Southern Cross University Gold Coast Campus Network Upgrade Report

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of the network infrastructure at Southern Cross University's Gold Coast campus, prompted by the need to accommodate a growing student population and campus expansion. The report begins by detailing the current network status, including user demographics, network usage patterns, and Wi-Fi coverage. The analysis incorporates data collected through surveys and interviews with network administrators, providing insights into the existing IP addressing scheme and network performance. Subsequently, the report proposes two potential network upgrade solutions: the deployment of Huawei Cloud Enterprise Communications (CloudEC) and the development of an in-house data center. A detailed evaluation of each solution is provided, including a cost-benefit analysis. The report ultimately recommends the CloudEC platform as the optimal solution, emphasizing its scalability, cost-effectiveness, and ease of implementation, especially in light of the university's projected growth. The report concludes by highlighting the advantages of the CloudEC solution over a data center in terms of accommodating future capacity and long-term cost considerations.

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Solution to Gold coast campus Network Scalability
Student name
Professor’s name
Unit title
Institution

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Southern Cross University at Gold Coast anticipates to upgrade its campus network
resulting from the expansion of the campus and the growth in the number of students. A
survey of the institution’s current network status was conducted to identify its capacity and
the possible network upgrades that could be implemented.
Current network Status
The following was identified about the campus network. The estimated number of
network users is close to 3000 users. This includes 300 staff members, 2500 students and 200
public and community members around the school. The information was collected from the
institution’s network and data centre administrators through questionnaires and also an oral
interview. The questionnaires were helpful in this scenario since they provided a template for
comparing the respondents’ feedback as well as are easy to analyse and visualize. 75 percent
of the staff members used the campus network for emailing services and accessing campus
data such as financial records and learning material including electronic books and
publications and course outlines. Voice and telephone services are also available on the
campus local network to the staff and form 25 percent of the network’s functions. Lecturers
and professors, who form a bigger chunk of staff members accessing the campus network,
mostly use it to access and update student data such as class attendance, and, assessments and
exam grades. Students on the other hand use the campus network to register their units and
classes at the beginning of the semester as well accessing their portals to view their details
such as grades, specific units to cover each semester and professor’s names and class venues.
The public and community members can only access the campus network via a wireless
connection and they only use it to access the internet. Staff members and students need to set-
up and fill in the correct credentials to access their portals through the campus network. All
users can access the internet through the campus network

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The campus Wi-Fi network covers the entire administrative and tuition areas as well
as certain sections of the hostels. It is also quite strong in the administrative and tuition areas
with speeds of up to 10Mbps in these areas. The connectivity weakens in the hostels and its
speeds can go as low as 2mbps in certain hostel sections. Analysing the campus’s Wi-Fi
connectivity coverage and strengths was simply done through experimenting by trying to
connect with the network in different sections of the institution with our own mobile devices.
Information collected through interviewing the network administrators reveals that the Wi-Fi
connectivity is procured from a third party service provider.
The IP addressing scheme for Southern Cross University appears as follows;
Subnet Prefix: 192.168.2.0/24 (mask 255.255.255.0)
DHCP server: 192.168.2.1
Default gateway: 192.168.1.1
Email server: 192.168.1.2
ICS clients IP address range: 192.168.0.2 to 192.168.0,254
Probable network Solutions
One of the solution’s to the Campus’s network outlook would be deploying Huawei
Cloud Enterprise Communications (CloudEC) platform to create a high-quality learning and
office communications network. The platform’s web-based, common eSight network
managing system supports centralized provisioning as well as domain-based management
which will simplify the institutions network operations and management (Huawei
Corporation, 2018). This will allow the network administrators to concentrate on value
addition to the network. In addition, the cloud enterprise will be affordable to the campus

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since it deploys local gateways to local calls and regeneration minimizing communication
costs as well as ensuring service continuity. In addition, the cloud platform offers extra
services in voice, data and video convergence which apply progressive communications
improving teaching and office experiences through HD video conferencing and office
collaboration.
Another alternative would be developing its own data centre which entails
incorporating a server hardware on the premises to store and access data through the
institution’s local network. It will generally be maintained by the campus’s in-house IT
department. The data centre will give the institution full control over its data as well as the
hardware. It will allow the institution to operate a vast category of applications and complex
workloads (Wen, 2018). In addition, it provides improved security to the campus’s network
and data. The physical connectivity of the data centre to the institution’s local network makes
it easier in ensuring that only the individuals with campus-approved credentials and devices
can gain accessibility to the institution’s information and applications.
Recommended Solution
The best solution for Southern Cross University at Gold Coast network upgrade
would be deploying the Huawei Cloud Enterprise Communications (CloudEC) platform.
Seen as the institution anticipates to grow its student capacity, a cloud solution would be best
since it is easy scalable in comparison to an in-house data centre. CloudEC has potentially
unrestricted capacity and the institution can subscribe to a private cloud within the vendor’s
network hence the institution will not be sharing hardware resources with other cloud users.
In addition, it is cost-effective in installing as well as less time consuming. The campus will
only pay-up for the subscription package it requires and it will be able to scale up and down

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in future depending on the needs. Setting up an in-house data centre is quite expensive
especially one that can accommodate the campus’s future capacity of 10,000 students in the
near future.
A table analysing the Cost-benefit analysis of the two probable solutions.
CloudEc In-house Data Centre
$12000 monthly subscription charges $10-20 million infrastructure setup
Nil annual maintenance cost $5000 annual maintenance costs

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References
Huawei Corporation, 2018. Southern Cross University Builds Cloud Communications
System. [Online]
Available at: https://e.huawei.com/en/case-studies/global/2018/201809271410
[Accessed 04 October 2019].
Wen, H., 2018. Cloud vs. Data Center: What to Consider. [Online]
Available at: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4982-cloud-vs-data-center.html
[Accessed 04 October, 2019].