Modern Campus Network Technology Evolution | Generated by AI
Question: What networking technology is typically used in modern university campuses (especially in China) to provide fast internal access to resources like videos, courses, and e-libraries for thousands of students, similar to the big campus LAN with student ID authentication that existed around 2013?
Answer:
In Chinese universities (and most large universities worldwide) in 2025, the core campus network technology has evolved significantly since 2013, but the overall architecture remains similar in concept:
- Campus backbone: 10G/40G/100G or even 400G fiber-optic backbone (usually a mixture of IPv4 + IPv6 dual-stack).
- Wired dorms/classrooms: Still mostly Gigabit Ethernet (1000Base-T) or 10GBase-T in newer buildings. Many dorms have upgraded from 100 Mbps (common in 2013) to 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps per port.
- Wireless: Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) or Wi-Fi 6E is now the standard across almost all Chinese campuses, with Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) starting to roll out in top universities (Tsinghua, Peking University, Zhejiang University, etc.). Peak speeds can exceed 3–5 Gbps in good conditions.
- Internal high-speed resources (videos, courses, mirrors, etc.): Still use the campus intranet (private IPv4 address space), often with **10G or higher bandwidth between the core switches and the media servers. This is why internal videos and course platforms (such as Tsinghua XueTangX, UOOC, or school-specific video servers, software mirrors) can reach 100–500 MB/s or more when downloading, while the external Internet is much slower.
Authentication method:
- 802.1X (the same as in 2013) is still the most widely used. You plug in the cable or connect to the campus Wi-Fi, then open the browser → captive portal → enter your student ID + password (or scan a QR code on the same student ID and password) to log in.
- Srun/BAS (Deep Blue) is still the most popular in Chinese universities, and most schools use Dr.COM, Srun (Srun) 3000/4000, Huawei iMaster NCE-Campus, H3Com/H3C or Ruijie/Cernet solutions.
- IPv4 is still the main protocol used for internal services. Many schools are still using IPv4 for the intranet, and only the gateway to the outside world is IPv6, so internal resources are still in the private 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, etc., and the speed is very fast.
Why is the internal speed still so much faster than the external?
- The internal traffic does not go through the school’s expensive external bandwidth (the external bandwidth is usually only a few tens of Gbps, but the internal bandwidth is hundreds of Gbps, and the internal traffic is completely free of charge and has no traffic accounting.
- The internal video servers, software mirrors (Tsinghua TUNA, USTC mirror, etc.) are placed in the school’s own data center or in the Cernet high-speed nodes, so the download speed can reach the upper limit of the local network card.
Summary of the current situation in Chinese universities (2025)
| Layer | Technology used in 2013 | Technology used in 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Backbone | 10G fiber | 100G/400G fiber |
| Wired dorm | 100M/1G | 1G/10G |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi 4/5 (802.11n/ac) | Wi-Fi 6/6E/7 |
| Authentication | 802.1X + Srun/DrCOM | Still 802.1X + Srun4000/H3C/Ruijie |
| Internal video speed | 10–50 MB/s | 100–500 MB/s (because the backbone is faster) |
| External bandwidth | 10–20G (total) | 100G+ (total), but still much slower per person) |
So the feeling you remember (internal resources are very fast, need to log in with a student ID) is still the same, only the speed has increased by an order of magnitude, and the authentication method has not changed much. The campus network is still a huge, high-speed “big LAN” for thousands of people. The only thing that has changed is that the bandwidth has increased by an order of magnitude.