The University of Birmingham (UoB) is one of the largest and most prestigious universities in the United Kingdom with approximately 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 6,000 staff, and an income exceeding £354 million. Founded in 1900, it ranks fifth in the UK for research excellence, 75th in world according to Times Higher Education and is a member of The Russell Group, an association of 20 major research-intensive universities.

Offering its students a world-class educational experience for more than a century, UoB knows the importance of keeping up with technological advances. It is committed to maintaining the highest level of excellence, including a high performance network with broad Internet access for its students and staff.

The infrastructure upgrade process started in 2003, when UoB put out a public tender for a new core network. Its existing backbone had grown to where the inter-switch links between the four core switches each comprised eight aggregated Gigabit connections. The IT services group realized that upgrading to 10 gigabit (10G) trunks would not only improve performance, but would also free up cross-campus optical fibers, some of them 2km or 2.5km long, and release a lot of LX GBICs for re-use.

Wireless connectivity is an important part of that commitment. The University of Birmingham is on course to complete one of the largest deployments of wireless at a UK university. By the end of 2008, UoB expects to have 802.11 wireless coverage at its main 250 hectare Edgbaston campus, the 80 hectare Selly Oak campus, and at the affiliated Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The University of Birmingham has deployed one of the largest, if not the largest, wireless networks within a UK university in an innovative way that has used resources to best effect, ensured easy deployment and maintained complete security. The UoB has designed its wireless network so that its students as well as staff and guests visiting UoB have the best possible experience using the network. The wireless networks complements the existing wired infrastructure and offers the same level of access to network resources.  

Goals for the project included:
	Ensure staff, students, and visitors at UoB have a superior experience using the wired and wireless networks
	Deliver advanced campus-wide mobile connectivity
	Provide straightforward user registration and authentication to the wireless network, with enough capacity to ensure fast and extensive coverage
	Deploy a scalable solution that can easily support future bandwidth demand and new services

The wireless network benefits the entire education process by enabling faculty, staff and students/users the ability to connect to the network campus-wide. Users of the wireless network are able to take laptops wherever they need and want to learn. Students can take laptops to class and faculty can share real-time electronic information with students during the class. Faculty and researchers can take their devices with them while doing research or collaboration with others. Similarly, students can collaborate together anywhere they can receive a campus wireless signal. As more information and resources move line, users can access this information anytime and anywhere.

Of the three companies that obliged the public tender, Brocades switching products came out on top in performance and ease of management due to one operating system instead of three with another competitor.

One of the things that sealed the decision to build the new core around Brocade's FastIron switches was that Brocade had sFlow monitoring every port, yet with no discernable performance impact on the switch, in comparison to flow monitoring on competing switches which produced a performance hit. The IT team upgraded the network building by building and with sFlow in the core they reduced the off-site network traffic by 50 per cent within days, because 50 per cent of the traffic was not legitimate - sFlow worked brilliantly. The team followed-up by educating users so they knew the network was now being monitored.

The decision to go with Brocade produced other benefits too, particularly it has a single OS across its switches, which resulted in a smaller team of administrators for cost savings as well as needing less training and covered all facets of the network.

The core upgrade also enabled UoB to add wireless as a parallel infrastructure, instead of as an overlay, thanks to those freed up spare fibers. Installation of the wireless was done in phases, beginning with a traditional set-up where access points (APs) on the non-interfering channels 1, 6 and 11 are interspersed to avoid having adjacent APs on the same channel. However, for phase 2, UoB instead went with Brocade's IronPoint Mobility controllers and APs. These use virtual cell technology developed by Meru Networks, which puts all the APs onto the same channel.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but it actually produces great benefits. The virtual cell approach is an overlay, with a controller to manage associations and disassociations. As clients move there is no re-association, the client just sees a single MAC address providing access. The mobility controller time-slices access to the AP so everyone gets a fair share. The traditional approach has clients contending, and you see a lot of scatter - some get good service and others get knocked back.

A big benefit is that virtual cell technology has removed the need for detailed site surveys. Instead, one just puts APs where they are needed. Surveying buildings is quite time consuming  the team did it in phase 1, and phase 2 was much quicker.

It has mitigated some of the issues with competing devices, such as the Sports Sciences department having a wireless alarm on channel 6, because the virtual cell can simply be moved to a non-competing channel. It has automatic rogue AP detection built in too. It triangulates, and the team pays the rogue AP location a visit, finds out what its use, and convinces them to use the official version. The rogues have mostly been legacy APs, from before UoB had complete coverage.

A big difference between the wired and wireless networks, which mirrors their typical usage: devices on the 45,000 wired ports have to be registered, but not on the wireless - users just need their username and password.

That means the wireless side requires security. The site already used firewalls, and the team decided to add a NAC (network access control) device, although as yet it concentrates on blocking bad behavior, rather than checking to see if client systems are secure. The NAC scans for unusual activity and disconnects that client via the firewall - the user gets a warning page. For example, a port scan will get you cut off.

