3Com, iCom & Griffith College lead the way with lecture streaming in Ireland with plans to link to China, Russia, Pakistan

3Com Corporation and iCom Technologies is helping Griffith College to lead Irish colleges with their next-generation network which is linking over 5 000 students and corporate customers and 400 staff and lecturers in Ireland.

The new 3Com network, installed and supported by iCom Technologies at Griffith College, gives enhanced stability and reliability with increased speed as an added bonus. According to Griffith College, the new 3Com network has improved teaching through the Internet and enhanced teaching levels. It will also speed up response times from students as the IT services department are now in a position to manage their own bandwidth usage.

The network will enable the vision of the college`s founder, Diarmuid Hegarty to stream lectures live not only to other branch colleges in Ireland but also to its international partner intuitions in Beijing, Moscow, Karachi and Shanghai. Griffith College offers a diversity of full-time, evening and professional courses in Computing Science, Journalism, Media, Business, Law, IT, Finance, Music, Design and Interior Architecture, etc.

George Furley, IT services manager, Griffith College, explains: "All users have seen a vast improvement since the new 3Com network has been rolled out. We have experienced less downtime and easier manageability. It is now much simpler for our IT services division to handle and maintain the network. I think one of the key words would be robust - we haven`t suffered a data flood since commissioning."

Ray O`Connor, country manager, 3Com Ireland said: "Education is a focus market for 3Com and I am delighted Griffith College has chosen 3Com as the platform for this network upgrade." The products installed included 3Com`s SuperStack 4900 & 4400 switches.

Paul Hyland, communications manager, iCom Technologies added: "Their backbone was running 10/100Mb but now Griffith College has Gigabit connectivity and the network is performing much faster and more resiliently."