Gigabit Ethernet in London College Increases Network Performance by 50 Per Cent; Students Designing High-Bandwidth Graphics With High-Speed 3Com® Gigabit Ethernet Solution

Business Wire, July 11, 2002

Business Editors and Technology Writers

Gigabit Ethernet over fibre switching has helped Westminster Adult Education Service (WAES) future proof its network and enhance network performance by 50 per cent. Network speed and throughput has dramatically improved with the 3Com(R) SuperStack(R) 3 Switch 4900.

WAES has a large number of students studying a broad range of subjects. The college offers 1,600 part-time day and evening courses covering everything from accounting to aromatherapy and currently has over 10,000 students on its domain. As more and more students began to use the college's learning resource centre, network, Internet and email for their studies, the college began to experience bandwidth shortages and bottlenecks in the network. The increasing number of networked users resulted in a constantly increasing volume of network traffic, and prompted WAES to research options for increasing the speed of its network. The college added a 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4900 to the network infrastructure at the main college site. This new switch is running over fibre to the learning resource centre and has increased the bandwidth capabilities at both sites.

"Since we were updating the network, we decided to go for top of the range technology with Gigabit Ethernet. We already use 3Com products across our network, and after some initial shopping around, we felt that it could offer us the best technology at the best price," said Paul Fagg, network supervisor for WAES. "Our main priority was to increase network throughput and the 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4900 has done just this - the reduction in bottlenecks means that students and staff can retrieve the information they need more quickly and communicate much more effectively."

Radically Simple Gigabit Ethernet Solution at an Affordable Price

The 3Com SuperStack 3 Switch 4900 has allowed WAES to make its network Layer 3 ready and able to cope with the increasing number of users. It also enables students to use high-bandwidth applications such as Photoshop. The low cost per port was very attractive to the college, so deciding to upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet rather than adding more 100Mpbs speed switches was not a difficult decision.

3Com products are known for offering rich functionality while being simple to install and manage and the SuperStack 3 Switch 4900 is no exception. WAES was able to line all the products up and get the whole network running in less than half a day. This was of great importance to the college, which relies on a small but busy IT team for the support of business continuity.

"Apart from initially setting up all the IP addresses, we have not had to do any additional management, as the network manages itself," commented Paul Fagg. "Moving from a 100Mpbs speed network to Gigabit Ethernet has resulted in an incredible improvement in network performance. 3Com really helped us make the right decision."

About 3Com Corporation

3Com is a global leader in functionally-rich, easy-to-use networking products that connect businesses to their employees, customers and suppliers anytime, anywhere. 3Com is also a leader in Internet protocol (IP) service platforms and access infrastructure for the network service provider market. In 1979, the company was founded by one of the inventors of Ethernet technology on which virtually all local area networks are based. Since then, 3Com has sold more than 360,000,000 Ethernet connections. 3Com has headquarters in Santa Clara, California and offices around the world. For further information, please visit www.3com.com, or the press site www.3com.com/pressbox

3Com, the 3Com logo and SuperStack are registered trademarks of 3Com Corporation. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.