Abbotsleigh Boosts Performance and Reduces Complexity with Extreme Networks

• Organization Name: Abbotsleigh
• Industry: Education (Independent K–12 School)
• Location: Sydney, Australia
• Challenge: Legacy network infrastructure couldn’t support growing digital, AV, and building automation demands.
• Solution: Upgraded to Extreme Networks’ Fabric technology to simplify management, increase performance, and support multicast AV traffic.
• Results: Simplified network operations, improved resilience and performance, faster deployments, and scalable AV-over-IP capabilities.

Established in 1885, Abbotsleigh is an independent Anglican school for girls located on Sydney’s North Shore. The Senior School hosts around 1,000 year 7 – 12 students, a boarding school for approximately 170 boarders, and extensive sports, leisure, environmental education and arts facilities, some of which are open to the public. The Junior School campus is separately located nearby and hosts 500 transition-to-Year 6 students as well as a purpose-built, 70-place Early Learning Centre for pre-kindergarten children.

The challenge

Abbotsleigh embarked on the planning and design of several new building projects in 2018/19 with the move to utilise a resilient data network as the backbone for core building systems to support functionality including lighting control as well as audio visual and HVAC systems.

Through this process it became evident that the school’s existing fixed data network required an upgrade to meet the increasing demands for digital learning. This included much of the infrastructure which was reaching the end of service life (EOSL). At the same time, the traditional configuration used when the network was first deployed was increasingly unable to meet increasing security and performance demands, while also growing in complexity.

“There was no true multi-pathing, and the infrastructure was growing in complexity,” says Paul Barrett, IT Technical Services Manager, Abbotsleigh. “This was resulting in increasing management overheads and made adds, moves, and changes difficult to complete in a timely manner.”

Barrett says the growing use of audio-visual technologies across the school was also straining the network and increasing complexity. The Crestron NVX platform, planned for deployment within new buildings for fixed AV installations, would also increase the bandwidth demand on the network beyond what it was reliably able to deliver. At the same time, the school’s AV team was looking to implement further AV over IP solutions such as Dante and NDI to increase their agility and reduce set up time for live events.

“As a result of the widespread use of Crestron NVX within our new buildings we needed a solution which would be readily able to handle large volumes of multicast traffic and provide high levels of fault tolerance,” says Barrett. “Achieving this with the legacy network design would have resulted in further complexity, not just in the configuration itself, but every time equipment was moved between locations.”

The solution

After examining a range of options, a decision was made early in 2021 to deploy a new physical network based on Extreme Networks’ Fabric technology. It was clear this option would deliver the network performance required while also significantly reducing network management overheads.

The first step in the deployment was to shift the network’s core to Extreme Fabric. Once this had been completed, new Extreme Fabric-enabled switches were installed and connected to the core.

“Extreme Networks’ Fabric technology automated the task of deploying network switches as well as services across the entire network fabric,” says Barrett. “Because it is based on the concept of shortest-path bridging, Fabric greatly simplified configuration of the entire network. It delivered us much greater levels of resilience and provided both a true multi-path network solution as well as automatic load sharing across available paths.”

The solution was built upon Extreme Networks’ VSP core switches and 5000 series universal edge switches and includes network management and authentication from ExtremeCloud™ IQ and Extreme Control (NAC).

The benefits

Once the new wired network was in place and fully operational, the school quickly began to enjoy some significant benefits.

Barrett says Extreme Fabric at the heart of the new network has significantly reduced the time and effort needed to deploy new switches. What used to take hours to achieve can now be handled in just minutes.

The Extreme Fabric infrastructure enables dynamic and rapid creation of virtual services between NVX equipment and contains the multicast traffic to only where it is required.

In order to ensure network security, each service is only extended to subscribed receivers. Full resilience is also supported through all available network paths with instant reconvergence and the most efficient use of bandwidth by the new AV services in the school.”

“Overall, it has made day-to-day management of the network much easier for the school’s IT team. Configurations have been simplified through the use of templates, freeing up staff time to focus on other activities.

“Through the use of the NAC and the resilience provided by Extreme Fabric, our AV team can utilise the network to distribute real-time, low-latency multimedia for live events anywhere a data point exists and without the need for the network engineers pre-configuring ports,” says Barrett.

In addition, another benefit delivered by the new network has been a significant improvement in overall performance. Network capacity has also greatly improved through the creation of higher bandwidth links and the sharing of loads across multiple paths.

“The Extreme Fabric automatically handles the Creston multicast traffic. This directly supports the audio-visual strategy of the school without increasing complexity or negatively impacting network performance.

“Extreme Networks’ focus on constantly improving the performance of its fixed network components means the school can take advantage of future enhancements as they are released. I am confident they will remain a valued technology partner for many years to come,” adds Barrett.