D-Link Upgrades New Zealand Council's Network Infrastructure to Support Increasing Digitisation and Online Interaction

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- May 2, 2011 -- D-Link Australia & New Zealand, the end-to-end networking solutions provider for business and consumers, today announced that it has upgraded Thames-Coromandel District Council's network infrastructure.

Three years ago, Thames-Coromandel implemented a D-Link 10-Gigabit Ethernet networking backbone as part of an upgrade designed to accommodate the Council's growth and to improve network performance and manageability.

Although staff numbers have remained fairly constant since installing the new 10-Gigabit network backbone, initiatives to digitise District Council records and interact electronically with residents have seen enormous increases in network traffic.

"As we digitise all our records, people are pulling up an electronic file instead of a paper file," said Murray Foster, Information and Technology Manager for Thames-Coromandel District Council. "We are also interacting more and more with the residents electronically for activities such as letters and applications, and that is also driving more network traffic.

"We are now storing large files in our document management system like videos of court proceedings and support documentation for development applications," said Foster. "Our employees are also downloading videos and other bandwidth-demanding documents from the content management system."

Thames-Coromandel realised that the staff productivity benefits it had reaped with increasing digitisation and online interaction would only be maintained if its network could keep up with demand.

While the D-Link network upgrade had served it well, the District Council needed to boost the performance of its network infrastructure. The decision was made to upgrade the network switches to create extra redundancy at the core and higher capacity at the edge, as well as improved management capabilities.

"We favoured D-Link because we are happy with them. The company's products work and D-Link's engineers are always there to support us," said Foster. "From our perspective it would have been an ideal opportunity to move off to another supplier if we weren't happy."

D-Link, in conjunction with its partner, Lexel Systems, recommended 3600 Series managed xStack switches suitable for deployments in small to medium-sized and large business environments as well as for the public sector.

For Thames-Coromandel's network core, D-Link recommended two 24-Port layer 3 managed DGS-3627 Switches as central network routers. For edge deployment eight 24-Port DGS-3427 and three 48-port DGS-3450 Managed Switches have been installed. The switches greatly improved the District Council's network performance with increased levels of redundancy and manageability.

The quick network upgrade caused no disruption to the Council's operations.

"The project went very quickly," said Peter Young, Sales Manager for Lexel Systems. "We always do a certain amount of configuration prior to shipment to speed delivery. At Thames, it took around four weeks from project start to completion. The onsite component was only two to three days to get everything going, even with a couple of smaller remote locations involved."

"It was completely transparent," said Foster. "From an end user perspective there was no visible sign that an upgrade was even happening."

Because the new solution is based on the latest technology from a trusted supplier, the District Council is confident that its upgraded networking infrastructure will meet its needs well into the future.

The major benefit, however, is that Thames-Coromandel's networking infrastructure now provides the additional performance and management capabilities to support the Council's increasing levels of digitisation and online interaction.

"With the latest D-Link switches we now have full management capabilities throughout the network," said Foster. "D-Link's management tools are sitting over the top and we have a more dynamic management environment for the whole network. This ensures that we are getting optimum performance out of the system and avoiding bottlenecks and overloaded network segments."

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About D-Link

D-Link is the global leader in connectivity for small, medium and large enterprise business networking. The company is an award-winning designer, developer and manufacturer of networking, broadband, digital electronics, voice, data and video communications solutions for the digital home, Small Office/Home Office (SOHO), Small to Medium Business (SMB), and Workgroup to Enterprise environments. With millions of networking and connectivity products manufactured and shipped, D-Link is a dominant market participant and price/performance leader in the networking and communications market.

D-Link Australia and New Zealand headquarters are located at Building A, Level 3, 11 Talavera Road, North Ryde, NSW, 2113, Sydney Australia. Phone (02) 8899 1800; Fax (02) 8899 1868; Internet www.dlink.com.au / www.dlink.co.nz; email marketing@dlink.com.au.