| Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria is in the final stages of a $10 million overhaul and expansion of its network and telephony infrastructure.
The project has involved adding 2500 IP phones to the university's network and pension off its conventional PABX systems, said Swinburne's chief information officer Richard Constantine.
The upgrade had also seen the university move its network to 10/100 and gigabit ethernet to the desktop and expand to about 18,000 ports.
Backbone network capacity has been expanded to 10Gbps.
"The university began moving to IP telephony with 1500 handsets rolled out in 2000," Mr Constantine said.
"The expansion had given the university some room to cope with future expansion demands," he said.
"The network had been expanding at a rate of 1000-2000 ports per year."
The upgrade was expected to see the university through the next five years, although it was likely that more ports would need to be added in the interim.
"Total value of the agreement, including equipment from Cisco and support and services from systems integrator NetStar, was about $10 million over five years," Mr Constantine said.
"Most of the work on the project had been completed by February, and the project was now being wound up with some final security work."
Work had been carried out by a mixture of university and NetStar staff, with some input from Cisco, he said.
The university had also recently installed video-capable IP phones at its campus in Kuching in Malaysia.
While various forms of video conferencing had been used around the university, the convenience of having video integrated with the phone system had worked particularly well with the Malaysian campus, he said.
"We can dial a four-digit extension from my desk to the conference room in Malaysia and not have a problem," Mr Constantine said.
The university also has more than 500 wireless access points at its Victorian campuses.
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