Case Study: Havering Sixth Form College achieves a resilient, high-performance campus-wide network with Daisy Group

Powerful New Network Enhances the Student Experience

Havering Sixth Form College, a five‑building campus serving around 2,500 full‑time students and 250 staff, faced regular downtime and poor performance from an ageing HP‑based 100Mbps LAN core, end‑of‑life cabling and an underpowered wireless network that constrained mobile learning. Having previously worked with Daisy on server virtualisation, the college engaged Daisy to consult on and deliver a Cisco‑based network overhaul to meet MoLeNET grant objectives and restore reliable, secure campus connectivity.

Daisy designed and implemented a Cisco solution—dual Catalyst 6506‑E resilient cores with virtual stacking, Cisco 2960‑S access switches with 10Gbps uplinks, dual fibre uplinks, CAT5e recabling, VLAN segmentation and a centrally managed lightweight wireless network—delivered at a fixed price and on schedule. The upgrade provided up to 20Gbps uplink per stack and 1Gb to desktops, expanded wireless to 48 access points with separate guest, mobile and college networks, and significantly reduced network incidents while improving capacity, scalability and security across the campus.

Havering Sixth Form College

Graham Francis

Director of IT Services