Background
The Office of Atomic Energy for Peace (OAEP) is a government body under the Ministry of Science and Technology of Thailand. OAEP's core responsibility is to control and develop safe usage of nuclear power in Thailand. Its mission is to ensure Thailand's policies and strategic plans for the peaceful utilization of atomic energy meet with international standards and obligations.
To take advantage of the many advances in networking technologies, OAEP wanted to build a new networking infrastructure that offered better performance, security, reliability and scalability. OAEP required the latest 10G Ethernet technology with redundancy and security built-in and the design had to provide a practical and inexpensive path for deployment of future services like VoIP, video multicasting and wireless LANs. The solution also had to be high quality but at a low price to meet the limited budget of OAEP. After thorough evaluations of all competing vendors, OAEP selected H3C to design and deploy their campus-wide network.
Technology Solution
To meet OAEP's strict requirements, H3C designed the OAEP solution around a campus network concept that deploys redundant core switches in every building. The design has three hierarchal layers - Core, Distribution and Access with each layer having different requirements and service needs. The OAEP campus-wide network solution focuses on providing security, performance and traffic management controls at all three layers using H3C's advanced switch technologies. To maximize the return on investment, cost-effective scalability was included at every layer.
The Core layer comprises two S8500 (H3C S9500) series and eight S6500 (H3C S7500) series switches that were chosen for their high reliability and performance capabilities running over a 10G connection between main switches in each building. The design also balances the traffic between the two S8500s (H3C S9500) allowing for enhanced management. The S8500 (H3C 9500) series is a next generation 10G core multi-service routing switch with high performance designed for the core layer of enterprise networks. It also provides high-capacity, high-density, modular structure and wire-speed forwarding performance on L2 and L3 and supports distributed and wire-speed forwarding over MPLS VPN. It also boasts abundant service functions, a powerful QoS guarantee, comprehensive security management mechanisms, and carrier-class reliability that fully satisfied OAEP's requirements.
At the Distribution and Access layers, H3C used its new intelligent switch S5600 and S3900 (H3C S3600) series to meet OAEP's needs for a cost-effective scalable network solution. To address scalability concerns, H3C's unique IRF (Intelligent Resilient Framework) stacking technology can provide a path for future expansion without service interruptions. The S5600 is easily expandable to work in a 10G network environment. In total, 12 S5600 series switches were deployed to act as distribution switches and 48 S3900 (H3C S3600) series were used at the network's edge for end-user access connections.
To provide strong informational security for OAEP's nuclear-related data, H3C deployed its SecPath1000F product as the network's security gateway that offers non-blocking forwarding capability. Additionally, the OSPF routing protocol was used to calculate the best path in the core layer and to act as a backup path when the main link is down. VRRP was chosen for the link between core and distribution layers to further guarantee high reliability and four 10G ports per interface card improve flexibility.
Why H3C
The H3C solution provides OAEP with a state-of-the-art network built on cutting edge 10G technology. Dual Core concept with high redundancy equipment design guarantees network uptime to satisfy customer requirements for reliability. H3C's intelligent equipment features new technologies such as IRF to empower current and future applications of VoIP, video conferencing and VLAN deployments. Easy expansibility for future growth, clear and simple upgrade path and modular slot and resilience stacking technologies all add to the extreme scalability of the new network configuration, meeting all OAEP's requirements for high ROI at a low cost.
The Benefits
OAEP needed a 10G-based network to guarantee it can support future applications such as VoIP or video multicasting while offering cost-effective solutions to present-day bandwidth and performance issues. H3C designed and implemented a dependable, high efficiency network that provides outstanding performance, redundancy and security.
The truly scalable nature of the H3C solution helps OAEP future-proof their IT investment. The traffic control, overall speed and accessibility of network services have been improved giving OAEP a more scalable, cost-effective and manageable network.
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