Ely IT Systems : Network Infrastructure

The college has 15 data cabinets located around the 8 buildings on the downham road site which all connect back to the main data centre by over 2km of optical fibre connections.

Most desktop computers connect to the college network at 1Gb/s (1000Mb/s), via wired connections to HP Procurve switches that are housed within each building.
These switches are then connected using multiple redundant OM3 fibres cores back to the main data centre (in the bedford building) which houses the college's main server farm and WAN connection the county council's CCN (Cambridgeshire Community Network).

CCN (The Cambridgeshire Community Network) is a large WAN comprising of almost every school in Cambridgeshire. These connect back to regional hubs which inturn connect back to the County Council's main data centre in Shire Hall, Cambridge. The college recieved a filtered and secure internet feed via this route.

All of the HP Procurve switches are managed and the majority are maintained by UPS power supplies. The switches report back to the IT support team using an online monitoring system. This combined with online server monitoring provides the college with a very high level of availability and quality of service.

The college invested in a solution from Trapeze Networks, to provide a campus wide wireless solution. This has enabled staff to roam with their laptops anywhere on the campus but keeping a secure connection back to the college network. The wireless network is 802.11a and b/g.