Wired Network Overhaul

During Easter 2024 the IT Services team completed the replacement of the entire wired switching network.  Comprising of over 40 switches this essential infrastructure is complex and challenging to manage but an incredibly satisfying and rewarding project to finish.

After many months of planning and technical design work began during Spring term to setup and prepare all the new switches.  We worked closely with our supplier Softcat and their technical teams to evaluate several solutions and eventually chose to stay with Aruba for the new network.  We have used Aruba networking switches for over 10 years and their new solutions offered considerable benefits at a competitive price point.

We would need up to six switches stacked together for each building in the School and 2 high speed redundant switches for the core.  The new switches are cloud managed, powerful, fast reliable and crucially have at least 10 years of security, software and hardware support!  You can find out more about the switches with these links if your really into that kind of thing:

Enjoy the pictures and some of the bits of information along the way!

Testing and Preparing the network

  1. 1. Setting up the new core network and first test switch. Building literally a brand new network from scratch to take over the old one. Two bottom switches are 48 port 10gb/s and are the backbone of the network. Fully redundant they cost £10,000 each!! On top is a small access switch for a small building. This is what a phone or computer will plug into. The coil of cables connects the two core switches together and runs at 80gb/s!

  2. 2. The new network grows. At this point we had a few test switches configured and had finished spending 6 full days with an external Aruba Networking Consultant to valid and test the new network design against our goals and needs. You can also see a few of the new wireless access points we rolled out at the same time being tested.

3. All the switches unboxed, asset tagged, setup and ready to be installed. Many thanks to Deyam for pretty much single handedly carrying each one up from estates over the course of a month! Each access switch can deliver up to 700w over the network to power wifi access points, cctv camera's, desk phones and more.

First Building Migrated

  1. 4. This is the Science access switch before upgrading. We chose Science as the first test deployment, being close we could keep an eye on things and troubleshoot issues fast. As it its next to our office, its also already very tidy and organised.

  2. 5. Here is Science after the new switches were installed. Lovely and neat, every cable exactly where it needs to be. A key feature of the new network is "colourless ports". The switches will automatically detect what device is plugged in where and make sure its connected to the correct network. Its now impossible to plug something into the wrong port and we can move things around without worrying about what is connected to each cable!

Core Installed

6. This picture shows the core switches installed in the server room. By this point we had migrated a lot of the network over. All of this was done during the Spring term with almost zero downtime. On the left is the cyan fiber optic patch cables, each one connects a building back to the core, each building connecting to both core switches. On the right are the high speed connections to our VMware servers, Dell iSCSI Storage and various firewalls and other key network devices. Each device had to be carefully planned, migrated and tested to ensure it worked correctly on the new network.

The Final Switch Over (Pun intended?)

Now that the testing and core was almost completed it was time to replace all the access switches, over the course of several weeks we replaced every switch in every building, in most cases with no impact on users.  Sadly the larger buildings needed to be taken offline so for the final push, on the Saturday after the end of term I did a 12 hour day and replaced all the remaining switches.  These took way longer than expected as they were such a mess, they hadn't been patched properly since before any of us were working at Badminton.  Each one had to be audited, cables checked, removed and then repatched into the new switches.  Once done though an incredibly satisfying job!  Here are some of the highlights.

  1. Sanderson Before - What a mess, this had not been tidied properly since the building was built! Cables blocking modules, hanging down, old cables not doing anything, multiple colors for no reason!

  2. Sanderson almost finished (I forgot to take a final picture) - Much more professional. Unused cables removed, all remaining cables ran properly. This took approx. 3 hours start to finish. Note the right hand side cables still needed to be patched back in.

  1. Sixth Form Before

  2. Sixth Form After - 2.5 hours

  1. School House Before

  2. School House After - Really proud of how this one turned out!

  1. Junior School Before - Its dark in the loft! Note the cables blocking all access to the old switch, this makes it a nightmare to check any cables or perform any maintenance on the switches if they fail.

  2. Junior School Finished - Neat and tidy with easy access to all switches and ports.

Network Monitoring

No network is complete without proper management and monitoring of the network.  For this we  our own in house network traffic mapping tool Cacti.

Here is our live network map powered by Cacti. It allows to see in real time how much traffic is flowing and where. We can us it to monitor links to buildings as well as checking devices with multiple links are connected and working correctly. The top left is our firewall "SonicWALL" the middle is the core switches. The bottom left is our storage and vmware servers. Finally all the buildings are on the right with any connected backups or extra bits of interest.

Network Management

for this we use Aruba Central, a key part of the new network this allows us to monitor the switches, keep them up to date, push out configurations and interrogate connected devices and data.  It even provides AI based insights into the performance of the network, suggesting changes and alerting us to potential issues.  

Aruba Central Homepage showing building status and overview of the network

List of switches with stats and key information such as firmware version, config status and more.

List of connected clients, allowing us to quickly get an overview of everything on the network or drill down into specific issues or problem devices.

Review, Documentation and clean up

Finally now the new network is installed we will review the new system, carefully monitor its performance and crucially document its design and setup.

We will also now deal with all the old equipment, two pallets worth of old switches that we will aim to sell to a refurbishment company or if not will offer as donations to other schools.  Failing that they will be responsibly recycled as WEEE waste.

I hope you enjoyed the photo's as much as I have enjoyed this project.