary and secondary schools.

First, the original network architecture had problems such as high duplication of construction costs, difficulty in dividing services and mutual interference, and traditional Ethernet networks were unable to bear the explosive business application needs; secondly, with the increase in classroom information points, the existing network architecture faced problems such as high bridge pressure, difficult network transformation and slow new business launch, making business expansion complicated; thirdly, the bandwidth demand for teaching business applications increased dramatically, and the experience of teachers and students could not be guaranteed. The network bandwidth demand evolved from gigabit to 10 gigabit, but network cables had bandwidth limitations and could not support smooth upgrades.

The PON solution is deployed in the form of splitting and bandwidth sharing. For high-concurrency and high-bandwidth services in teaching, such as online high-definition video and VR, after entering the room through 1:8 or 1:16 splitting, it is easy to experience freezes and audio and video asynchrony, which cannot meet normal teaching needs at all.

At the same time, after the introduction of the PON solution, some of the school's businesses are still running on the Ethernet protocol network. Since a protocol different from Ethernet is used, operation and maintenance personnel need to maintain both the PON and Ethernet networks at the same time. The technical threshold for carrying out operation and maintenance business is also higher, which greatly increases the workload and difficulty of operation and maintenance, and has an adverse impact on operation and maintenance efficiency and user experience.

Against this backdrop, educational institutions at all levels are actively looking for new technology routes based on "all-optical networks". "Ethernet all-optical" has entered the sights of educational institutions at all levels with its mature technology, high bandwidth, and advantages of optical fiber networking. After multiple verifications, some provinces have begun to use "Ethernet all-optical" and "optical fiber into the room" as the construction standards for smart campuses, and have issued a number of guidelines for the construction of smart campuses, providing standard guidance for campus network upgrades, such as:

• Fujian Province mentioned in the "Guidelines for the Construction of Provincial "Smart Campus Pilot Schools (Primary and Secondary Schools) " that "schools have fiber-optic access to the Internet or education-specific networks, gigabit access to schools, and fiber-optic access to classrooms and rooms." "The campus network uniformly uses the Ethernet protocol, and network services are fully covered. Wireless campus network equipment uses fiber-optic connections to ensure transmission bandwidth, and the wireless campus network covers major teaching, office, and activity venues. A fully functional network operation and maintenance management platform has been built."
• The "Guidelines for the Construction of Digital Campuses for Primary and Secondary Schools in Yunnan Province" mentions "network environment, including campus network and network data security. Schools build fiber-optic campus networks and wireless networks, covering teaching areas, office areas, living areas and other places, with information point bandwidth greater than 100 megabits. Access to the education network is based on an average downlink bandwidth of no less than 4 megabits per student and an uplink bandwidth of no less than 0.8 megabits per student; implement network security systems, ensure the security of education data, and achieve green Internet access."
• The "Opinions of the Henan Provincial Department of Education on Implementing the Digital Campus Improvement Action for Primary and Secondary Schools" proposed "Upgrading the campus network. Incorporating the network environment into the basic standards for school conditions, carrying out campus network upgrades and renovations, encouraging the use of Ethernet optical network models, and building a high-bandwidth, low-latency campus all-optical network with ubiquitous access perception and intelligent operation and maintenance to achieve full coverage of campus wireless networks."
  

Based on the standards and requirements for the construction of the next generation of smart campuses, it is not difficult to find that the new smart campus network has the following common requirements:

1. Simple architecture, mature technology, and multi-network integration;

2. High performance supports high-speed data transmission and has good scalability;

3. Intelligent operation and maintenance, easy to deploy and maintain;

4. Full wireless high-speed coverage.

"Colored Light" promotes the implementation of new standards for new smart campuses

Focusing on these requirements, education departments, schools, and manufacturers are constantly exploring solutions that are more suitable for digital campuses. Based on mature Ethernet technology, higher-performance optical media, and intelligent operation and maintenance management that are essential in digital transformation, Ruijie has proposed a minimalist Ethernet all-optical solution, and has continuously innovated to introduce Ethernet color optical technology for smart campuses, creating a faster, simpler, and more secure network solution, and continuously launching a series of new products with innovative and scenario-based capabilities for various scenarios of smart education.

1. In terms of architecture, the simplified Ethernet all-optical solution uses a two-layer passive Ethernet all-optical network to carry multiple services, and applies Ethernet color light technology on a large scale, replacing the original active aggregation of the building with passive transparent aggregation, truly realizing that the aggregation node is completely passive and the weak current room has zero maintenance; not only that, the solution also innovatively integrates color light technology with switches, transmitting 8 pairs of optical signals of different wavelengths in one optical fiber, replacing the previous 8 optical fibers, and effectively saving more than 85% of backbone optical cable resources.

2. In terms of performance , unlike the PON point-to-multipoint bandwidth sharing mode, the minimalist optical solution not only adopts the deployment method of fiber into the room, but also combines and splits optical signals of different wavelengths, so that the trunk optical fiber between the hyper-aggregation module and the transparent convergence can transmit multiple optical signals at the same time without interfering with each other, ensuring exclusive bandwidth into the room, bringing school customers a high-performance network experience of 1:1 Gigabit/10 Gigabit bandwidth into the room, and also better supporting high-bandwidth and easy expansion needs.

3. In terms of operation and maintenance, the solution follows the mature Ethernet architecture, which is more friendly to IT operation and maintenance personnel. There is no need to learn new protocols and technologies, and it can be quickly started with zero technical threshold and zero cost, avoiding the dilemma of "two networks" in operation and maintenance. The solution is equipped with INC Network Intent Commander or built-in intelligent operation and maintenance system EMB, which can create a one-stop switching, wireless, routing and security network equipment management and operation environment for network administrators to achieve efficient operation and maintenance.

4. In terms of wireless coverage, through the combination of wired all-optical network and wireless Wi-Fi 7, the minimalist optical backbone network adopts a large two-layer architecture, supports 2.5G/10G indoors, and the terminal matches the new generation of Wi-Fi 7 AP in multiple scenarios, using the all-optical network to provide performance support for high-speed wireless.

Large-scale application of Ethernet color light into the room exceeded 100,000

Over the past three years, the minimalist optical solution has blossomed across the country and has entered many education bureaus and primary and secondary schools, building a network connection foundation for these customers to develop their business in the next 10 years. The leap of Ethernet color light has also achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 100,000 rooms, but minimalist optical will "not stop there" and looks forward to continuously increasing its technological innovation capabilities to continuously empower the "outstanding" development of smart campuses.