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Laser-based Networking Keeps Students Online

Laser-based Networking Keeps Students Online
High-speed FSO wireless links enable full-time Internet access.

London South Bank University is a dynamic, inner-city university with a diverse multi-cultural population of some 17,000 students and around 1700 staff. The university has been providing high quality education in London for over 100 years and their students and staff come from a variety of communities and countries, making a truly multi-cultural environment.

Providing Internet access is an important part of South Bank University’s service to its students, in particular to the students resident in halls on the campus. Three of the University’s halls of residence were connected to the main campus via radio based wi-fi connections. However this solution did not deliver high-enough bandwidth, often failing to deliver any more than 3Mbps of throughput for each link. This level of bandwidth was grossly inadequate and would often cause problems for students using the Internet connection, and in-turn causing a major headache for South Bank University’s IT team.

South Bank University was faced with the task of finding a reliable, cost effective solution that would deliver high bandwidth connectivity, and that could be quickly implemented.

Various forms of building-to-building connectivity were considered. It was proposed that the preferred long term solution would have been to install a fibre connection. However initial cost and time constraints were seen as being prohibitive to installing a fibre solution at that time.

Instead South Bank University turned to WAN Partnership and LaserBit to provide a high bandwidth Free Space Optic (FSO) wireless solution.

After visiting the site and conducting a site survey WAN Partnership proposed the installation of five wireless laser links to meet the varying distance requirements between sites. LaserBit solutions were chosen including Pico, Pinto and 1200m units - each of these links would deliver 100Mbps of data throughput.

To date WAN Partnership has installed five LaserBit point-to-point laser links at South Bank University, and this number is set to grow. The university’s students now enjoy a much more reliable, high-bandwidth connection to the Internet at their halls of residence.

V iew an enlarged diagram of the South Bank University 'Wireless Network Configuration'.

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