Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), has deployed a 10 Gbps network backbone spanning its five campuses to accommodate the continued growth of data traffic from academic and administrative systems.
The new backbone, which runs on switching routers from Brocade, has enabled the university to reduce costs and streamline management by migrating applications that previously ran over separate networks onto a single infrastructure.
The Brocade solution also paves the way for SJTU to pursue its interests in Software-Defined Networking (SDN), both at an academic level and as a way to support digital campus service innovation.
"We operate a large and complex network that has to reliably deliver services to tens of thousands of wired and wireless devices across our campuses," said Rui Xie, director of Network Information at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
One of China's oldest universities,SJTU has grown substantially since the late 1970s. The university now also encompasses education in business, law, medicine, life science, and social sciences. It has a student population of almost 40,000 -- more than half of whom are studying for post-graduates degrees -- and a faculty of more than 1,900 professors and associate professors, including 15 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and 20 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Brocade network engineers worked with SJTU to devise a solution that meet its needs, based around Brocade MLXe Core Router and terabit-scale switch fabrics that enable the university to run the backbone at 10 Gbps -- with the capability to support 40 and 100 Gbps wire-speed interfaces if and when they are needed.