At the United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA), a ProCurve networking solution plays an important role in supporting the goals of education. Recognizing the potential of IT to enhance the teaching and learning process, the College set out to create an integrated portal to deliver an active e-learning environment.

The ProCurve network with a Series 5300 switch at its core, powers the portal and enables wireless connectivity for up to 8,000 users.

"We measure the value of the network infrastructure in terms of how much it supports our goals to improve the quality of education, reduce the administrative load on the staff, and minimize the burden of IT management for our support staff. The ProCurve network contributes to the achievement of these goals," said Ben Morgan, Director of ICT, United World College of South East Asia.

In 2005, United World College of South East Asia set out to establish itself as a leading example of a 21st century learning environment. Key to this was the ability to fully exploit the vast digital resources available and maximize the role of information technology in the teaching and learning process.

Over the past three years, the UWCSEA has been building an integrated portal for its community of 8,000 online users, comprising teachers, students, and parents. Each user has a personal login ID to the integrated portal and is able to access a slew of resources and information according to his user status.

"The integrated portal is mission-critical to UWCSEA's 21st century learning environment. It provides a comprehensive e-learning platform for the students, is an important resource for the teaching staff, a main communications link between teachers and parents, and between teacher and student outside the classroom," said Morgan.

The portal is integral to the smooth functioning of the College. Student attendance is recorded electronically, homework and other materials are created and distributed online, many assignments and feedback are also shared online. Students can access a wide variety of information, including examination schedules, online. Parents can login to the portal and access reports and assessments to receive feedback on their children's performance and learning progress.

Outside the classrooms, a wireless network infrastructure allows students, teachers and parents to access the portal at any time, using any Web-enabled Internet device.

Morgan explained that the requirements for the UWCSEA network are different but no less demanding than for a corporate network. Like a corporate network it needs high availability at all times, but the UWCSEA network also needs sufficient power and speed to handle peak period loads and bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications.

"We needed a robust network implementation because of network usage patterns. The network must be powerful enough to handle peak volume access many times a day. With close to 3,000 students, we can have as many as 1,000 users logging into the network at the start of each class period, which takes place every 75 minutes of the school day.

"Secondly, we need high bandwidth, as teachers and students make use of bandwidth-intensive applications such as video streaming and multimedia learning applications that combine voice, video, data."

Equally important, UWCSEA needed a flexible, wireless LAN. "Demand for wireless connectivity is high. Our students and their parents bring all types of wireless devices and laptops onto the campus. We need an open, standards-based environment. Our wireless LAN implementation had to be straightforward, requiring little configuration and zero maintenance."

UWCSEA has operated a Procurve network for three years. A ProCurve core switch - the 5300 Series with Wireless Edge Module was selected to perform core switch functions, while 36 ProCurve Series 210 Radio Ports were deployed in stages to provide wireless connectivity.

With the planned deployment of more wireless access points, 100 percent wireless access throughout the campus is a targeted goal.

As the network is critical to the running of the College, network availability and scalability are ongoing priorities. The network remains stable and is able to cope with increases in the number of users and peak loads.

"Although the use of the network has changed dramatically over the years and performance demands have increased significantly as we grew from a few hundred to close to 8,000 users, the ProCurve network has remained reliable," said Morgan.

The wireless LAN deployment is simple and flexible. Many of the ProCurve wireless devices are automatically configured and require zero maintenance. This is very valuable for the College as it has an IT support team of only six staff to manage all of its IT and network requirements.

The UWCSEA has a mixed IT infrastructure consisting of servers, desktops and laptops of many brands, Windows and Macintosh applications. The network also has to cater to a large base of wireless users with many and varied types of wireless connectivity devices.

"Our goal was for any Internet-enabled device to be able to connect to the portal from anywhere in the campus. The ProCurve infrastructure supports this goal very well," said Morgan.

UWCSEA also recognized the value inherent in ProCurve products. "ProCurve switches are very cost-competitive and the lifetime warranty of the Series 5300 core switch made it more attractive. In addition, ProCurve supports a very open environment for sharing resources and training. While other vendors would charge for extras like firmware upgrade, access to training and documentation, ProCurve gives access to many of these valuable support resources on its website," said Morgan.