The History Of The Campus Network

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

The campus network is that portion of computing infrastructure which provides network communication services when accessed and resources to students, staff and faculty. It also provides services for devices spread over a geographical location. It is spread over buildings, or group of buildings within the geographical area. The campus network acts as the core or backbone which provides interconnectivity between other parts of overall network within the campus. There can be multiple campus sites distributed worldwide which provides user access to its local backbone network. The backbone network often interconnects the network access, data center and Local Area Network (LAN) portions of the campus network.

The campus backbone connects buildings within the network. Centralized server is connected to the campus backbone. It provides server resources to the end users such as print, file, e-mail, application, and so on. The campus backbone should support network monitoring, security, logging, troubleshooting and other function. Therefore network management is one of the important components of the campus backbone network.

The data center is a facility used to keep Servers, computing systems and its components of the network. Examples servers are used to keep database, house mail etc of the campus network.

The LANs of the network contains switches, routers, and others equipments used to interconnect a main building to other branch buildings and interconnect multiple sites. In large networks, connecting data centers requires higher bandwidth links. LAN technologies, such as Token Ring, Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet are utilized for connecting the campus buildings.

A large Campus network with group of buildings can use Wide Area Network (WAN) technology to interconnect the buildings.

Internet Edge is part of the network that comprises of switches, routers, firewalls, and network devices which interconnect the network of the campus to the Internet.

Hierarchical Campus Network

The network designer uses the hierarchical network model which provides the framework that is used by the designer to ensure the network is flexible, easily implemented and troubleshoot.

Hierarchical network model consists of three layers shown in the figure:

Access Layer: The campus network is accessed by local and remote users through access layer. It provides connectivity for hosts and devices.

Distribution Layer: It interconnects the local networks. A distribution layer is a boundary between access and core layers.

Core Layer: The backbone or core layer provides with high speed network connectivity and transportation of distribution layer devices.

Design of Campus Network

Local area network has been enhanced due to its vast use of LAN switching at data link layer to increase performance. It also provides with more bandwidth requirement to meet networking applications. LAN switches are implemented in campus networks which provide increasing bandwidth for better performance and better throughput for local servers. LAN switches are deployed toward the network’s edge in the wiring closets. By this design shared concentrator hubs are replaced by switches where the end users are provided with higher bandwidth connections.

C:\Users\Akshay\Desktop\Design.jpg

The network in the Layer 3 uses switches to interconnect workgroups and to provide services such as security, traffic management and quality of service (QoS). Switched networks are integrated by routing which provides stability, security and control to build scalable network.

In Layer 2 switching is done by LAN switches, whereas in Layer 3 routers are used for networking. These two functions of networking are integrated to common platforms. One example is multilayer switches which provide both Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionality.

To build good campus network various LAN technologies used are:

Routing: LANs in campus network are interconnected through routing. It is done either by switching in Layer 3 or routing Layer 3 switches.

Gigabit Ethernet: Gigabit Ethernet belongs to Ethernet family of networking which has data transfer rate of 1 Gigabit per second. It provides increased speed over Fast Ethernet. The network backbone is supported with high bandwidth capacity through Gigabit Ethernet.

LAN switching: There are two switching technologies implemented:

Ethernet switching: The Ethernet segment in the network for each connection is provided by Ethernet switching. It is done through Layer 2 Ethernet switching. This provides the base of the network.

Token Ring: The Token Ring technology is implemented here, but it offers the same functionalities of Ethernet switching. Token Ring is used has source route bridge.

ATM switching: Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching offers higher bandwidth. Voice, video and data are obtained by high speed switching.

Routing Protocols

Routers control the broadcasting of information to other nodes in a network. The information exchange of network destinations takes place by several routing protocol. Routers are used to forward the packets from one destination to other. This information is exchanged by routers. The lists of routing protocols are given below:

For TCP/IP routing:

Routing Information Protocol (RIP)

Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (ISIS)

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM)

For AppleTalk routing:

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)

Routing Table Maintenance Protocol (RTMP)

Criteria

The network design of the campus is done bases of the following properties:

The processing speed of the various devices used in the network.

The number of ports connected in various network devices such as routers, switches and so on.

The amount of memory needed for operating successful campus network.

Throughput of packets in the network measured per second.

The various technologies of LAN and WAN used in building the network.

Amount of latency measured when the data is relayed from the device.

Media support. (Cabling of the campus network)

Configuration of the network should be easy.

Network management and Security.

The time measured when failure of a system which occurs during some operation is called Mean time between failures (MTBF).

The time required to recovery from the system failure is called Mean time to recovery (MTTR).

Packet filtering.

QoS features supported to enhance the network.

Power supply should be redundant.

Now criteria for bridges and switches used in the network design:

Support for bridging technologies in the network such as remote and transparent bridging, and so on.

Number of MAC addresses.

Port security.

Support for Adaptive switching in the network.

Support for VLAN technologies.

Multicast application supported. (Example Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP) used to handle multicast management on the network.)

The switching and routing tables require memory.

Criteria for routers used in the network design:

Support for routing protocols in the network.

Multicast application support within the network.

Support for network layer protocols.

Encryption of data.

Advanced switching and queuing system.

