The China Youth Daily Group, a large conglomerate and publisher of one of the country's most widely-read newspapers, the China Youth Daily, has been running all its business operations on a local area network since 1996. After a decade in operation, the 10Mbps network was technologically lagging and could no longer cope with new business demands such as daily transmissions of a large volume of news reports and large files of high-definition images. The Group needed a new high-speed communications network to efficiently support the day-today operations of a modern newsroom.

The old network, using hub technology with only one broadcast domain and one collision domain, offered a low level of security, reliability and network manageability.

The China Youth Daily Group decided to go for a total revamp of its network infrastructure, upgrading its technology platform with the use of switching technology, as well as replacing all its old network devices. The primary goals were to increase the network operating speed, boost security and reliability, and improve manageability.

The Group evaluated network equipment from several vendors and finally chose ProCurve Networking switches for best price-performance and ability to provide a comprehensive set of solutions to meet the requirements of the network upgrade. In addition, the Group was keen to ensure that the network would be up and running at all times to support the operations of the press room, and that the network would be highly secure.

The new infrastructure relies entirely on advanced ProCurve switches. The design of the network also takes advantage of ProCurve's Switch Meshing technology at the network core to ensure full redundancy for the four switches in two main buildings -- the Newspaper Office complex and the News Collection and Editing building.

Switch meshing works by providing redundancy between multiple links, allowing traffic to divert to another path in case there's a problem in one of the links. Switch meshing also makes use of all of the links rather than having any link sitting idle until there's a failure, as may be the case with other technologies such as spanning tree.

In the News and Editing building, there are 30 servers in the central computer room on the second floor and in another computer room on the fourth floor. Every server is linked to the two ProCurve core switches via gigabit connections, while the servers on the two floors are connected via optical fibre.

The ProCurve switches provide threelayer routing, but as the routing cannot be initiated simultaneously with switch meshing, two ProCurve 5304xl switches are used for routing and accessing the control list. By using the proprietary XRRP Router Redundancy Protocol in the two 5304xl switches, the network ensures there is no single point of failure.

By using ProCurve switches, the new network is able to leverage many advanced technologies, including:

Switch Meshing
In a network environment made up of switches, if redundant links exist, there is a good chance of looping, so to prevent the network generating loops, Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) is used. The Spanning Tree will set the redundant link between switches in "Blocked" status, and change it to "Forwarding" status only after the main link is broken. While STP prevents looping, its inherent disadvantages include waste of bandwidth, complex design and layout, and too much convergence time (at least 50 seconds).

ProCurve switch meshing technology is also used to resolve the loop problem that can exist in switch environments, but it does not obstruct redundant links. Instead, it allows the main link and redundant link to work simultaneously with the help of an intelligent algorithm. Control of data between them is realized through intellectual equalizing - i.e. when the data volume is low, the entire data flow is transmitted via the main link; and when the main link is overloaded, the excessive data flow will then be automatically transmitted via the redundant link. In this way, the network achieves load equalizing of data transmission and avoids wasting link bandwidth.

Router Redundancy Protocol XRRP
Router Redundancy Protocol XRRP is mainly used to achieve failover between two router switches. Its chief advantage lies in the ability to allow two router switches to take up the task simultaneously and yet allow failover at the same time.

Virtual Stacking Technology There are two types of stacking technologies: physical stacking and virtual stacking. Physical stacking can limit the distance between different network devices, and is commonly only deployed inside a computer room, specifically inside a cabinet, since the physical stacking cable is only 0.6 meters long. Virtual stacking does not have this limitation and uses the normal Enhanced CAT-5 cable to extend gigabit stacking to 100 meters. It can also connect switches from the same stack in different wiring enclosures and allow management via one single stack.

The ProCurve technology platform provides a high-speed and efficient communications system for the business and newsroom operations of the China Youth Daily Group.

One of the key reasons for choosing ProCurve Networking is the value-add of the ProCurve switch devices. Built with ProCurve's own ASIC chip, these switches have the best performanceprice ratio compared to other offerings in the market.

ProCurve's unique lifetime warranty, which includes free maintenance service and software upgrades, is also a winning factor.

The implementation of modern technologies such as switch meshing, router redundancy and virtual stacking in ProCurve switches assures the China Youth Daily Group that it has an advanced platform geared up for future expansion.