The University of Granada (Spain) has renovated its network infrastructure with the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches. The upgrade incorporates higher-capacity processors and 40 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet connectivity cards in order to establish aggregated links and obtain a connection to the 160 Gbps nucleus of the network backbone.
The university thus becomes the first academic organization in the world to reach this capacity using Cisco Catalyst switches. Due to this capacity, the University of Granada’s researchers can work uninterruptedly with centers located within and outside Spain.
The University of Granada comprises 70 buildings spread over eight campuses (five in Granada, one in Ceuta, another in Melilla and one virtual wireless one) interconnected by 2,000 kilometers of its own fiber optic cable. The network will serve around 85,000 users consisting of students and personnel.
The new-generation network — known as RedUGRNova — consists of Cisco routing, switching and safety solutions, including: Catalyst 6500 Series Switches that were updated with Catalyst 6904 40 GE cards; Cisco Nexus 5500 Series Switches to interconnect the two main university data centers and to unify the LAN and storage networks, including transport via Fiber Channel on Ethernet (FCoE); Cisco ASA firewalls; and the unified Cisco Prime Infrastructure management console. The Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches also incorporate the Supervisor Engine 2T, that can increase the Cisco Catalyst 6500 advanced service modules which add capacities for balancing load and monitoring traffic capability from 720 Gbps to 2 Tbps, quadrupling the number of devices or users that can connect to a network up to 10,000.
The project has been financed with funds from the European Union, while Acuntia, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner, has integrated the new network infrastructure in the University of Granada.
