Eton College
Eton College Turns to Extreme Networks and Data Integration for Network Modernisation Project
Eton College sets high standards in education - all pupils have laptops connected to the network in their study-bedrooms and the school will implement wireless access points to facilitate interactive learning from January 2007. The development of computing skills and knowledge is a core component of the curriculum.
Underpinning this commitment to educational excellence and developing computing skills is an enterprise class network built from a combination of Summit 450, Summit 300 and Summit 200 switches from Extreme Networks. All set up in an innovative Local Area Network design - planned, implemented and now managed by UK systems integrator, Data Integration - that covers 400 buildings across 4 square miles in and around the town of Eton.
Founded in 1440 by King Henry VI, Eton College is a school that pursues excellence, nurtures independence and encourages initiative beyond self-interest in a way that maintains real breadth and diversity. Today there are nearly 1300 boys at the school between the ages of 13 and 18, all of whom board, along with a residential teaching and support staff of more than 400. With more than 560 years of history behind it, Eton College has many established traditions. Teachers are "beaks" while the three school terms are called "halves". However, its use of technology is anything but traditional or conservative.
From the day pupils start at Eton College, the curriculum and school communications are designed to impart a high degree of computer literacy. Each pupil has their own laptop and almost all school events are advertised via email and internal websites. In the first year the curriculum taught leads to a professional qualification in computer literacy the British Computer Society's ECDL and ensures boys learn how to touch type. The curriculum, itself, also makes heavy use of electronic learning resources such as streamed video, interactive teaching applications and projectors.
Head of ICT, Liam Maxwell is also responsible for the computing infrastructure that supports all these resources and services. During the nineties, Eton College built up an ATM-based Local Area Network (LAN) to provide a high-speed, high-performance backbone for its IT infrastructure. This served the College well, but by 2004 was starting to show the strain. The school's IT team was spending more and more time managing problems with the network, instead of concentrating on deploying new services and technologies that could benefit the school and its pupils. More significantly, all pupils now had their own laptops and network connections in their bedrooms for use for study and recreation, and the college was building up a complex web of access policies that were proving difficult to enforce across the ATM network.
"Eton College is committed to helping pupils to use both internal and Internet-based learning resources to further their studies, yet we are also their temporary guardians during term time. We want pupils to get the maximum benefit from these resources but assure their parents that we are in ultimate control of what they are doing and when, all while pursuing a strategy based on individual responsibility rather than denial of access. This presents a peculiar set of challenges not often found in either the public or the corporate sectors," explains Maxwell.
In 2005, Eton College issued a tender notice for a completely new network that could support its needs. Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Extreme Networks and Alcatel responded to the tender notice and the school conducted a rigorous evaluation of each supplier's equipment. Eton College ultimately selected the Extreme Networks solution recommended by Data Integration. It provided the flexibility and control to manage access on a PC by PC basis and also cost-effectively connect all 400 buildings in a single Local Area Network (LAN) design.
"Only Alcatel and Extreme were able to deliver the kind of access control we required from the network, from there it came down to cost and our confidence in the supplier. We were able to obtain the features we needed more cost-effectively from Extreme. Data Integration demonstrated a very good understanding of our unique circumstances and were the logical choice for implementation and ongoing network management," continued Maxwell.
As a boarding school, access control was a subject high on Eton's list of priorities from the new network. In the role of temporary guardian to all pupils during term-time, the onus lies on the school to ensure that the network is used in line with school rules on learning and entertainment. Access rights are determined by a number of factors including the age of the pupil and their boarding house, which presents a unique management challenge.
The network and application access rights for each user at Eton College are held in Microsoft Active Directory and seamlessly applied across the Extreme network from any location that a user connects. User rights are tied to MAC address authentication so that the school is also able to control how pupils interact with the network. For example, if a pupil breaks the rules surrounding use of computing resources the school is able to allow them to sign in to a PC in a classroom as part of a lesson but not from their laptop in their bedroom for recreational use.
"This level of access control sounds simple yet is relatively difficult to achieve as it's not a standard requirement on corporate networks," Maxwell continues. "In fact, once the network was installed we worked with Data Integration and Extreme Networks Technical Assistance Centre to develop additional software code to deliver exactly what we wanted at the edge of the network. The response from the TAC team was impressive, their understanding of our situation and their professional approach was excellent."
With both user and MAC address authentication, the edge of the network is relatively secure. To complement its access control rules Eton wanted to segment its network to further ensure that unauthorised users do not gain access to confidential information. Eton has established virtual LANs to segment the IT infrastructure logically by user group so that traffic from school masters, pupils and the schools administrative and management staff are kept separate.
With 400 buildings spread over 4 square miles the network at Eton College covers a relatively large area for a local area network and is perhaps best described as a campus network. This presented Data Integration with the design challenge of building a campus network with the bandwidth of local area network.
The Extreme Networks infrastructure recommended by Data Integration takes an innovative approach to delivering against these unusual requirements. The College is one of the first UK customers for Extreme Networks latest Summit 450 switch based on Extreme Network's XOS modular operating system. Originally designed for the service provider market, the Summit 450 provides core switching capabilities, such as high availability, resiliency and advanced management, in the smaller and less-expensive form-factor of a stackable edge switch.
Data Integration identified 4 key locations that would aggregate traffic from across the entire network. With a Summit 450 at each of the 4 locations, all interconnected over Gigabit Ethernet, Eton College has built a high speed, highly available core network with ample bandwidth for its needs but at a much reduced cost compared with buying chassis-based switches.
"In terms of network design and build we got everything that we needed for a lot less than we had expected to pay, thanks to the Summit 450. Data Integration were the only people we talked to who truly understood the problem and knew enough about the technology available on the market to suggest the Extreme product as the solution," Maxwell explains.
The first two stages of the network deployment, core replacement with the Summit 450 and edge refresh with Summit 200, have been completed on time and under budget with the final stage of the project, a wireless LAN deployment, set to go-live in time for the start of the new school year in January 2007. The wireless LAN project will see access points installed in the Science teaching facilities so that pupils can bring their laptops into class and the school can better utilise electronic teaching resources on the network. On a day-today basis the network is managed by Eton, with Data Integration contracted to provide support such as updating switches with new releases and any ongoing maintenance requirements.
"We now have a network that means we don't spend all of our time managing either the network or associated access lists and can concentrate on our ICT teaching responsibilities and delivering new technology that improves the schools educational capabilities. We can now see in real-time exactly where everything is on the network and whether it's working properly, if there is a problem we can see exactly where it is and what it is. We're now much more in control of our own destiny, the network is no longer a stumbling block to be overcome when delivering day-to-day teaching or improving the service we offer to pupils."
