Case Study

The University of Hertfordshire is a modern high-tech university with more than 24,000 students and 2,500 staff spread across three main sites. The university prides itself on being one of the leading business-facing universities in the UK and is focused on developing new and creative approaches to learning, teaching and research with a commitment to adding value to employers, enterprise and regional, national and international economies.

The premise of a business-facing university is that universities and business need to work on an integrated and collaborative basis if the United Kingdom is to retain global competitiveness in the 21st century. The University of Hertfordshire is an ambitious and entrepreneurial University and offers excellence in teaching, learning and research

Challenge

There are over 26,000 staff and students at The University of Hertfordshire, who need to have regular and instant access to the network in order to check emails, download course information and lecture notes, listen to and view lectures online, use the Internet and find out what is going on at the university. The university realises that the IT network is fundamental to its day-to-day operation and is the driving force behind modern education. Therefore, ensuring everyone has access to the network is of paramount importance.

Every year, there are thousands of new students who need to be able to configure their computer or laptop, logon and use the network who each need their own switch port, IP address and Domain Name. The network management team come under great pressure as they have to ensure that there are enough usable switch ports for the new customers, as well as providing switch ports and switches to make sure that all the existing students can continue to connect to the network. In addition, the team need to identify all the switch ports and switches that are no longer needed because an area has changed in the way it is used.Furthermore, as the university is constantly growing and adding new buildings or facilities, there needed to be enough access switch ports to connect all lecture rooms, study rooms and other areas to the network.

Therefore, in order to facilitate this large ever-changing demand, the IT team needed to identify redundant switch ports and make them available for reallocation. Historically, this was a very time consuming and laborious process and it was very difficult to find out if there was switch port capacity available to facilitate the intake. The university needed a solution that would easily identify which switch ports were in use and which ones could be redeployed allowing for new students to connect to the network.

Historically, the process of managing the switch port estate and looking for redundant switch ports and switches was carried out manually. This was very time consuming and made life laborious for the IT team. Therefore, in order to improve this process and make it more efficient, the IT team needed to automate the way they identified the redundant switches and switch ports, making them available for reallocation.

In addition, due to network security and the large number of people needing to use the network, it is also very important for the network management team to monitor and have visibility of which switch ports are being used at any time and by whom. The university needed a solution to help manage this process.

A Network Manager in the IT infrastructure team at the university, Alan Dickson, realised that he needed to find an application that would better manage their network by identifying which switch ports were being used and where there were redundant switches which could be redeployed, reducing the need for additional switches and making the life of his team easier.

Solution

Alan Dickson tried several different products that claimed to deal with these issues; however, he found that they all took time to set up and none were able to fulfil his requirements fully. Alan discovered porttracker at a network exhibition and was intrigued to find out if it would help him manage his network and address his challenges.

By using porttracker, an easy to use, plug–and-play appliance, that enables IT and Network Managers to quickly and simply track and report on what is connected to the network, The University of Hertfordshire was able to address its main issues and realise some quick and clear benefits:

• porttracker can automatically identify switch ports which can be reused
• The University is now able to easily track where end devices are connected to the network. porttracker can identify which switch ports and switches are being used through a last seen and last changed time and date.
• To address the capacity issue, porttracker allows unused switch port capacity to be easily found. It displays the number of switch ports unused since a specified time, allowing for redundant switches to be redeployed elsewhere.

In addition, due to the automation of these previously laborious manual processes, porttracker was able to free up the time of the network infrastructure team enabling them to do other things.

Results

“From the outset we have been very impressed with the solution that porttracker offered”, says Alan Dickson, Network Manager at The University of Hertfordshire. “Most importantly, we were able to save time and resources as we no longer had to manually look for idle switch ports and switches across our sites, which in turn has enabled us to spend more time on other network management tasks”

Alan continues, “porttracker has freed up significant time, and it may well pay for itself if we find we no longer need to hire another network manager to enable us to do our job. Furthermore, porttracker addressed our three key issues of managing the network, facilitating the smooth intake of new students every year and identifying areas of unused switch capacity in a simple and easy to use manner. We are happy to be using porttracker to aid the University of Hertfordshire in ensuring the network is easily accessible to all our users.”