Keith Linforth - Associate Director (Networking and Communications), Massey
University.
With multiple campuses around New Zealand, Massey University uses in-house videoconferencing services to conduct virtual meetings and distance teaching. This helps them avoid both travel costs and non-productive travelling time. The system can make use of both their IP network and New Zealand’s advanced research network, KAREN, for inter-site bandwidth allowing them to optimise their telecommunications costs when holding a videoconference.
Massey’s IT department asked us diagnose a problem when the system developed an intermittent fault that the incumbent network integrator was unable to resolve.
Although the fault initially appeared to lie within the videoconferencing system software, we found a rare bug in a video protocol inspection process running on the firewall cluster in the Data Centre. Further analysis showed that it was inspecting all videoconference traffic and occasionally forcing session terminations, resulting in videoconference sessions being dropped mid-way through meetings.
We developed a workaround that could be immediately deployed to enable their videoconferencing to operate flawlessly, while providing time to work through a patching/upgrade plan for the firewalls via their incumbent support agency.
The videoconference system now works flawlessly. The firewall upgrade was scheduled for a later date.