Ashoka University, which is building facilities at its 10-hectare campus at the Rajiv Gandhi Education City in Sonipat, 20 kilometers from Delhi, has stared making investment in the network infrastructure.
The IT deployment will assist Ashoka University to grow 10-fold in five years. It has started deploying a campus network infrastructure running on Juniper Networks Junos operating system including Juniper’s switching, routing and security platforms.
The scalable Juniper Networks’ enterprise network architecture will enable Ashoka University to increase network throughput and security capacity without increasing its management overhead.
“Our network has been designed from the outset to be capable of delivering high-definition video streams to hundreds and eventually thousands of computers and tablets. Juniper Networks is fully engaged in helping us realize our vision of delivering a liberal arts education in India, with a network that will enable us to scale across new learning spaces,” said Chandresh Kumar, head – IT, Ashoka University.
The University has deployed Juniper QFX5100 switches to provide the core network, while using EX4550 switches in the server room and the EX3300 switches for providing campus network access, supporting Juniper Networks Virtual Chassis technology.
The strategy of network deployment enables up to 10 interconnected switches to operate as a single, logical device, which simplifies management of the Ashoka University network while increasing resiliency and delivering low-latency server connectivity.
The university currently utilizes 10 Gigabit per second Ethernet (GbE) links between its access layer switches and the core network. It plans to upgrade this to 40 GbE with the deployment of more core switches from Juniper Networks and redeployment of QFX5100s as a distribution layer supporting expanded campus access.
Juniper Networks SRX550 Services Gateways ensures firewall security, remote network access support and unified threat management control – including intrusion detection and prevention, application security and web filtering – as part of a policy-driven security environment.
In the future, Ashoka University plans to harness network function virtualization, enabled through software-defined networking, to provide security capacity on demand.
“The architecture provides flexibility for the university to scale the network in multiple phases while protecting its initial investments and delivering a highly cost effective operational model. That means not just expanding the footprint and overall capacity of the network but also adding services by leveraging the software-defined networking capabilities of the infrastructure,” said Sangya Gupta (ASK Consultants), IT Consultant, Ashoka University.