Shanghai's Tongji U Overhauls Network, Deploys Load Balancing Software

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 05/21/08

Tongji University in Shanghai has deployed Radware AppDirector 3020, a load balancing utility, as part of the overhaul of its campus network. With 78,660 students and staff, the campus network covers 17 network systems, including portals, authentication, and student management. The goal of the overhaul was to address network overload, uneven traffic distribution, and server instability, the school said in a statement.

"The response of our network system has significantly improved since the deployment of AppDirector," said Fang Yuan, deputy director of network. "AppDirector has helped us to vigorously push forward the evolution of our campus information system and set up a digital platform with excellent performance, stability and reliability, so that we can empower teaching and learning, as well as provide better service to teachers and students."

Load balancing products such as AppDirector look at a packet and send it to the server with the lightest workload. It also adds identification to the packet so that when the server sends a response, it can be returned to the user who made the network request. AppDirector also provides intrusion prevention from application-level attacks, denial-of-service protection and access control as part of bandwidth management.