The Monash Network: an Explanation

There are many ways in which high speed networks can be built, where solutions can vary depending on the situation and the requirements. The following features distinguish the Monash approach:

• An emphasis on availability and maintainability through resilience (multi-paths; dual active/standby hardware pairs, etc.) and minimizing the number of single-point-failure items.
• Providing equally well for local traffic and Monash-wide traffic through quality of service controls.
• A network infrastructure which is capable of equitably supporting various user groups' disparate needs including use of both local servers and central servers;

Campus Links

The Clayton campus is considered to be the centre of the Wide Area Network. There are 1 Gbit links from Clayton to the other campuses via optical fibre. Each is connected to part of the Clayton Core. The campuses are connected to Clayton via either the Southern or Northern loop.

The Southern loop is comprised of optical fibre links between Peninsula , Gippsland and Berwick. The Northern loop is comprised of fibre links between 30 Collins, VCP, Alfred and Caulfield. Both loops are connected to both ends of Clayton which provide link redundancy.

Monash Network Implementation

Monash are using Cisco Systems brand of Gigabit Ethernet Switches, upon which the inter campus framework is built. At the centre of each campus are two core Routers, which resiliently connect to Precinct route-switches. The Clayton campus being the largest one is broken up into six geographically designated Precincts; where as the other Campuses are seen as individual Precincts respectively.

From each Precinct switch, there are dual Gigabit connections via Single Mode (SM) to Building Distribution Switches (BDS). Each BDS in turn resiliently connects Floor Ethernet Switches (FES). A high degree of resilience is therefore achieved from core to edge, without requiring a full mesh structure, thus essentially providing a gigabit connection to the desktop.

Central Server Connectivity

There are Gigabit fibre connections at the Clayton Campus (between ITS in Building 28 and MANTRAK). All production servers in these locations are connected via Fibre Channel to the Storage Area Network (SAN).

Local Server Connectivity

ITS wants to cater well for both "centralised server" and "distributed server" models, because in reality both will continue to exist. The network architecture developed has specific features to handle both models. Except for really major central servers which need to be specially located at major network hubs, to a large degree ITS is not concerned where smaller servers are located. It makes sense for local servers to be located close to the bulk of their users.

While there will continue to be a need for local capacity from workstations in an area to local servers, there will also be a growing need for high performance access to server content from further a field: elsewhere at Monash - students in libraries, students/colleagues within local department/faculty but in other buildings/campuses; staff/students at home; providing content internationally.