The Client
A state department of information technology (IT)
The Challenge
This client is a branch of a state government that provides IT services and solutions to many agencies of state government. The state’s network consists of over 15,000 nodes and 500 remote offices. The client contracted Haverstick Consulting for additional technical resources in the areas of network design, support, and management.
The goal of this engagement was to increase customer service and improve customer relations while maintaining a high level of network availability. Also to implement an Enterprise Network Management Package in preparation for a major upgrade of the core and distribution layers of the campus.
The Haverstick Approach
Due to Haverstick Consulting’s relationships with the Intelenet Commission and years’ of experience working with many of the state of Indiana government agencies, we were able to provide the additional resources and experience necessary to support the state’s large campus enterprise network.
A thorough vendor comparison was conducted in order to select the right equipment vendor to provide network equipment for upgrades. The state of Indiana looked to Haverstick Consulting with our many years’ of experience in LAN/WAN Network Infrastructure design and support to evaluate and assist in recommending the best vendor for the equipment upgrade.
Haverstick Consulting also assisted in evaluating and recommending the best network management solutions for the state of Indiana Campus Network. This solution consists of a network management station, multiple RMON probes, and an Application Response Time monitoring solution.
The Result
A phased approach was selected to migrate the new core and distribution layer network solution. The network is currently being migrated from an FDDI Ring Backbone consisting of Cisco Routers to a Gigabit Ethernet Backbone that was put in place to provide additional capacity. The next phase of the effort is to implement a core and provide redundancy in the distribution layer. The final phase is to complete the state of Indiana migration from EIGRP to OSPF and IPX RIP/SAP to NLSP. These network upgrades address IP Addressing and Summarization, IPX Addressing, Quality of Service and a more comprehensive approach to network security, to name a few.
The state of Indiana will have a fully redundant network from the core to the distribution and access layers of the network. This will greatly improve the availability of the network and network services.
Network management solutions will provide the state of Indiana with improved network management capabilities.
By utilizing these capabilities, they will be able to be more proactive in maintaining the network, provide better capacity planning, and facilitate future network upgrades well in advance of the actual need. | 
