China's University of Petroleum is enhancing the network connecting its three separate campuses with a Nortel (NT) solution to improve communications and ensure easy online access to advanced learning resources for 40,000 students.

Connecting existing UPC campus networks in Beijing, and Dongying and Qingdao in East China's oil-rich Shandong province, the upgraded Nortel communications platform supports the exchange of information in real-time, regardless of location, as well as access to high-bandwidth, Internet-based services such as distance learning, Web-based multimedia collaboration, video conferencing and VoIP.

"With campuses located in three remote locations, converging our multiple voice and data networks into a single infrastructure provides a powerful platform for meeting the evolving communication needs of students, teachers and the university administration," said Wang Jian, director of the Information Center at the University of Petroleum, East China. "Nortel supplied the converged campus networks for our two Shandong campuses in 2004, and the Beijing network the following year. The performance, reliability and stability of these networks were key factors in selecting Nortel to implement the next phase of improvements to our network."

At the core of the Nortel solution for UPC is the Nortel Ethernet Routing Switch (ERS) 8600. Providing a resilient, secure and intelligent network, the ERS 8600 enables Terabit performance and network-wide delivery of applications such as VoIP over 10-gigabit Ethernet links.

A Nortel ERS 1600 is being deployed to provide additional support for converged applications, and a series of Nortel Ethernet Switches for high throughput and high-density desktop connectivity. A Nortel Backbone Link Node Router will ensure top network performance with a forwarding rate of 1.4 million packets per second.