How a Resilient Network Transformed Education at Slovakia's Leading Technical University

The Slovak University of Technology (STU) is the largest and most influential technical university in Slovakia, widely recognized for its strengths in engineering, information technology, and scientific innovation. As digital learning, laboratory research, and smart-campus initiatives accelerate, STU is upgrading its network infrastructure to enhance reliability, expand wireless coverage, and support its next phase of technological and academic development.

The Faculty of Materials Science and Technology in Trnava (MTF) is one of STU’s most engineering-driven and research-active faculties, educating around 3,500 students. With strong programs in materials engineering, manufacturing technologies, automation, and industrial systems, MTF has a growing need for advanced networking to support digital classrooms, smart-manufacturing platforms, interconnected devices, and collaborative research environments.

The Challenge: A Network Struggling to Keep Pace with Ambition

This pressing need stemmed from several pressing challenges that were impeding MTF's core missions of education and innovation.

First, the existing network capacity and bandwidth had become largely insufficient. The strategic expansion of smart classrooms, the ubiquity of online learning platforms, and the sheer volume of personal devices—from laptops to smartphones—used for both studies and campus life had exponentially increased network traffic. The emergence of data-intensive AI applications in research and coursework further stretched the available bandwidth to its limits, creating bottlenecks that hampered digital instruction and collaborative work.

Second, the university grappled with inconsistent wireless coverage and high-density access issues. In crucial areas like lecture halls and libraries, the high concentration of users simultaneously connecting multiple devices led to frequent signal degradation and connection drops. This unreliable access directly disrupted the learning experience, hindering participation in interactive sessions and access to online resources.

Thirdly, the university’s legacy core switching architecture—based on FC technology and large 6U devices—can no longer meet the capacity and performance needs of modern digital services. To support growing traffic and campus-wide applications, the core must evolve to a high-performance Ethernet architecture with 100GE ports, larger buffers, and a compact 1U design, ensuring scalability and operational efficiency.

Finally, the rapid evolution of technology has revealed clear scalability limitations in the university’s existing network as it prepares for next-generation digital applications. Emerging demands—such as immersive AR/VR learning, AI-driven high-performance computing, and cloud-native platforms—require far greater bandwidth, ultra-low latency, and stronger architectural flexibility than the legacy system can provide. At the same time, the partially built access layer, still restricted to 1G in many areas, cannot support the increasing density of wireless usage across classrooms, laboratories and libraries. To ensure stable and high-capacity connectivity for these advanced academic and research scenarios, the campus must deploy multi-GE access switches and future-ready Wi-Fi 7, enabling seamless scalability as digital requirements continue to grow.

The Solution: Building an Intelligent, High-Performance Campus Network

To address these multifaceted challenges, Huawei deployed its Intelligent Campus Network Solution for MTF. This comprehensive architecture was designed to deliver robust Wi-Fi coverage, exceptional reliability, and strategic cost efficiency.

The solution's highly reliable core and aggregation network ensure high-capacity, high-throughput data forwarding, seamlessly supporting campus-wide applications and demanding research networks while maintaining stable performance even during peak usage.

The benefits brought to the university's digitalization can be summarized in four key points:

University-Wide, High-Density Wi-Fi Coverage: The solution provides seamless wireless connectivity across the entire campus—from classrooms and libraries to labs. Intelligent load balancing ensures fast, stable internet access for all students and staff, even in the most densely populated areas.

Modular and Scalable Architecture for Future Expansion: The solution adopts a modular two-tier architecture—core and access—designed for long-term network evolution. This framework supports seamless capacity expansion and the introduction of bandwidth-intensive services such as AR/VR teaching, AI research platforms, and cloud-based laboratories. By providing flexible scalability and supporting future smart-campus applications, the design ensures sustained performance while maintaining cost efficiency.

Cost-Effective, High-Density Access Layer: The access layer is built on multi-GE switches that deliver 2.5GE/5GE bandwidth for Wi-Fi 6/7 APs, high-density classrooms and laboratories. This enhances user experience through higher wireless capacity and stability while keeping deployment and maintenance costs efficient, ensuring the network can evolve smoothly as digital requirements continue to grow.

Summary: A Strategic Enabler for a Modern University

In summary, Huawei's solution delivers a campus-wide, highly reliable, and cost-efficient network that directly addresses MTF's core challenges in capacity, wireless density, management, security, and scalability. This transformation is more than a technical upgrade; it enables the development of a modern smart campus and serves as the foundational backbone for the university's long-term digitalization strategy, ensuring MTF remains at the forefront of technical education in Central Europe.