Spirent® Communications Guides First Stage of University of Exeter’s £5.5 million Next Generation Network Project
 
Provides testing and consultancy expertise for project which will deliver 200 channels of IPTV and 1Gbps bandwidth to the desktop

Crawley, UK – (July 15, 2008) — Spirent Communications (LSE: SPT), a global provider of performance analysis and service management solutions, is playing a crucial role in the first stage of the University of Exeter’s three year £5.5 million cross-campus network upgrade. The University used Spirent TestCenter and Spirent Avalanche testing solutions to assess switching and routing capabilities of network systems offered by various vendors. This performance testing process has enabled the University to gauge the vendors’ equipment and its capacity to handle ‘bursty’ multimedia traffic particularly when applied to unicast/multicast traffic, layer 4-7 networking elements, and security and failover testing.

In addition to testing, Spirent’s Global Professional Services group advised the University by providing measurement data to support vendor selection, and consultancy through the initial stages of implementation. Once complete, the University will benefit from a 100 Gbps next-generation network which will deliver up to 1Gbps bandwidth to students’ computers and over 200 channels of IPTV, enabling them to view content relevant to their courses and catch up on lectures.

“Spirent provided us with an invaluable independent evaluation and consultation process. By testing the equipment literally to the point of destruction it has given us assurance that the vendors selected for the project will meet the very demanding specifications of this network,” said Roger Snelling, Head of Networks at University of Exeter. “As a highly-respected public body, it is imperative that we are transparent and fair in the selection process, while getting the best return on investment possible. Spirent enabled us to do this and completed the work within five weeks from start to finish which is remarkably quick for a project of this size.”

“By emulating a mix of real-world traffic patterns and a mix of applications over the competing equipment, we were able to validate whether the systems could accommodate all the anticipated services and data throughputs,” said Leon Wynne, Director of Global Services at Spirent Communications. “Additionally we flushed out issues that needed to be addressed before the system was installed, which gave the University added leverage when negotiating with vendors for the final project. Not only did our objective perspective provide peace of mind for the university, we were able to ensure it will be in full control of the roll-out process.”

The new core infrastructure is currently being installed, and full deployment is expected on the University of Exeter’s smaller St. Luke’s campus by December this year. This deployment with edge devices, VoIP phones and wireless networking will act as a proof of concept for the main Streatham Campus. The system will also share the computing power across research networks DANTE and JANET.