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Extreme Networks Celebrates Tenth Anniversary Of Flagship Implementation
Published 13th May 2008
Oceanographic Research Centre Still Depends On Company’s Debut Solutions...
Extreme Networks, Inc. today announces an important customer milestone with the National Oceanography Centre being rewarded for ten years of unbroken custom at an event at the Mountbatten Hotel in Covent Garden. The Centre, which first implemented Extreme Networks’ reliable and robust switching products in 1997 rely on Extreme Networks solutions every day on research at its world-renowned facility in Southampton.
The National Oceanography Centre (NOCS) represents an unparalleled investment in marine, earth sciences and technology in the country. The centre opened in 1995 in a purpose-built, £50 million waterfront campus on Southampton’s Empress Dock. A collaboration between the Natural Environment Research Council and the University of Southampton, the centre houses around 500 staff and 750 undergraduate and postgraduate students.
The reliability of Extreme Networks’ solutions is typified by the fact that the NOCS still uses some of the company’s original Summit® 48 switches purchased some ten years before on its Royal Research Ship (RRS) Discovery. Built in 1962 and a key part of the NOCS’ fleet, the RSS Discovery measures 90 metres in length and is fitted with a broad range of oceanographic equipment. Until recently it was the largest general purpose oceanographic research vessel in use in the UK.
Since the purchase of its first set of Summit® 48 switches, NOCS has implemented a variety of Extreme Networks’ BlackDiamond® and Summit® series switches to meet its growing technological goals.
“We are constantly viewed as a technology leader in the research community. We were a big user of protocol VLANs in the early days, had Gigabit before it was fully ratified in 1998 and were one of the first academic sites to implement 10Gig back in 2003,” explains NOCS Network Manager, Bryan Norman. “As a technology leader itself, Extreme Networks has been a constant source of industry-leading solutions, expertise and encouragement that has enabled us to carry out our revolutionary research and put the country at the forefront of global oceanographic research.”
NOCS upgraded to Extreme Networks BlackDiamond® 8800 series core switches in 2007. The switches deliver voice-class availability, high-density Power over Ethernet (PoE), Gigabit Ethernet, and 10 Gigabit Ethernet wherever it’s needed. The BlackDiamond® 8800 series minimise latency and jitter, which degrade the quality of voice and video applications. They're also highly resilient, a key aspect of voice-class availability using technologies such as Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS) link resiliency standard to provide sub-50-millisecond link failover recovery time.
In addition, the company relies on a number of Extreme Networks’ powerful and compact Summit® X450 series switches, based on its revolutionary ExtremeXOS carrier-class operating system. ExtremeXOS is a highly resilient, modular OS that offers high availability and greatly enhances manageability. Summit® X450 series switches have the same high-performance, non-blocking hardware technology used on Extreme Networks BlackDiamond® 8800 series switches, continuing in the Extreme Networks tradition of simplifying network deployments through the use of common hardware and software throughout the network.
”The performance and reliability of Extreme Networks’ solutions is unparalleled,” enthuses Norman. “The feature set of its solutions is extremely rich, yet has an ease of operation that negates the need for expensive training courses and a plethora of time consuming upgrades.”
“The innovative nature of our products over the years, epitomised by the success of our extensible operating system – ExtremeXOS – has led to a high level of trust in the market that our products do exactly what they say on the tin,” adds Extreme Networks’ MD for UK & Ireland, Paul Phillips. “NOCS was one of the first customers to recognize the many significant benefits that we can enable and they are not alone in coming back for solutions again from us, although by being with us from the start has been one of the first to reach this impressive milestone.”