Dunlop Africa, and its Dunlop Tyres SA operation, have moved to upgrade their computer networks following significant - 100 fold - increases in e-mail and other high bandwidth data and graphics traffic over the last six months.
Dunlop is one of South Africa`s largest tyre and rubber product manufacturers. Its network infrastructure - for the more than 5000 employees - spans the country, with local area networks (LANs) located at 12 sites.
Central to the upgrade was the installation of a 3Com Layer 3 network switch, supplied by networking specialist, DNS (KwaZulu-Natal). It replaced a series of Layer 2 switches and file servers that previously did network bridging and data routing duty throughout the enterprise.
Dunlop Africa Group IT manager, Martin Klein, says that in Dunlop`s high speed, high demand network the switch plays a pivotal role.
"It is key to the performance and functioning of the network and its selection was central to our strategic purchasing programme," he says.
Prior to the upgrade Dunlop`s network was juggling the competing demands for application bandwidth from various sources within the organisation.
"The existing infrastructure was not designed for the enormous traffic loads - particularly e-mail - and the anywhere-to-anywhere traffic that is now the norm," notes Klein.
The 3Com switch offers true scalability, providing the bandwidth required for current applications and future growth as well."
Looking to the future, Klein says that as the mix of applications running on the Dunlop network become more complicated, the need to manage the traffic flowing through the network will become more critical.
"With our solution, a simple software upgrade to Layer 4 functionality which will give us a host of advanced services such as filtration and prioritisation that can be used to optimise the network.
"Our next step will be to manage the mix of application traffic on our network. It`s the need to satisfy the dual requirements of performance and quality of service that will push us towards a Layer-4 implementation sooner rather than later," he says.
"In addition we`ll be looking to out-task the operational elements of our network, with a focus on the remote management of the switch."
Klein adds that the selection of DNS KwaZulu-Natal as the vendor of choice for Dunlop was made because of the high levels of local support provided by the company, the proven reliability of its 3Com product offering and DNS` ability to understand the challenges facing Dunlop and propose suitable, cost-effective solutions.
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