The university’s network now connects classrooms, administration offices and student residences within a range of 10 miles. Enterasys has said that the connected endpoints are secured through unified wired/wireless policy privileges to distinguish between staff and student roles and protect against unauthorised behaviour by rogue devices or unauthenticated users.
John Carling, head of IT at Southampton Solent University, said: We selected Enterasys because they were proven to be compatible with our existing IT infrastructure at a price point with technologies that other leading vendors couldn’t offer at the time.
Enterasys, a part of a joint venture between Siemens Enterprise Communications and The Gores Group, delivers network security system Secure Networks. In August 2008, Scotland’s Perth & Kinross Council has selected the Secure Networks for VoIP to prioritise and secure network traffic associated with the deployment of its new IP telephony and power over Ethernet (PoE) upgrade. Enterasys network system helps the council protect information assets among 50 remote government, education and institutional sites.
At the Southampton Solent University, Enterasys network will connect more than 16,000 students and 1,000 staff. It is also expected to be compatible with the university’s multi-vendor infrastructure environment, which includes Checkpoint firewalls and Dell servers.
Carling said: As an IT professional, we understand that we rarely get calls from users congratulating us when the network is running well, but we do get calls when there’s a problem. With Enterasys equipment, we don’t receive many of those calls. The network is transparent to our users, highly visible to us, and if we want to make future enhancements, it won’t require a forklift upgrade.
