George Washington University Improves Network for Academic, Administrative and Research Uses

Ed Martin says the network at George Washington University (GW) is always upgrading.

However, he says the university’s most recent upgrade entailed a partnership with SolarWinds and twofold touchups to the wireless network:

1) Moving the wireless network to the edge and preparing it for AC standards

2) Moving the routing elements of the network infrastructure to the edge

Martin says GW’s routing was in a collapsed core environment before the upgrade. Now, the network is being reconfigured to support BYOD and new university network protocols.

“With the introduction of the Internet of Things-type devices to our network – access control panels, card readers, video cameras, point of sale devices – these are non-traditional uses of our shared network. They still require that their access is provided through a shared backbone, and we needed to provide compartmentalization, security and zoning,” says Martin, Deputy CIO at GW. “[This helps you make sure] only the right people are getting to those devices with the right protocols at the right time. We’ve started and progressed through a re-architecture of our network in anticipation of that need here and rapidly growing.”

Martin says SolarWinds played a key role in shrinking the network from many tools down to one.

“The introduction of Solarwinds enables us to collapse and consolidate from three tools to one,” he says. “We had incomplete tools for different aspects of our network administration, and Solarwinds brought a single-pained glass view and a simplification to how we could take care of analysis, recording and reaction to things that are happening on our network.”

Martin says the upgraded network will successfully serve the three main user communities on campus: the academic user community, administrative user community, and research community.

He says the real success of the implementation will shine through when typical network snags are avoided and personal devices can connect smoothly.

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