In
order to increase the bandwidth and to achieve a more cost-effective network,
in 2002 we decided on establishing a LAN-interconnect type backbone network in
place of the earlier FR/ATM one. The winner of the tender MATV Rt. has built
out and is operating a purely optical backbone network for the University of
Szeged, whose central element located at MATV is a Catalyst-3548XL switch. At
present 28 FastEthernet endpoints are attached to it. The aggregated traffic is
connected to the university’s central Catalyst-6509 switch through two
GigaEthernet links.
At the endpoints several problems had to be
solved: the reception of the full duplex 100Mbps speed from the direction of
the supplier, adapting the obsolete coaxial LAN to it, and routing of several
IP sub-networks at some points. These tasks were impossible to achieve with the
earlier routers at the endpoints, and there were no resources to buy new
routers/switches for this purpose, as a temporary solution we used PC-s running
Linux.
Before the final acceptance we were running a
thorough check-up to get quality parameters on the connections. For these tests
we used the above PC-s with software elements developed by ourselves.