Higher education

It's the connective infrastructure that carries everything a university does digitally, from student information systems, learning platforms and identity services to data-intensive research and emerging AI workloads. In practice it spans several layers. This can be in-building and campus connectivity across dorms, libraries, faculty offices and recreation and healthcare facilities, one or more data centers, or a WAN linking campuses to regional research networks, national labs, cloud providers and the public internet. Unlike a typical enterprise network, it must serve research and daily operations all at once, around the clock.

Through a WAN built for more than raw speed. It needs scalability, resiliency and operational visibility to move large research datasets and enable collaboration across campuses. High-capacity core and peering sites call for platforms supporting 400GE and 800GE coherent optics, with deterministic forwarding and integrated security so performance holds under sustained load; aggregation and distribution layers scale bandwidth closer to the campus edge in a more cost-effective, fit-for-purpose way.

Digital footprints grow faster than headcount, so the answer is automation and infrastructure simplification rather than more people. Intent-based workflows, network-wide transactions, and a digital twin let teams validate changes before production instead of relying on late-night maintenance windows, with telemetry and AIOps to explain what changed and why. On the physical side, consolidating buildings onto a fiber-based optical LAN reduces active electronics in distributed closets, cutting power, space and operational overhead.