HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht

Recabling the FE building with 10GB to the workstation

 

HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht has six faculties in the cities of Utrecht and Amersfoort, offering approximately seventy degree programs. Over 3,500 employees enable nearly 40,000 students to prepare for their future. It goes without saying that computers play a vital role in modern education. However, if the IT facilities in a faculty building prove to be unreliable, an educational institution naturally faces a significant problem. This is exactly what happened to HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht (HU). A building completed in 2002, the FE building (Faculty of Education), was found to have defective cabling. Located on Padualaan in Utrecht, this striking building hosts educational programs. With 9,200 students and 850 employees, it is also the largest educational faculty in the Netherlands.

 

Verwoolde: “We were not familiar with Nexans, but in hindsight, it proved to be an excellent choice”

 

Gerard Verwoolde, IT advisor for the HU and the man who, in his own words, primarily deals with the ‘lower three layers of the OSI network model,’ remains frustrated by the situation. “During construction, about ten years ago, we as the IT department were only invited twice to monitor the progress of the cabling. When the building was delivered, we quickly discovered errors. Some connections did not work at all, while others were intermittent.

Regarding cable management, it was also subpar: we encountered illogical spaghetti structures and not all patch cables were labeled. That is not something that makes you happy when you are responsible for managing 2,400 connections! Consequently, we did not accept the cabling as it was delivered, and what followed was a legal back-and-forth. We hired an external party to provide an independent assessment of the cabling quality, and that report was utterly scathing. A complicating factor was that the installer had since gone bankrupt, leaving us with a useless ‘guarantee.’ However, education must continue, so we had to take swift action.”

“We then issued a European tender procedure—required due to the scale of the project—for a complete recabling of the FE building. This eventually led us to installer HTC International from Rosmalen, who proposed providing each workstation with a 10-gigabit connection based on Nexans LANmark-6A cabling. We were not familiar with Nexans, but in hindsight, it proved to be an excellent choice. The fact that HTC and Nexans could provide a 25-year warranty on the cabling was of great importance to us in light of that recent debacle.”

 

Upgrade

 

Henk Smits, Director of HTC International in Rosmalen, discusses this project. “After analyzing the existing network, we proposed not only renewing the cabling but also upgrading the network itself. We reduced the original 2,400 connection points to 1,654—after all, the use of wireless connections has increased significantly in recent years. Additionally, we increased the network speed to 10 gigabits to the workstation and to all wireless access points, ensuring that HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht will not face another problem in a few years. For us, the challenge was twofold: installing a 10GB network in the existing cable ducts while simultaneously ensuring that students would not experience any disruption from our work. Because of the latter, we chose a phased approach: two floors at a time. We also worked during holidays as much as possible, and even at night on several occasions!”

“In total, we removed 120 kilometers of cable and installed 90 kilometers. We deliberately chose Nexans LANmark-6A copper cabling. One of the many advantages of this shielded F1/UTP cable is that it is thinner than competing unshielded U/UTP cables, allowing us to fit more cables into the existing ducts. We also installed a new 10GB fiber optic backbone. Before installation, we measured all cable paths to ensure the cabling did not run too close to sources of interference.”

“Ultimately, we were able to deliver a completely new network with minimal changes to the infrastructure.” Before delivery, the new network was fully tested according to the ISO/IEC 11801:2002/Amd2:2010/Cor1:2010 and ANSI/TIA/AIA 568C standards. This resulted in the intended LANmark-6A warranty certificate for 25 years, including labor. All cable endpoints are provided with identical labels, so it is always clear which cable serves which purpose.

 

Collaboration

 

During the project, Gerard Verwoolde experienced the professionalism displayed by the HTC/Nexans team. On several occasions, Nexans employees visited the site to check if the installation was proceeding according to plan and Nexans’ specifications. Gerard Verwoolde looks back on the progress of this project with great satisfaction. “We are particularly pleased with HTC, which worked closely with us. But Nexans also contributed a great deal of expertise. Large projects like this can only be brought to a successful conclusion if all parties work closely together. That clearly happened here. The results speak for themselves: the IT department has much less work managing the network, and network changes can now be carried out with ease, so to speak. The problem in the patch cabinets with unlabeled cables has also been resolved, and the wireless connections now work optimally everywhere, which was not the case before. The fact that HTC and Nexans are willing to provide a 25-year warranty shows that they are confident in their work. This is important to us, as a building’s cabling is an infrastructural utility, comparable to gas and water.”