FS Helps a Spanish University Achieve Full Wireless Network Coverage on Its New Campus

A growing Spanish university has successfully built a comprehensive wireless network from scratch in collaboration with FS. With over 10,000 students and 2,000 faculty and staff, this institution, renowned for its focus on research and diverse educational offering, needed a solution that would ensure fast and stable connectivity across its new 70-acre campus, comprised of four five-storey buildings.

Faced with the need for comprehensive coverage and efficient centralised management, FS designed and implemented a custom wireless solution that integrated firewalls, switches, access points (APs), access controllers (ACs), network video recorders (NVRs), among other devices. This solution ensured reliable and scalable performance, allowing the university to centrally manage the entire infrastructure, improving connectivity, security and video surveillance management across the campus.

This project transformed campus connectivity, establishing a solid foundation for learning and research in an advanced digital environment and positioning the university for a more connected and efficient future.

The client faced several key challenges when designing its new wireless and video surveillance network. Firstly, one of the main challenges was the need to connect a large number of devices using multiple links. This required detailed technical planning to maintain network stability and performance across the campus, which was made even more difficult when considering that each access point had to support up to 120 devices and guarantee a speed of 20MB per device.

Another crucial challenge was achieving wide and stable network coverage across the campus. Since the buildings are interconnected, the network had to offer reliable connectivity between all of them. In addition, the client needed a centralised management solution to be able to monitor and control all devices and links efficiently. This cloud-based platform had to allow remote access and facilitate real-time analysis, which represented an additional challenge in terms of complexity and cost.

Finally, link consolidation to ensure redundancy and increase available bandwidth was another major challenge. This meant the need to implement advanced technological solutions that not only ensured a continuous and reliable service, but also balanced quality, scalability and energy efficiency within a limited budget.

This network solution is designed to provide reliable, high-performance connectivity in wireless networking and video surveillance applications. It uses an architecture designed for high availability, redundancy and scalability, adapting to future customer needs. Link aggregation (LACP) allows multiple links to be combined into one, increasing bandwidth and providing link redundancy, improving network stability and reliability. Moreover, an NSG-5220 firewall is included to ensure infrastructure security.

At the core switching layer, two S5810-48FS switches are used, with 48 1Gb SFP ports and 4 10Gb SFP+ uplink ports. These devices are connected to each other and to the distribution layer via fibre optic links, improving switching capacity and network redundancy. Additionally, the S5810-48FS switches allow flexible interconnection of up to 8 units, offering efficient performance thanks to their Broadcom chip.

For the access layer, the S3410-24TS-P and S3410-48TS-P switches are used, which feature PoE+ ports to power devices such as access points and video surveillance cameras. These switches include 10Gb SFP+ uplinks and SFP Combo ports, delivering fast and reliable connectivity between network devices. Furthermore, the S3410 switches allow stacking of up to four units, facilitating network expansion based on customer needs.

In areas with lower capacity requirements, the S3270-10TM-P switch is used, which has 8 PoE+ ports for power devices and 2 2.5Gb SFP ports for uplinks. This model, with its Broadcom chip, provides reliability and energy efficiency.

The AP-N515 access points offer efficient Wi-Fi coverage throughout the facility, managed via the cloud. With support for Wi-Fi 6 and 4×4 MU-MIMO antennas, these devices facilitate seamless connectivity and seamless roaming between different areas. The AC-224AP controller manages all access points and enables full integration for centralised wireless network management.

The video surveillance solution is completed by the IPC304-8M-B and IPC304-8M-D cameras, which offer high 8MP resolution, intelligent night vision and a robust design. Rated IP67 and IK10, these cameras are connected to the network via PoE, minimising additional cabling and providing continuous and efficient surveillance.

The entire network infrastructure and surveillance devices are managed through the AC-224AP controller, which can handle up to 224 access points. Additionally, the NVR716-128C network video recorder provides robust and scalable storage, recording up to 128 channels in 4K.

Optical modules such as the 10GBASE-SR SFP+ and 1000BASE-LX/LH SFP ensure high-speed connectivity in the network, providing reliable links over multimode and single-mode fibre, ensuring continuous and reliable performance across the system.

With FS solution for the campus wireless and video surveillance network, a highly efficient and low-cost infrastructure was implemented, tailored to the client’s flexible needs and designed to deliver the best experience to students and teaching staff. Leveraging FS’s experience in deploying high-performance networks and its high-reliability design capability, a multi-tier network was built that optimises both performance and security.

The network was designed to be flexible, scalable and capable of growth, with redundancy in both 1G uplinks and power to access devices, ensuring that the network can easily adapt to future demands. FS also implemented advanced security measures to enhance network reliability, including link redundancy, real-time monitoring, centralised management and device status alerts, contributing to a substantial improvement in infrastructure security.

The system also stood out for its low energy consumption, operating efficiently even under high load conditions. Thanks to its dual power supply design, the solution guaranteed continuous operation, even in the event of a power failure. FS provided ongoing support throughout all phases of the project, from implementation to staff training and maintenance, ensuring that end users could benefit from a reliable, high-performance network.

With an excellent value for money solution, FS not only met the client’s budget, but also managed to optimise long-term operating costs, providing a flexible, scalable and efficient solution that met the client’s needs and improved the experience of the entire educational community.