University Revamps Network to Boost App Performance, Simplify Operations

The 6,800-student University of New Haven in Connecticut was expanding and needed to improve reliability and application performance on its data center and campus networks.

Overview


Company University of New Haven
Industry Education
Products used QFX5200EX4600EX4300
Region Americas
University of New Haven Image
"We run 12 months a year, 7 by 24. It took a lot of logistics to coordinate an upgrade that affected every building, but we didn’t get any user complaints that anything was down because of a change."
Greg Bartholomew Director of Networking and System Operations, University of New Haven

The University of New Haven is a liberal arts school with four campuses in Connecticut and one in Italy. With enrollment on the upswing, the university embarked on a much-needed network makeover to improve users’ digital experiences, simplify management, and automate operations.

Business Challenge

With 20 new academic programs, a growing University of New Haven needed to resolve reliability and application performance issues in its backbone, campus networks, and user desktops. The culprit was a legacy Layer 2 network that was unreliable and maxed out.

Business Solution

The university worked with network engineering firm Integration Partners to build a predictable network which was flexible and simple to operate.

Business Results

The university refreshed connectivity in 35 campus buildings and the data center without business interruption. It also overcame its network resiliency and application performance problems while adding a measure of network automation that lets it rapidly provision switches and simplifies ongoing operations.

"Instead of logging into more than 40 switches individually, we log into [Junos] Space, and it takes five minutes. And with Junos OS, it’s nice having the same syntax no matter what device you log into. I can’t imagine learning different syntax for different devices."
Greg Bartholomew Director of Networking and System Operations, University of New Haven