Wagner College Case Study

Wagner College Case Study

FloodGate-1

Andy Druda, Network and Communications Manger

Come September school bells ring throughout college campuses across the nation but as excited students move into the dorms and make new friends, employees of the Information Security departments are left pulling out their hair trying to manage the dramatic increase in network traffic.

Last year, Napster was the bandwidth hog of choice and this year Andy Druda, Network and Communications Manager at Wagner College, has seen movie downloads added to music downloads. Many college campuses outright denied their students the ability to use the popular peer-to-peer computing programs used to collect these files, Wagner was not one of them. They allowed their students to have fun with these programs while maintaining high levels of productivity at the same time.

Wagner College sits on a hilltop overlooking Manhattan, the Atlantic Ocean and New York Harbor in the borough of Staten Island. Founded in 1883, the liberal arts campus community of close to 2500 students and faculty take part in over 30 academic programs and four graduate departments. Wagner is ranked by US News and World Report in the "Top Tier" of Northern Universities, continuing its tradition of academic excellence into the next century.

According to Druda, “The students were using programs like Napster to download music and it was giving us a little bit of a bandwidth headache. While some were downloading music others were not able to access critical information from the library or computer labs. We knew there had to be a product out there to help us.”

After looking at a few industry products Druda discovered FloodGate-1™ from Check Point Software Technologies. “I looked at competitive products but was really looking for an integrated product to compliment out existing Check Point VPN-1 Gateway™. We have had success with Check Point in the past and integration with VPN-1 meant that I would not have to relearn a new system. We trusted their name in the market.”

FloodGate-1 optimizes the performance of business critical applications by controlling, prioritizing and improving the efficiency of TCP/IP traffic. The product allowed Druda to set policies for limited bandwidth resources that matched the needs of the college.

Once Wagner knew Floodgate-1 was the right product for its environment, Druda turned to New Jersey based reseller, Glencom Systems for technical knowledge and support. “We are a small installation but the hands on treatment that we received from Glencom was invaluable to our product success,” Druda added. “I was going to install the product myself but needed to make sure that it was going to technically do everything that I wanted it to do.”

With the help of Glencom, Wagner was able to seamlessly integrate the FloodGate-1 product into its existing Check Point security network. “I am just one guy over here, Glencom would offer advice on FloodGate-1 which allowed me to easily incorporate it into our network. I knew that if I needed something they were only a phone call away.”

Once the product was installed, Druda had students asking him what he did to the network. “Students would ask me if I added T1 lines,” Druda said. “After installation we were able to provide good performance to the computer labs and library while still allowing students limited access to their peer file sharing programs.”

Druda has even been able to monitor students that were causing traffic jams on the network. “We have more than 1000 students using their computers in the dorms and with the rise of peer file sharing, students in our computer labs and library were experiencing slower response time to our computer labs and library resources. FloodGate-1 allowed me to target the heavy users and create policy rules for them.”

He wanted the students to have fun using the programs and be able to gain the files that they were downloading. So instead of completely blocking access to peer-to-peer traffic, Druda chose to simply prioritize more important traffic destined for the labs and library. Once the needs of critical traffic had been met, students can have free access to any remaining bandwidth. "By letting the students continue to use these programs I am hoping that they will become excited about technology. They are in college and should be having fun learning. This is my way to help out.”

Although he hates to admit it, Druda had a hard time trusting the priority control system but has found that it really works. “Anyone that knows me knows that I don’t endorse many products but FloodGate-1 has done everything that I thought it was going to do and more that I did not anticipate. It has been a welcomed product to our security environment.”

As for future plans, Druda is looking to use Check Point VPN-1 SecurRemote to offer secure VPN remote access for his network security staff as well as leaning on Glencom for additional technical advice. “We have had a great relationship with Glencom and Check Point. We have the best of both worlds, a caring reseller and a great product. What more could we ask for.”

Druda adds with a smile, “more bandwidth.”