Peer-to-Peer

Campus Area Network for Presidency College

Kolkata-based Presidency College has deployed networking technology from Cisco to enhance its educational standards, says Nivedan Prakash

One of the leading educational institutions in India, Presidency College boasts of a long and illustrious history. Presidency College was established as Hindu College in 1817, in Calcutta, the capital of British India. It was renamed Presidency College and placed under the aegis of the University of Calcutta in 1855. Recently, it has been accredited as the A+ rated college in India by NAAC.

A model Campus Area Network

The overall aim of the engagement was to establish Presidency College as an all-round point of excellence using state-of-the-art, modular and scalable technology that could not only meet present needs but also future ones. Specifically, the college authorities wanted the implementation of a secure, cost-effective, and redundant Campus Area Network that would be a pioneering model for Indian educational institutions.

Highlighting the challenges faced by the college, Dr P Dasgupta, spokesperson of the Presidency College, said, “As there was no existing Campus Area Network or proper IT infrastructure at the Presidency College, some of the specific business challenges included the connectivity between various departments as well as buildings that had to be redundant, expandable, and scalable using the latest technology and products; facilitation of fast data transfers and communication between various departments and buildings; and WAN connectivity for communication, knowledge, and data transfers with other universities, colleges, organizations, researchers, and students, across the globe.”

Apart from this, the college authorities also wanted easy access to the World Wide Web for the purposes of information and knowledge gathering; creation of an e-library wherein the library’s resources would be available to students, researchers, professors from other authorized universities, colleges, organizations; departmental mail access; WLAN access at specified locations such as the principal’s office, auditorium, conference rooms, guest rooms, e-classrooms; information kiosks to provide detailed information about the college’s activities; and establishing foundation for future e-classrooms or virtual learning.

The right solution

Presidency College selected Forte India for this project based on the system integrator’s reputation and expertise in the field of networking in Eastern India. Forte India offers complete networking consultancy services, as well as design, supply, execution, testing and commissioning, site certification and more as per international standards. Forte partnering with Cisco was selected for this engagement.

After detailed discussions with the college authorities, Forte recommended that all the departments be connected through the Campus Area Network. Other recommendations included the network has to be designed in a ring topology and that it would employ structured cabling; the backbone had to consist of 12 and 6 core fiber optic cable and rest of the distribution would be undertaken using CAT5 UTP cable; given the requirements, the 10/100 Mbps bandwidth network was recommended with Cisco Active Components; and sufficient redundancy for network safety as well as expansion in the future.

• Switching: Forte utilized four Core Switches (Cisco 3750G) for administering the whole infrastructure. Further recommendations included two Distribution Switches (Cisco 3508) for the down level and 14 Access Switches (Cisco 2950 SX) for departmental connectivity.
• WLAN: The college authorities wanted to turn the entire campus into a Wi-Fi zone and keeping that in mind Forte deployed four Wireless Access Points (Cisco 1310g) spread across the college campus.
• Routing: High-end routers (Cisco 2811) were used not only for high bandwidth leased lines but also for the planned e-classroom that will be set up at a later stage.
• Security: Security was a major concern irrespective of the volume of the network. To make the network secure at the entry point, Cisco IDS 4215 has been utilized. In addition, PIX 515E UR as the firewall, and PIX 515E FO ensuring fail-over protection of the existing PIX 515E UR are in use. To prevent internal threats, Cisco Security Server Agent (CSA-B25-SRVR-K9) and Cisco VMS 2.3 WIN 20 Device Restricted (CWVMS-2.3-R-K9) were implemented.

Dr Dasgupta also pointed out that, “Presidency College made an investment of Rs 2.85 crore in the whole project, which was completed within tight deadlines as well. We went for Cisco because of its brand name. Although we contacted several other players, in the end we zeroed in on Cisco.”

Business value

Commenting on the business benefits achieved, Dr Dasgupta, said, “Few organizations within the Indian academic sector have implemented this level of unique, advanced, and secure technology to be able to provide the best resources to members of our community.”

The recommendations also laid the foundation of future deployments such as the implementation for IPTV Broadcast Server and more. It will be used mainly for e-classroom or e-learning. According to Abhijit Kumar Sen, Forte India, “Through the IPTV Broadcast Server of the college and EDUSAT program of the UGC, all the important lectures of renowned academicians and important global seminars can easily be broadcast to the students and professors of the college. Simultaneously, important lectures of the existing and visiting academicians of the Presidency College could be sent to interested people anywhere in the world.”

Commenting on the engagement, U R Acharya, Vice-President, Distribution and Reseller Channels, Cisco Indian and SAARC, said, “Our vision of the Presidency College was to enable them to create value for their stakeholders, and in particular for their students. Our partner, Forte, worked closely with the customer to understand the requirements and vision. Together we delivered a futuristic solution.”

nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com