Daramalan College, the largest single campus independent secondary school in the Australian Capital Territory, recently has turned to Brocade (News - Alert) for its VoIP switches, in a move that is guaranteed to up the ante on performance within the campus network.

In fact, the college has replaced its aging local area network infrastructure with a unified campus networking solution based around the new ICX family of VoIP switches from Brocade.

"Our old network, with its stacked core and daisy-chained access switches, was never designed to handle what was being asked of it," said Rob Wilson, IT manager, Daramalan College, in a statement.

A core upgrade was needed to minimize network-wide downtime and the access switches replaced to provide greater bandwidth. 

“We needed to make a change – and fast," he added.

After a competitive tender, Brocade's technology was selected to provide the college with its next-generation campus solution. In order to alleviate previous network access limitations, Brocade ICX 6610 Switches were deployed within classrooms, laboratories, offices and the library.

The Brocade ICX 6610 Switch redefines the economics of networking by providing unprecedented levels of performance, availability, and flexibility in a cost-effective stackable form factor. Each ICX 6610 provides 48 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports with four 40-GbE ports that can be used to link up to eight units into a single logical switch with chassis-like reliability and performance.

The college now has six ICX 6610 switch stacks in place, each of which has a pair of fiber-optic GbE connections to the network core.

Thanks to the implementation of these VoIP switches, Daramalan College will now be able to use Brocade's HyperEdge Technology in the future. The robust platform will enable the college to employ single-point management to simplify LAN operations and mix-and-match switches as it expands its access network stacks.

Overall, the whole project implementation was very smooth and the college has already noticed a significant improvement.  According to Wilson, “The network now has 30 percent more bandwidth and is optimized so we enjoy considerably better performance with greater stability," he commented.

"This reliability has enabled students and teachers, for example, to embed video streaming into their classroom toolkit, which is something we could not have dreamed of before. We have entire classes that can download programs to their notebooks, edit the required footage and produce media themselves in the classroom. It really is clever, effortless stuff," Wilson concluded.