Rhodes University, School of Journalism and Media Studies goes live

The African Media Matrix houses South Africa's largest School of Journalism in a visionary building designed to be at the heart of journalism and new communications technologies in Africa. Linda More investigates how a high performance 10 Gigabit/s infrastructures from ADC KRONE has enabled the creation of this media-rich learning environment.

Situated in Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, Rhodes University is an internationally recognised centre of excellence for education, which acknowledges its southern African setting and the need to meet international standards in a multi-racial society. Recently celebrating its centenary, Rhodes University owes its unique character to a combination of historical, geographical and architectural factors. With over 6 200 full-time students, of whom almost half live in residences on campus, the university boasts 34 academic departments and 23 research units and institutes.

The recently completed Africa Media Matrix houses the School of Journalism and Media Studies. Already regarded as the leader in its field - training top-class journalists and media study theorists - the School of Journalism and Media Studies has taken a bold stride into the future with its state of the art building, designed to provide a stimulating and productive workplace for its 560 students.

"Costing R24 million (US$4 million), the Africa Media Matrix is a purpose-built teaching facility designed to be at the heart of journalism and new communications technologies in Africa," explains Joe Alfers, Technology Manager for the school.

From the Zen garden in the entrance to the state of the art broadcast studios, the building provides an excellent creative working atmosphere for the media producers of the future. Every floor of the three-storey building has brightly coloured walls, and media paraphernalia abounds - vinyl LP records are used as clocks, vintage printers' trays decorate the walls with mounted copies of historic newspapers. Each specialisation - photojournalism, television, radio, design, new media as well as writing and editing - has its own production space, complete with the latest and best equipment.

"One of the biggest advantages of the move has been to bring us all together," states Alfers. "Formerly, photojournalism was at one end of the campus, while our radio and writing students were housed away from the main department."

The university enjoys a long association with ADC KRONE. "Eighteen years ago we pioneered its termination product for our telephone systems and then tried out their new twisted pair Ethernet cabling system," explains John Stevens, Telecommunications Manager. "Now we have over 6 000 network points of which 95% use ADC KRONE technology, so it was the obvious starting point when researching options for the structured cabling design in the new building."

One of the first problems facing Stevens and his team was to understand exactly how the building would be used and what demands could be made on the cabling system, and how that would affect the choice of structured system.

"From our experience, we knew that computer science departments like to play with the technology and although they don't generate huge amounts of traffic, they will compromise on speed in order to get zero errors, and so 1 000Mb/s TrueNet cabling is ideal for them," explains Stevens.

Journalism students have completely different requirements - they are heavy users of technology, are more mobile and expect resources to be available wherever they are in the building.

From his research, including a tour of similar educational establishments in the UK and US, Stevens discovered that there is a big difference in the whole issue of transparent structured cabling.

"In the US they tend to push specialist media systems over dedicated fibre links, whereas in the UK transparent UTP cable plants allowing multi-purpose connectivity are more apparent, and blown fibre even to the desktop is taking off," says Stevens.

"What we did learn was that once you start pushing video applications, including high definition television over Ethernet, you quickly start to need 10GE to the desktop."

The final choice, for maximum future-proofing, was to implement a structured cabling topology using CopperTen. With its potential to deliver 10 Gigabit/s Ethernet (10GE) to the desktop, the university felt that its high bandwidth and performance offered the capacity that would be required as new media technologies were developed and deployed. In addition, empty TrueNet blown fibre ducts have been installed that will allow fibre to be installed to the desktop in the future.

"Having the option of delivering blown fibre to the desktop is important for future needs," explains Stevens. "Our intention is to populate a small pilot of 20 or 30 desktops as an experiment and to gain expertise with the technology. At the moment, we don't have any applications that demand fibre performance; however, when the applications arrive we can deliver them without having to pull the building to pieces in order to re-cable it."

The high-speed CopperTen network is ideal to support the advanced work of the School of Journalism and Media Studies, as well as providing the necessary capacity to take them into the future. From the moment a visitor steps into the foyer, the technology is on display. A large information panel streams a constant newscast of live video from the TV studios located in another section of the building, while woven baskets made from colourful data cables adorn the walls, stressing the importance that the whole network infrastructure plays in the life and work of the building.

"We came from an environment where we were staggering along on 10Mbps, so 10GE seems an unimaginable luxury," says Alfers. "However, it gives us the performance to use exciting new technologies, including voice over IP, streamed video and audio broadcasts from our TV and radio studios to the desktop and create the media-rich building we envisioned. The real benefit is that we can do cutting-edge media-related ICT work on our own infrastructure, and still have the future-proofing we need to absorb new developments as they come along."

Stevens and his team are delighted with the results and the ease at which the CopperTen cabling was installed and deployed.

"We use our own internal teams to do the cable termination and testing. Because of the excellent partnership relationship we enjoy with ADC KRONE, we benefit not only from good products but also outstanding technical support and advice."

The university will continue to use ADC KRONE structured cabling in future projects, which include a new library resource building and the completion of network provision within the student residences.

"The ethos of the university is that we all stay on campus - the ideology of living and working together generates lasting friendships and a camaraderie that we believe makes us unique. Providing 2 500 TrueNet network access points into the student accommodation is just another way of keeping us all connected," says Stevens.