Yes

Yes

Upgraded network performance for users and ease of management for the IT department:
	Upgraded core network from 8 x 1 gigabit trunked links to 10 gigabit Ethernet
	The whole wired network has been standardized using one switch family  the FastIron range - from Brocade to simplify management
	Flood resistant category 6 cabling network has been installed in new telecoms rooms created in every building
	Desktop connection speeds have been improved from 10/100 MBits to 1 GBits in some areas
	A separate parallel wireless network has been created using Brocades IronPoint Mobility access points and five controllers linked into a dedicated firewall
	300 access points have been rolled out-in student areas such as lecture theatres, libraries, coffee areas, classrooms and certain open air spaces

Customized and controlled access for classes of users to keep university materials private.
The wireless network at UoB has been set up to offer access, depending on who they are:
	UoBWLAN - the main directory for staff and students
	Eduroam  the JANET roaming service that allows visiting university students and lecturers
	UoBGuest  a Private ISP allowing visit access

Future services and expansion:
Today, UoB has installed 300 APs and will install another 360 across the campus by the end of the project, extending wireless coverage to the student accommodation, public walkways, sports fields and open areas. UoB is currently trialing wireless phones for staff members with good results, multi-casting sports events and conferences, and is looking to offer students IPTV later in the year.

About Brocades Virtual Cell technology: 
Chris Lea, senior network specialist, IT Services department, UoB: The virtual cell approach is brilliant for us in terms of achieving complete campus wireless coverage. Weve mitigated the need for time consuming survey work in terms of where to actually place APs to avoid interference issues and roaming is easy as there as theres zero delay handoff between them. This is key to supporting popular applications like VoIP and mobile email as users remain connected all the time. 

About the parallel network: 
John Turnbull, head of networks in the IT Services department, UoB: While our first goal with wireless has been to enhance the user experience, it has also added resilience to the network overall. Should a distribution layer switch in our wired infrastructure go down, we still have the parallel wireless to go provide connectivity. 

About future plans: 
John Turnbull, head of networks in the IT Services department, UoB: The student portal is a dynamic environment and were continuously being asked to extend content to cover sports given we excel in golf, football, hockey and rugby.  Weve provided podcasts of key rugby matches and our intention is to offer multicast video of key games across the network, plus were looking at IP-based TV.  

About return on investment:
John Turnbull, head of networks in the IT Services department, UoB: The creation of a wireless network at UoB was part of an overall £12 million network refurbishment, with £250,000 spent on the wireless network alone. Some said we could have gone down the VLAN route to get a similar end result, but this would have been extremely complex for a campus our size. Originally we had eight 1 gigabit fiber links trunked together between each of our four core switches which have now been replaced by just one 10 gigabit link further to an upgrade of blades in our existing FastIron 1500 Layer 3 chassis switches. This has released seven fibre pairs between each core switch and expensive mini-GBICs resulting in a saving of about £87k which has been a tremendous benefit.  

About network use:
John Turnbull, head of networks in the IT Services department, UoB: "Students need access to the student portal for course information and our virtual learning environment, for their lecture notes, exam results and so on and that it has also been used in student elections, to support conferences, and for media coverage of sports events, for example.

It is not the first application of wireless in a university environment, but it ranks as one of the largest, if not largest, wireless networks in the United Kingdom.

Innovation 
The UoB was able to create a secure, parallel network to the existing fixed network using Brocades mobility family of access points and controllers. This allowed UoB to take advantage of virtual cell technology with over the air Quality of Service (QoS) to provide users with seamless roaming, meaning that people can roam around the campus and be connected at all times with handoffs between APs automatically managed by the Brocade IronPoint Mobility controllers. 

The virtual cell technology works by administering certain channels to applications, one channel for wireless, another for alarms and so on, thereby limiting any interference. Client devices, such as PDAs and laptops, see one large AP as opposed to a series of individual APs. This gives users blanket wireless coverage throughout the campus.

Even though it ended up being a major part of the network and a great success, the wireless network took longer to implement. The start of work on the wireless side was delayed by concerns among the IT team that wireless security was still immature in the initial planning stages of the upgrade. However, this was overcome by making sure security was robust and reliable in the wireless network as well as the wired network and making sure there were security policy and procedures developed and implemented.

No great obstacles encountered for the project.

Achieved

As one of the largest research universities in the UK, UoB is part of a country and worldwide network of educational institutions. As the UoB upgrades its network and rolls out leading edge technology to enhance the education and research process, it is an example to other universities who may be doing similar projects or may be contemplating the same upgrades in order for them to achieve similar results or, perhaps, even better results. The goal of a university is to foster learning, openness, innovation, and partnerships among many things. This often occurs in IT department with the ability and willingness to share best practices and implementations with fellow educational counterparts.

Users across the campus have embraced the new wireless and wired network. Wired and wireless access to resources is faster and more robust than ever. With students and faculty often accustomed to wireless in their homes, they have also come to expect seamless and reliable anytime/anywhere access at UoB as well.  

In addition, the new network allows opportunity for students to use online collaboration, distance learning, and online learning and instruction. Students today expect their educational network to do more than just search the library database. They have embraced improved access to the student portal for course information and the virtual learning environment for their lecture notes, exam results and advanced services. The upgraded network has also been used in student elections, to support conferences, and for media coverage of sports events, as well.