BlueCat Networks > Case Studies > BlueCat Provided Support and Expertise, as well as a Resilient, Scalable, and Redundant Network to University College Dublin

BlueCat Provided Support and Expertise, as well as a Resilient, Scalable, and Redundant Network to University College Dublin

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Europe

Country

Ireland

Product

BlueCat IPAM
BlueCat DNS/DHCP Core Services

Tech Stack

BIND DNS and DHCP
Red Hat servers

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Digital Expertise

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

University College Dublin (UCD) was founded in 1854 as the Catholic University of Ireland by John Henry Cardinal Newman. After a few iterations as the Royal University and a constituent college of the National University of Ireland, UCD became an independent college in 1997. Today, UCD is recognized as one of Europe’s leading research institutions, and it is ranked in the top 1% among international universities. Considered to be Ireland’s most globally engaged university, UCD has a population of more than 30,000 students from 120 countries, and 5,500 students are located outside of Ireland. A major contributor to modern Ireland with a rich history, UCD has produced numerous Irish Presidents, Prime Ministers, as well as business, cultural, and sports leaders, including the writer James Joyce in 1902.

The Challenge

Over the years, University College Dublin (UCD) built its own DDI infrastructure, consisting of BIND DNS and DHCP as well as several Red Hat servers. They also created an in-house IPAM solution that allowed its network team to easily create address ranges and edit IP data. However, the network was growing rapidly and placing more demands on the current system. The growth and increasing demand on the network put pressure on the already-tight resources, and the University did not want to be in a precarious position where its networks management group was stretched too thin. As resources left the team, it was becoming harder and harder to run the in-house solution. It made logical sense to move to a managed commercial DDI project where they had robust expertise and extensive support. In addition, UCD was in the process of upgrading to IPv6. They were operating a dual stack and had IPv6 running on a few test networks. As they looked for a new IPAM product, this was something that had to be addressed.

The Solution

As UCD looked for a network vendor, it considered all of the major players in the industry. The University conducted a one-day workshop to evaluate the different networking companies against its requirements. After a detailed comparative analysis, BlueCat out-ranked its competition and could offer UCD a fully resilient, scalable solution with built-in redundancy. UCD’s busy networks team wanted a smooth transition with minimal downtown. Therefore, the BlueCat engineer needed to quickly understand the current system and carefully plan the migration. It was important that the busy day-to-day operations of the UCD network and networks team were not impeded during implementation of the new system. This is where the skills of the BlueCat project engineer was a huge bonus to them. They didn’t need to devote a lot of time or resources to the engineer. Essentially, he was able to plan the transition with limited demands on their current team.

Operational Impact

UCD’s BlueCat solution has been in place for over a year, and the networks team has found the day-to day operations of the new system to be very straightforward.
UCD sees daily concurrent connections of up to 18,000 devices on its wireless network and 7,000 endpoints on the wired network.
The system works with little maintenance required from the UCD team.

Quantitative Benefit