Case Studies
Ball State University
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Overview
Ball State University is a leading technology university located in Muncie, Indiana. Ball State is recognized for its programs in information technology, architecture, exercise science, teaching, anthropology, entrepreneurship, and communications.
Ball State has an extensive wireless network which is used by its more than 20,000 students and more than 3,000 faculty members, and covers all academic and administrative buildings, residence halls, athletic facilities, and popular outdoor gathering spaces on campus. Fiber-optic voice, data, and visual networks also link classrooms, laboratories, residence halls, and offices.
The Challenge
While Ball State's IT department has always taken a proactive approach to managing its network, the staff was spending valuable time keeping track of configurations on the network. Specifically, they spent a lot of time insuring network policy compliance. With a network of this magnitude, Ball State needed a way to facilitate the management and enforcement of its configuration standards without spending an excessive amount of staff time.
Senior network engineer for University Computing Services, Daniel K. Fortreide said, "We provide networking data services to the entire university so we required a solution that could facilitate proactive monitoring of our network and simplify our management process."
The Solution
After weighing a number of alternatives, Ball State chose to implement Netcordia's proactive network analysis solution, NetMRI. NetMRI offered unparalleled functionality within Ball State's budget. NetMRI quickly and easily addressed all configuration challenges while also monitoring, detecting, and reporting on network issues before they became problems for the IT department and end-users.
Upon installation, NetMRI discovered various configuration discrepancies and enabled the staff to catalogue configurations, monitor changes, enforce policy and standards, and even execute changes whenever necessary. NetMRI also located problems on the network that previously were not detected with other monitoring systems. It found power supply issues that went unnoticed and identified port errors faster than previous solutions. Its Policy Enforcement function also allowed engineers to make rapid changes across multiple devices from different vendors without significant programming, all from a centralized platform.
For organizations such as Ball State that don't have the in-house expertise or time to synthesize information from numerous monitoring tools into a comprehensive scenario, NetMRI provides a distinct advantage, as it provides inclusive network analysis in a single solution.
Summary
By easily locating issues on the network, NetMRI has essentially simplified and improved management of the university's extensive network. NetMRI automatically discovers issues before they cause significant problems and because of this unique capability, Ball State's IT staff is now able to address any potential threats in a timely manner—rather than having to react to outage in the middle of the night or during critical hours when the network is needed most.
"NetMRI is a functional, cost-effective way to manage a variety of network issues in one place. Every morning I can go to the Issues page and see what is on the horizon for the day," says Fortreide. "At a growing university such as Ball State, it is critical that we have a solution like NetMRI to ensure that our policies are uniformly enforced throughout the network."