Features for routers optimization.

Criteria for wireless points used in the network design:

Virtual LAN support.

Ethernet ports uplink speed.

Speed of the wireless devices.

Support services such as Network Address Translation (NAT), IP routing and various other services.

The range of the wireless antenna.

Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) used for security enhancement.

Implementation of Robust Security Network (RSN).

Support for encryption.

Each user is given a dynamic key and unique key and support for Message integrity check (MIC).

User authentication.

One-time password support.

Publicly Secure Packet Forwarding (PSPF) within the network has to be supported.

Optimization Features of Campus network devices

The need for optimization of campus network devices where QoS feature is important in the network design. The bandwidth available is lower when compared to the campus; QoS is required to increase the bandwidth in Wide area network. The requirement of QoS in LAN is driven by low delay and jitter in the switches and routers. Usually situation occurs where the demand for bandwidth sometimes exceeds the available bandwidth of the campus network. The consideration of the QoS features for campus network is one of the important tasks in selecting the internetworking campus devices.

In hierarchical campus network the uplink mainly requires QoS features where it is covered from distribution layer to core layer in the design. Sometimes uplinks require QoS from access to distribution layer. When there are many ports in the network the speed at the ports are also greater. The speed of the uplink port is low when compared to summation of all the port speed of a switch where the devices connected in the network. The congestion is unavoidable when the access ports are fully utilized in the uplink port.

The switches in the access layer will decide the QoS based on traffic in the input port. In uplink port the particular port with traffic can be declared as high priority. Traffic in access layer at output port are served first, this is accomplished using scheduling mechanism. The input traffic is monitored and can be marked which passes switches of distribution layer and core layer. This is performed to ensure required services when passing through layers within the network.

The Layer 3 data is utilized to provide QoS for distribution layer and core layer switches. Layer 3 contains information such as port numbers, source IP address and destination IP address. It also contains data on QoS of bits in IP packet. The flow of traffic takes place both directions in distribution layer and core layer switches which are provided by QoS.

Background Information of the Campus

Lancaster University is one of the top colleges in the United Kingdom that has enrollment of approximately over 12,000 students from 120 countries each year, 2500 faculty and staff. There are nine colleges in which 8 are undergraduate colleges, and one postgraduate college. There are courses taught such as business, computing, communication, finance and engineering.The main campus has several buildings with a network point of presence. The network provides 6,625 residents with high-speed broadband. Daily it serves 5050 university workstations across the campus.

The increase in enrollment of students and faculty each year has made network designer to develop the campus network which meets the performance and reliability problems of the network. This may cause problems such as students unable to submit the coursework within the given deadline; faculty and staff cannot upload grades of the students properly, and so on. If such network problem occurs in the campus than the students have to submit the coursework in person to the faculty. Students have to be informed each time if there is any announcement made by the faculty.

Reasons to increase the campus network:

Increase in the student enrollment each year.

By enhancing campus network the participation of students and faculty in research field will improve.

This resolves the problem of student coursework submission.

Enhanced security. (Prevents attack from intruders)

It should allow parents and visitors to easily access the internet facilities in the campus.

Technical Details

The network designer listed the following elements based on the network improvement structure which will enhance the performance of the campus network design.

The IP address scheme has to be redesigned.

Network should provide security.

Students are allowed to access the internet and network in campus with the private wireless network points.

The response times for interactive applications have to be approximately 1/10th second or even less.

Internet connections bandwidth has to be increased. This will support for new application to run smoothly in the campus network and also help current applications to be expanded.

Efficiency of the network is increased by using management tools in the network.

Management tools help to improve department’s effectiveness in the network.

Open wireless network has to be provided for accessing the network facilities for the visitors.

The campus network should be available all the time which should be 99.90 %.

The network should be enhanced in such a way that it should support extended use of multimedia applications.

It should provide security for internet connections and from attacks from malware or intruders.

Network Applications of the campus network design

The campus network provides various applications purposes for students, staff and faculty of the university. They are:

Firstly writing coursework, assignments and saving them in the computers located in labs. Students can take print out of their coursework or assignments in the department buildings and other buildings.

Students, staff and faculty use network in campus for sending e-mails.

One Search Library facility for students, staff and faculty where they can access for vast information found online on various topics. It also allows for IEEE papers to be accessed from university account.

One of the main applications of campus network is for distance learning. University can participate in competitions with other universities.

Student, staff and faculty access information from Internet, chat with friends, social-media used to exchange information, play games and other useful services.

College keeps the attendance records of the students and student information.

One of the important applications which are frequently used by students is to solve the assignments given by the faculty which requires many programming software’s.

Management maintains university account from which the resumes of the students can be referred to the companies for internship and jobs.

Stakeholders of campus network

There are mainly two kinds of stakeholders:

General stakeholders of the campus network are students, faculty and staffs. They use the network for various purposes such as for sending e-mails, assignment submission, exchanging information, solving coursework, publishing notes on subjects taught by faculty and so on.

Key stakeholder is Network strategy planner/designer who designs the network in such a way that the network should be utilized to its full extent by the general stakeholders. Network designer monitors the network for data gathering, verification, documentation of tests performed, analysis of the network and future enhancement.