Óbuda University Leverages Wi-Fi 7 to Build a High-Quality 10 Gbps Smart Campus Network

In today's era, technology is advancing quickly and driving all industries to constantly innovate and move forward, and the education sector is no exception. Óbuda University, located in Budapest, is a key player in Hungarian higher education. Since its establishment, Óbuda University has a reputation for education innovation, practices, and internationalization. It is committed to providing students with best-in-class education and abundant practice opportunities. To this end, Óbuda University has always focused on improving education quality and elevating the adoption of information and communications technology (ICT). However, the growing use of ICT puts a huge strain on the legacy campus network infrastructure, which urgently needs to be upgraded and transformed. Especially as more demands for smart education emerge, a key challenge faced with Óbuda University is to create a fast, stable, and intelligent network environment.

Network Challenges to Address

Óbuda University evaluated its original network environment and found a few network challenges, including the following:

• Insufficient wired network bandwidth: Legacy network infrastructure has been running for more than 10 years. As a result, devices became outdated, providing insufficient wired bandwidth. This led to low network performance and frequent network congestion, hindering the smooth use of smart teaching appliances.

• Poor wireless network quality: There were wireless coverage holes in teaching buildings, labs, and public areas on campus. Especially in some areas, signals were poor and in-roaming disconnections frequently occurred, causing service interruptions. This reduced teaching efficiency and affected the network experience of teachers and students.

• Multi-vendor devices in use and low operations and maintenance (O&M) efficiency: Network devices came from multiple vendors and were managed separately using different O&M systems. This resulted in inefficient O&M, more network security risks, complex network configuration, time-consuming fault diagnosis, and other challenges.

Building a High-Quality 10 Gbps Campus Network with Huawei Xinghe Intelligent Campus Solution

In face of these challenges, Óbuda University picked Huawei Xinghe Intelligent Campus Solution to build a leading-edge 10 Gbps campus network with Wi-Fi 7. The new network improves the network experience of teachers and students and enables high-speed, stable network connections anytime, anywhere, marking another milestone in network infrastructure construction.

Huawei's solution stands out for many compelling features such as:

• Improved wireless experience: Integral to Huawei's solution, Wi-Fi 7 provides a higher data transmission rate. According to real-world tests, Huawei's Wi-Fi 7 AP offers the single-client speed of up to 4.5 Gbps and enables up to 120 endpoints to live-stream 1080p video smoothly. This high bandwidth accommodates bandwidth-hungry use cases such as smart classrooms, cloud desktops, and online classes. Teachers and students now can enjoy smooth service experience during online learning, remote conferences, and data sharing.

• 10 Gbps campus network: Huawei CloudEngine S5735-S-V2 was deployed as the access switch to provide diverse ports for multi-terminal access and offer a maximum of 90 W power supply on a single port. Huawei CloudEngine S6730-H-V2, a multi-GE switch, was installed at the core layer to provide 100GE uplink ports for non-blocking forwarding even upon traffic bursts.

• Intelligent O&M: Óbuda University also deployed Huawei's iMaster NCE-Campus platform. This platform centrally manages and monitors network devices and supports intelligent analysis and fault prediction. In particular, its digital map feature clearly displays real-time experience visibility at network, user, terminal, and application levels, helping O&M staff demarcate and locate faults within minutes. Beyond this, network optimization can be completed within seconds upon a device fault, greatly improving O&M efficiency.

"Huawei's network management system has shortened network construction time and simplified network O&M, and Wi-Fi 7 adoption has achieved impressive results in corresponding terminals."

— Ivan Csaba, Director of the IT Department, Óbuda University

Leading-Edge Digital Infrastructure for More Efficient Teaching, Research, and Administration

By deploying Huawei's Xinghe Intelligent Campus Solution, Óbuda University has built a future-proof 10 Gbps campus network for better network experience and more efficient teaching, research, and administration.

Teachers now can make full use of online resources for teaching in smart classrooms, and students can access learning courseware more conveniently and participate in online projects and experiments. All of this paves the way for more technological and education innovation on campus.

In addition, researchers are no longer constrained by network bandwidth resources when they are doing research or analyzing data. University administrators benefit from an intelligent O&M system to effectively simplify routine management procedures and improve work efficiency.

Through continuous innovation and transformation, Óbuda University has become a pioneer and role model in constructing a future-proof smart campus and set a new benchmark for network upgrades among European universities. Key enablers behind this are advanced network technologies and a high-quality digital education environment. Powered by a high-quality 10 Gbps campus network with Wi-Fi 7, Óbuda University will continue to take teaching quality and research to new levels, develop more talented graduates, and contribute more to the progress and development of society.