Feng Chia University prepares for SDN Evolution with Brocade

Brocade has announced that Feng Chia University has successfully deployed a New IP networking solution to deliver smart network access within its on-campus student accommodations. The decision to deploy the Brocade solution reflects the strength of its software-defined networking (SDN) capabilities, which is part of the university’s strategic direction for enabling new network services.

Feng Chia is Taiwan’s private comprehensive university, with a strong foundation in business and engineering, and is rated among the top 100 global emerging universities and top 100 Asian universities by The Times Higher Education Supplement. The university has a total of 21,000 students, approximately 5,000 of whom live on campus.

“The university model of teaching and learning has changed a lot as a result of Internet technologies, and it is now critical that students have top-quality network access from their dorm rooms in order to leverage online educational resources,” said Bing-Jean Lee, President of Feng Chia University. “Our project is not only designed to provide a more robust and scalable network for our student accommodations, but also to have much more fine-grained management control over network service delivery through SDN. We are already trialing the new Brocade network’s SDN capabilities to manage access control and traffic accounting.”

The total solution deployed at the university includes SDN-capable core, aggregation, and access devices from Brocade along with an open-standards SDN controller and applications from local software partner YESEE. Carrier-grade Brocade MLXe 4 Core Routers provide a robust and highly scalable foundation with Brocade ICX 7450 switches in the aggregation layer, providing wire-speed 40 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) uplinks to the network core and 10 GbE downlinks to Brocade ICX 7250 access switches that deliver 1 GbE connectivity and Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) within the accommodation units.

“SDN is a revolutionary concept but its adoption, of necessity, must be evolutionary,” said Jeff Tsai, country manager for Taiwan, Brocade. “Feng Chia University’s end-to-end SDN-capable network enables it to test and migrate services to the new technology platform at its own pace. The Brocade solution delivers the SDN OpenFlow protocol in true hybrid port mode, allowing the university’s network administrators to progressively integrate OpenFlow, giving them programmatic control over specific network flows while the remaining traffic is forwarded as usual.”

Even before a single network service has been migrated to SDN, however, Feng Chia University is already reaping significant network management benefits from the new infrastructure. Brocade Campus Fabric technology supported by the Brocade ICX switches enables the aggregation and access layers to be collapsed into a single logical switch. This approach enables shared network services while reducing management touch points and network hops through a single-layer design that spans the university’s campus accommodation units.