Network review improves South Africa connection

A project to analyse network traffic flows and implement prioritisation has improved the response times from the South African campus. Interactions with most online systems based in Australia such as Callista, Monash University Services Online (MUSO) and my.monash are now faster.

Response times from almost all Monash systems improved significantly with MUSO and my.monash now twice as fast or better. Downloading of large files from Monash is up to 10 times faster. Videoconferencing to the campus has also significantly increased in quality and reliability.

Jamie Sunderland Manager, International IT Services and Myles Fenton, Network Engineer travelled to South Africa to work with South African IT staff to perform an in-depth analysis of network usage and to suggest ways in which the link may be improved.

Several days were spent gathering statistics, performing benchmark testing and consulting with staff, students and suppliers before any network changes were made.

The major cause of the problem was identified as a change in the network configuration made by the local Internet Service Provider which caused the internet traffic originating from the campus to flow in a sub-optimal manner.

The results from the network changes have been a significant improvement in communication with Monash Australia and there is now monitoring and prioritisation of general internet browsing and other network traffic.