Multifaceted Faculty Network Design and Management: Practice and Experience Report

TL;DR

This paper shares practical insights and experiences in designing and managing a complex faculty network, covering topology, security, automation, and evolution over time.

Contribution

It provides a detailed case study of faculty network management, highlighting unique features like campus-wide VLANs and ghosting, with historical and technical perspectives.

Findings

Effective network topology and scalability strategies

Security and monitoring practices for academic networks

Automation and data management in network administration

Abstract

We report on our experience on multidimensional aspects of our faculty's network design and management, including some unique aspects such as campus-wide VLANs and ghosting, security and monitoring, switching and routing, and others. We outline a historical perspective on certain research, design, and development decisions and discuss the network topology, its scalability, and management in detail; the services our network provides, and its evolution. We overview the security aspects of the management as well as data management and automation and the use of the data by other members of the IT group in the faculty.