Case Study: Vermont State Colleges Statewide MPLS Network

Designing a Solution to Connect Colleges Throughout Vermont While Prioritizing Network Traffic

 

The Client

Vermont State Colleges (VSC).

VSC is an association of colleges that offer higher education to more than 13,000 students throughout the state. VSC includes five colleges with more than a dozen learning sites, as well as many remote learning opportunities.

 

The Project

VSC operated a managed services network that provided bandwidth to each site, but they required a higher-speed network with more flexibility. The new network is designed to support VSC's plans to expand their online courses and degree programs to reach a broader audience, as well as to deploy more hosted academic and administrative applications. The new network will carry voice, data and video traffic, and support prioritization so bandwidth allocation can be adjusted among academic, administrative and student residential usage as needed.

 

RCC's Role

RCC provided many important services for VSC during this project, including:

 

  • Reviewed the existing network topology and architecture.

  • Performed physical surveys of all campuses to inspect current applications, systems, cable, infrastructure and networking.

  • Reviewed major campus buildings relative to the potential installation of converged voice and data networks.
  • Identified the network needs of all audiences, including administration, faculty, staff and students (both on-campus and remote).

  • Developed the technical, functional and operational requirements for the network.

  • Identified alternative network architectures, technologies and service providers who could deliver and support the required services.

  • Created a report detailing the different options available to support VSC's needs, including budgetary cost estimates.
  • Developed a design for a Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network, which consists of one network infrastructure to support and carry all the voice, data and video traffic and set priority levels to the bandwidth.
  • Developed a justification for procurement of the MPLS network.
  • Prepared a Request for Proposals.
  • Participated in proposal evaluation, interviews and product demonstrations.
  • RCC's proposed design also envisions updated routers and routing protocols, and updated traffic shaping technology to facilitate flexible allocation of bandwidth between academic and residence hall (student gaming and social networking). The proposed network has also been designed to support the integration of voice traffic and the future deployment of VoIP.

 

VSC is currently implementing the MPLS network provided by a national carrier as a managed service.