EC News DeskJuniper Networks has announced that Egyptian Universities Network, EUN, connecting public universities across Egypt, providing applications and services that researchers, students and staff need, has deployed Juniper’s core network solutions to enable advanced learning and collaboration for 27 public universities across Egypt. By providing a reliable, stable and secure WAN, EUN is able to offer first-class VoIP, internet access, email and video conferencing for students and staff, academics and researchers.
Egypt is in the midst of an education resurgence, following the government declaring 2019 as the Year of Education. Egypt’s public education system is the largest across Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East, and nearly three million students are currently enrolled in Egypt’s universities. EUN relies on Juniper’s MX Series Universal Routing Platform for secure connectivity. Researchers, students and academics can collaborate with their peers around the world using interconnections to key international research and education networks, including Arab States Research and Education Network, European Academic and Research Network, Internet2 and GEANT.
The technology deployment from Juniper has provided a host of operational benefits:
- With the core network now running at multiple Gbps, universities and scientific institutions can connect to EUN at high speeds. Students and professors have fast access to bandwidth-heavy digital coursework and libraries. Classes can be streamed and recorded easily and video conferences are high quality with reliable connections, improving the user experience significantly.
- Simplified network operations with best-in-class network – the universities can now make requests for shared applications that EUN can easily fulfil.
- Universities are requested to add VPN capacity on-demand. With the upgraded network, EUN can accommodate the universities’ requests for more capacity for internet usage.
To accomplish this, EUN implemented the following Juniper solutions:
- As traffic volumes grew, EUN chose to upgrade its WAN with Juniper Networks MX104 Universal Routing Platform. The upgrade was completed without any downtime. The modular MX104 platform is ideal for space- and power-constrained environments. Deep-packet inspection detects applications and determines traffic treatment on a per-application basis, enabling highly-customised and differentiated services at scale. Powered by Juniper Networks Junos OS and the programmable Junos Trio chipset, the MX104 shares the same advanced routing, switching, security and service features that are available in larger MX Series platforms, including a wide range of L2/L3 VPN services to support this mission-critical research and education network.
- Juniper in-service software upgrade features, as well as the built-in automation of Junos OS, minimised downtime risks associated with implementing new hardware and helped the team deploy the new routers without introducing errors from manual entry.
“Today’s university students rely heavily on digital tools like email, video conferencing, internet access for their courses, collaboration and communication. The demands of online classes put even more stress on the network. Networks underpin the digital transformation of modern universities, from how students learn, interact with campus life and stay in touch with home, to enabling major international research projects that were previously not possible. It is a big responsibility to be entrusted with, one that Juniper takes extremely seriously. Juniper Networks has been EUN’s networking partner of choice for a long time and we will continue to work together closely to build the best possible network for Egypt’s universities.” said Yarob Sakhnini, Vice President, Sales, Emerging Markets, EMEA, Juniper Networks.
