HONG KONG -- 22 October 2001 -- City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has begun an ambitious programme for an extensive upgrading of its campus network with Cisco Systems' powerful Gigabit Ethernet solutions. The multi-phase upgrade, valued at over HK$25 million, will provide CityU with a state-of-the-art network to meet the continuous increase in demand for network bandwidth, with the first phase of installation scheduled for completion by the end of this year.
Under the comprehensive IT infrastructure upgrade, the existing ATM backbone will be replaced with Cisco's Gigabit Ethernet and layer 3 switching technologies for easy management and maintenance, as well as lower total cost of ownership (TCO).
"Our goal is to provide the best possible teaching, learning and research environment, and the simplified but powerful network architecture will offer over 20,800 staff and students faster and more stable Internet access for diverse information services," said Mr. K.H. Poon, Director of Computing Services, City University of Hong Kong. "Cisco's Gigabit Ethernet provides high scalability to meet the constantly growing bandwidth requirements as a result of the increasing number of network nodes, the escalating processing power of PCs and workstations and the rapid proliferation of multimedia applications."
The upgrade plan will be rolled out in three phases, and will eventually offer 10/100 Mbps desktop connectivity for over 7,500 PCs and workstations as well as multiple Gigabit Ethernet uplinks. Around 3,100 network ports will be upgraded to 10/100 Mbps in the first phase, which has already commenced and is projected to be completed by the end of this year.
Products to be used range from Cisco Catalyst 2900 series switches for upgrading the wiring closets, to Cisco Catalyst 3500 (the premium Gigabit Ethernet switches), and Cisco Catalyst 6000 family -- the high-performance and multilayer switches solution -- for fortifying the network backbone.
"With its proven record of high availability, performance and manageability, Gigabit Ethernet networking has become the major technology for today's network installations or upgrades," Mr. Frankie Sum, Managing Director of Cisco Systems Hong Kong. "By participating in this network upgrade project, we are proud to present CityU's students and staff with the state-of-the-art network technology."
With Cisco's comprehensive solutions, the new Gigabit Ethernet network will support data transfer rates of up to 1 Gigabit per second, much faster in comparison to the existing ATM backbone that runs at 155/622 Mbps. The upgrade will also support end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS), thereby guaranteeing better support for video-conferencing, Video on Demand (VoD) and TV broadcasts.
Furthermore, the upgraded network will be furnished with Cisco's Network Management Systems (NMS), a comprehensive set of applications for managing the routers, switches and access servers. Cisco's LAN Management Solution (LMS), User Registration Tool (URT), QoS Policy Manger (QPM) and SwitchProbe series, and NMS will also help reduce cost and improve network traffic with greater accessibility and simplification of network management tools, tasks and processes.
About City University of Hong Kong
The City University of Hong Kong is a government-funded tertiary institute founded in 1984. It has over 18,000 students (both full-time and part-time) and 2,700 staff, and offers courses on diverse disciplines in science, engineering, business, humanities and law from bachelor's to PhD degrees. Associate degrees and continuous education are also offered to accommodate various demands. The University always attaches great importance to IT development, and has an advanced, sophisticated campus network as well as a large computer set-up, which is among the best in the universities in the Asian Pacific region. For further information on the University, please visit www.cityu.edu.hk.
About Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Cisco news and information are available at www.cisco.com.
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