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Virginia Military Institute Selects Bay Networks' Accelar Routing Switches for State-of-the-Art Network
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 22, 1998--
Historic College to Implement Accelar Routing Switches to
Support Multimedia Applications
Bay Networks, Inc. (NYSE:BAY) today announced that the Virginia Military Institute has selected Bay Networks as its network vendor.
VMI's new network is designed to support the institute's extensive use of multimedia applications to enhance its academic programs. The network includes two Accelar 1200 routing switches, 20 Accelar 1100 routing switches, 58 BayStack 350T-HD 10/100 Mbps Autosense switches and 25 BayStack 303 Ethernet desktop switches.
Founded in 1839, the Virginia Military Institute is the nation's oldest state-supported military college. Graduates include prominent figures in United States history such as General of the Army, George C. Marshall who is best known as the architect of the World War II European Recovery Program known as the Marshall Plan (VMI class of 1901). The college has a long history of academic excellence, and realized that continuing that tradition into the next century would require a state-of-the-art network capable of supporting current and future applications including a distance learning initiative.
"A key criterion in building our new network was finding a solution that would grow with our requirements and not become obsolete in two to three years," said Jim Bollinger, assistant director of computing at VMI. "We deployed Bay Networks Accelar routing switches throughout our network, from the backbone to the wiring closet because they are a cost-effective solution that allowed us to extend Quality of Service (QOS) to the wiring closet and offered us options to increase bandwidth as our requirements grow. The Accelar routing switches were the only products on the market that met our performance requirements."
VMI students were "pushing" the old network's limits through growing use high bandwidth applications and multimedia downloads from the World Wide Web for research. Bollinger wanted to make certain that the students didn't experience diminished service. To ensure the success of the network and future growth options, he deployed Accelar 1100 routing switches in the VMI barracks (student residences) connecting them to Accelar 1200 routing switches on the network backbone. The sophisticated queuing capabilities included in the Accelar Routing switches allow VMI to give priority to academic applications, making sure students and staff do not experience substandard network performance.
"We are trying to satisfy the student's need for visual stimulation as part of the academic experience," continued Bollinger. "Doing this means supporting a variety of multimedia applications. By installing a cutting-edge network, we are adding another recruitment tool to our arsenal, allowing us to continue to attract the brightest and most motivated students."
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