Korea: H3C Constructed 10GE and Gigabit-to-Desktop Networks for Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency

Background

The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) was established in 1962 as a national trade promotion organization. Since then, it has successfully facilitated Korea's rapid export-led economic development through various promotion activities such as overseas market surveys and business matchmaking services. KOTRA has grown to have branch offices in over 75 countries around the world.

KOTRA's existing network infrastructure deployed aging Ethernet backbone and workgroup switches that could no longer provide the performance required by service provisioning and user applications. The network's database servers required high stability, but the existing network lacked a backup external connection making it vulnerable to outages. The older equipment also lacked the bandwidth consistency to handle higher speed connections like Gigabit Ethernet and ATM. KOTRA's new network had to meet stringent requirements for reliability and availability, security and scalability.

Technology Solution

To upgrade KOTRA's network infrastructure, H3C installed a Gigabit Ethernet link between the switches in the backbone and workgroup areas and placed Layer 3 switches throughout the network to enhance efficiency. In the network's backbone core, H3C installed dual S8512 (H3C S9512) 10G multi-service core routing switches.

The S8512s (H3C S9512) are based on an innovative 10G platform that offers a flexible port density design, configurable to 576 GE-ports or 48 10GE-ports, to provide high scalability for future growth. The S8512 (H3C S9512) also provides large capacity L3 forwarding performance and MPLS distributed wire-speed forwarding and flexible support for increasing functional support for PoE, Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) and VLAN deployments.

To deliver Gigabit-to-desktop performance, 38 S3928P-EI (H3C S3600-28P-EI) Ethernet switches were installed on each floor of KOTRA's headquarters building.

Overall network security is enhanced by comprehensive security management tools and by providing a secure linkage between all levels of the network and any third-party NMS, including VLAN separation and IP network distribution for each subnet. H3C's products also use 802.1x authentication at the access layer to identify users who attempt to access the network and support ACLs across all lines.

Why H3C?

KOTRA needed to replace the out-of-date equipment and upgrade to new network switches capable of providing carrier-class reliability and auto convergence features. H3C was selected based on their outstanding reputation for high quality products and cost-effective solutions. In addition, KOTRA's new network is supported by H3C's comprehensive product line and customer-oriented service.

Benefits

KOTRA can now take advantage of expanded IP-based services and applications over its new 10GE network. The new network resolves the connection and availability problems by using GE links between the core switches and the workgroup switches and with dual-links between key S3928P-El (H3C S3600-28P-EI) switches for maximized connectivity and network reliability. H3C's stackable IRF technology enables KOTRA to have an adaptable network with high reliability, easy management and "pay as you go" scalability. Its switches also offer a powerful QoS guarantee, high performance IP/MPLS functionality and integrated security management to exceed KOTRA's requirements for reliability, scalability and security.