Always connected, the Umea University campus and city network approach

Abstract

This paper describes the current network approach at Umea University and how the strategy has changed over the years to meet new challenges. Today, we face two important scenarios that have to be managed within budget limitation and increased user demands.
– the rapid growth of mobile devices put pressure on the University Wireless Network, and the Mobile Internet for the PTT´s to deliver accessibility.
– the expectation of users, students and staff to be connected all the time and everywhere, on campus, in the city, in cafes and stores, on buses, in airplanes and on trains with enough network performance to use the application they want.
Umea University has a large network, connected to Internet via the national university research network Sunet. The university has approx. 25,000 network outlets and 17,000 of them are active, the rest is a reserve for internal moving around. 100 Mbps is standard for a personal workplace but can be upgraded to higher speed for servers and users with high demands. The wireless network has 520 access-points, all scattered sparsely around the campus for maximum coverage. There are three Wlans accessible all over the campus:
UmU Wlan – a closed network that can be accessed with your digital university identity, i.e. CAS or AD
eduroam – the federated global university network
Adm – the federated network from the local community
The Umeå city open network (SSID: City of Umea) is only available at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Visual Culture.
In 2010, the university and the local community agreed to federate their wireless networks to make Internet available in community premises for students and staff. For the university, the major benefit is that students can access the university network from local libraries, schools and other local facilities around the city.
The university has an agreement with Telia, the major PTT, for both mobile telephones and mobile internet. The university has been moving on the road to Office Extension and offers staff to close their landline office telephones and move over to mobile telephony only. This approach builds on access to mobile telephony as the cell phone gradually takes over as the only office telephone extension for staffers. During 2013, the +20-year old university switchboard will be replaced by Lync 2013 which is a further extended approach to telecommunication. Office@365 and GoogleApps adds collaboration tools to the workplace and the concept Unified Communication is now being implemented and has currently 600+ users in the first installation phase.