University of the Free State:Redesigning the campus network for innovation, VoIP, multicast and IPv6
Abstract
Starting in July 2012 the University of the Free State embarked on a topological network
redesign and implementation. This was in order to rectify performance issues on the network,
and to facilitate the deployment of technologies such as IPv6 and Multicast. The redesign also
had to cater for large scale innovation as well as network scalability. Once the planning had
been done, the implementation of the new design was performed over a period of 3 weeks, with
zero downtime to any member of staff or faculty. Today, to our knowledge, the university is
now the largest destination of IPv6 sourced content on the continent with significant percentages
of their traffic running over IPv6.
The paper explores the design process and the implementation process, as well as look at the
benefits gained from the implementation now that it is complete. It explores the benefits behind
some of the technologies that are now useable on the campus, with an emphasis on the multicast
deployments done in conjunction with TENET.