Research On Network Engineering Lifecycles And Design And Implementation Of A Campus Network

21^st century has been referred to as network-based information age. As a result, construction of computer networks and network-based information infrastructure becomes an important area in informationization of the society. Since mid 90s' last century, the initiative of CERNET (China Education Research Network) has made great progress in informationization in educational front and obviously pushed forward the process of education modernization. With rapid economic development in China, demanding on technical workers with higher education has stimulated a sharp turn in China's education policy. The emphasis of China's university education used to be placed on academic and engineering aspects and now both traditional universities and technique-oriented polytechnics are viewed as to have equal importance. Consequently, polytechnics have been expanded rapidly in recent years. For the same reason, development and application of campus networks in polytechnics lagged behind traditional universities in China. In the background, this dissertation is dedicated to network engineering issues based on the concept of network engineering lifecycles and the experience gained at Guangzhou Railway Polytechnic in setting up the campus network.By and large, text books on network engineering lacks clear definition to connotation of network engineering and clarification between traditional engineering (e.g. civil engineering) and network engineering. As a result, network engineering has been merely treated as a practice of organizing networks with network devices. In the work presented in this dissertation, the author has tried to adopt the concept of "Network Engineering Lifecycle" (NEL), introduced by my supervisor in his lecture of "network engineering and design", and to further explore various aspects of that concept in our polytechnic network project. By analogy to software engineering, NEL was used to model the spiral-evolution process where the long-term evolution was termed as "Long-Lifecycle" while short-term engineering progress was referred to as "Short-Lifecycle".This dissertation explores general rules of NEL and its technical and management involvements corresponding to individual phases within a short-lifecycle and those relevant to long-lifecycle. In the perspective of long-lifecycle, this thesis presents a long-term development scheme of the Guangzhou Railway Polytechnic (GRP). Short lifecycle issues are further discussed combined with first phase development of the campus network of GRP, i.e. the management and technical involvement, decision making, design and implementation issues.The author's experience has shown that it is helpful to clarify the long-term engineering target and to deal with management, design, and implementation issues according to the nature of individual phases in a lifecycle should the concept of network engineering lifecycles is adopted. Consequently, appropriate regulations and technical standards can be applied to different phases and control of quality, investment, and time limit of an engineering project can better be ensured.