Spirent ensures delivery of 200 IPTV Channels

The University of Exeter is investing £5.5m to upgrade its cross-campus network, including the provision of 1Gbps bandwidth to the desktop, and 200 IPTV channels showing lecture material and other information relevant to courses of study.

Spirent Communications is playing a key role in the upgrade by assessing the switching and routing capabilities of the network systems offered by various vendors, via its Spirent TestCenter and Spirent Avalanche testing solutions.

Spirent’s technology has allowed the university to gauge the equipment on offer, and its ability to handle ‘bursty’ multimedia traffic particularly when applied to unicast/multicast traffic, layer 4-7 networking elements, and security and failover testing.

Spirent’s Global Professional Services group has also provided measurement data to support the selection of vendors, and consultancy services during the early stages of implementation of the network.

Spirent’s technology allowed the university to ensure that its new systems would accommodate all the anticipated services and cope with the high levels of data.

New core infrastructure is now being installed, and the system is expected to be fully operation on the University of Exeter’s St. Luke’s campus by December.

The deployment will include edge devices, VoIP phones and wireless networking, and will act as a proof of concept for the University’s main Streatham Campus.