The higher education landscape in America is increasingly competitive: for top faculty, top students, funding resources, and more. One investment that can help you compete against much larger schools is in your network. This article discusses how building a robust network can benefit your school, and also the technology that can give you the most bang for your budget.
How Your Network Can Help
When presenting your university to prospective students, your network can be a surprisingly effective selling tool. A robust network with strong coverage throughout your campus can improve quality of student life, and give an excellent first impression on student tours. If you have on-campus residences, having a strong connection at these buildings will increase student satisfaction, for both educational and leisure pursuits. It may also keep them living on campus, thereby ensuring a consistent revenue stream for your school.
Additionally, a strong network can help you expand your reach beyond campus. As more students are turning toward the flexible convenience of online education, a strong network core will enable you to enrich these offerings. Offering a strong online curriculum can help you expand and diversify your student base, without many of the capital investments of a campus expansion.
How WDM Can Help
As shown here, passive WDM can help you add bandwidth to your network without adding additional fiber. For example, if you have a 10G link between two key locations on campus, a simple set of filters can increase the effective bandwidth on this link to 40G, 80G, even 400G!
WDM offers smaller colleges and universities the following benefits:
- Customization. Whether you need a few channels or a lot of channels to grow into, there is a filter set that is exactly right for your needs.
- Reliability. Small campuses mean small IT departments (maybe even a department of 1!), which means time is at a premium. Passives require little to no maintenance once deployed. Their simple design means there’s no need to worry about compatibility with your existing network equipment, and their durable construction make them built to last.
- Affordability. Compared to upgrading your entire network, introducing active WDM, or adding additional fiber, passive WDM products are a much more budget-friendly solution.
Ready to start finding the right WDM solution for you? Let’s get started with a preliminary consultation.
