Case Study

Hokkaido Institute of TechnologyHokkaido Institute of Technology, in Sapporo, Japan selects an Allied Telesis network solution to provide their Broadband campus network.

Introduction

Hokkaido Institute of Technology (HIT) is in Sapporo, Japan. HIT’s education philosophy is “the merging of humanity and technology”. HIT cultivates a culture of respect for each student’s individuality, and contribution to the revitalization of local communities.

HIT has an extensive campus which looks out onto the Teine mountain ranges. Established in 1967, HIT began with a Department of Mechanical Engineering, and a Department of Industrial Engineering. Following this, it

Customer ProfileHokkaido Institute of Technology - HIT

Established: April, 1967Location: Teine-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido, JapanNumber of staff: 191 Number of undergraduate students: 2,910Number of graduate students: 701

http://www.hit.ac.jp/eng/index.html

1 Numbers of staff and student accurate as of May 1, 2011.

established other faculties, departments, and Master’s programs. Today, along with a strong focus on Engineering, HIT also promotes a merging of science with humanity.

HIT consists of four faculties: ■ Faculty of Creative Engineering ■ Faculty of Advanced Engineering ■ Faculty of Clinical Engineering ■ Faculty of Future Design

| Hokkaido Institute of Technology alliedtelesis.com2

HIT provides a comprehensive education to prepare students for today’s highly technological society. There are full facilities to support education and research, and HIT provides campus intranet and e-Learning. Most buildings on campus are able to access the advanced data network, and those that do not will do very soon. Providing a “mobile campus” with constantly available network access is a high priority for HIT.

HIT recently redesigned their network using Allied Telesis products, to provide them with a mobile campus environment. The new Allied Telesis network solution provides a high functioning, secure, reliable and future proof network. The campus is extremely well connected, with Wireless Access Points installed throughout.

HIT’s new network has an Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x908TM

Advanced Layer 3 Modular Switch as their network core, and a distribution layer of x600 Series Switches and layer 2 switches at the edge.

With the new network, all students can access the internet anywhere on campus, at any time, with workstations, laptops, and smart phones.

HIT has an online “Campus Information System” which provides information about general campus life, and there is a “HIT-Education System” which supplements daily lectures. Both of these information systems are accessible from a portal website called “HIT Navigation”.

From the HIT Navigation portal, students can find up to date information about lecture scheduling, supplementary course information, the open lectures, a general course guide, faculty topics, and information about job-hunting.

A mobile campus environment

The Campus Information System provides registration for courses, report browsing, a student support program which records goals and achievement, and much more.

The HIT-Education System provides access to attendance records, mini-examinations, lecture documents, study assignments, and student communication.

“We have installed wired and wireless LAN access points throughout the Campus. We provide a constantly available Information environment for students.“

Professor Tetsuo Okazaki, Head of

Media center,Department of

Frontier Information Engineering, Faculty

of Advanced Engineering,

Hokkaido Institute of Technology

Hokkaido Institute of Technology | 3

The G building

The G Building was constructed in 2001, and has 29 lecture rooms. Wired LAN information outlets have been built into all the lecture room seats. There are around 4000 ports in total.

When a student attends a lecture, he or she connects a laptop to the data port in the seat. The HIT Education System uses this to prove that the student attended the lecture. This would not be so easily achieved with wireless LAN.

Lecture rooms also have printers installed for student use. Information sent from a student laptop to the printer travels to the campus media center server room via the campus network, and is output in the student’s lecture room.

HIT have performed regular upgrades on their network. In 2001, they renewed the G-building’s backbone LAN, and installed wireless LAN around its lecture rooms. In 2003, the LANs in existing buildings were improved. In 2005 they upgraded the campus wireless LAN.

“We use SSL-VPN for students and IPsec-VPN for staff, so that they can remotely access the campus information system from home or elsewhere.“

“We chose the SwitchBlade x908 because it is so reliable, and very scalable.”

Mr. Takashi Kawamura, Manager of

Student support group, Academic

Information Division, Hokkaido

Institute of Technology

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Network redesign with Allied Telesis intelligent switches

In 2010, HIT completely redesigned their campus network.HIT introduced two Allied Telesis SwitchBlade x908 Advanced Layer 3 Switches at the core of their new network. The new network design separates the network into 2 segments: global for staff, and private for students.

To cater for the 4000 data points housed in the G Building, a distribution layer of x600 Layer 3 Series Switches has been introduced. Currently the network speed is 1Gbps, but if campus traffic increases in the future, they can easily increase this to 10Gbps, thanks to the scalable and future proof design of the SwitchBlade x908.

At present the network does not employ any switch redundancy in the distribution and edge layers, but this can easily be added in the future if required.

The Academic Information Division manages the edge switches set in each building. In general, they cannot closely manage the switches located in the laboratories. However, the packet storms, caused by incorrect connection of ad hoc switches in the laboratory, affect the entire Campus Network. Therefore Loop Guard-capable edge switches are used in order to confine storms to the local switch.

A Service Provider Network and SINET (Academic Information Network) provide Internet access. Allied Telesis WAN Load Balancing connects these two Internet access sources.

Mr. Hiroyuki Sakaida, Branch

Deputy Manager,Hokkaido Branch, Mitsubishi Electric

Information Technology

Corporation

“Separating our network into global and private segments simplifies it and makes it easy to troubleshoot.”

More common WAN redundancy schemes make active use of only one WAN link at a time. In contrast, WAN load balancing makes active use of both links when they are available. If one link fails, communication can continue on the remaining available link.

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Key solutions

SBx908 AR770S

x600-48Ts8100S

Optical Cable (Multi mode) UTP Cable (100M/Gigabit)Link Aggregation

8100S

x600-48Ts8100S

ISP

SINET

8100S

GS950

Building

Library

Building

Building

Plaza

Products shown in this diagram are representative only and may differ from those actually used.

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Renewal of Wireless LAN

Partner ProfileMITSUBISHI ELECTRIC INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION.

Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan.Established: April, 2001Number of Staff: 1,1002

http://www.mdit.co.jp/

(Global web site of Mitsubishi Electric Group; http://www.mitsubishielectric.com/)

The needs of the campus network are varied. University staff have a different set of needs to the students, and each faculty can have its own specific requirements. As such, HIT’s network must meet these differing needs.

For example, the Faculty of Advanced Engineering makes extensive use of design and drawing packages, which require frequent transfer of large files.

In the Innovative Information Engineering Department, students receive practical training in a range of IT engineering areas. As part of this, the students perform network management tasks such as VLAN creation, SNMP management, and more, on Allied Telesis switches.

HIT plan to introduce a wireless LAN in their planned new gymnasium called “HIT Arena”, which will be built next year. The new gymnasium will house athletic clubs, cultural activities, and training. Mobile access is required to allow efficient information exchange between staff and the various clubs. A wireless LAN will provide this access and thus expand the range of their existing wireless LAN. The Allied Telesis products used in the new network will easily accommodate this network expansion.

Mr. Kazuyoshi Nishimura, Information section chief, Academic Information Division, Hokkaido Institute of Technology

“We are very happy with the Allied Telesis switches we chose for our campus network. Our costs are low and our network performance is high.”

2 Numbers of staff accurate as of 2010.

Hokkaido Institute of Technology | 7

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