Read the case given below and answer the questions given at the end.

CASE STUDY - 2

Located in, South Carolina, Converse College is a liberal arts college that has been preparing students to be strong leaders in their professions and in their communities for over 100 years. In addition, Converse also offers a graduate program. In total, Converse serves more than 1500 students.When a college accustomed to using the Internet as a learning and communication tool faces frequent network problems with its legacy equipment and foresees the need to support convergent applications of the future, administrators must determine how to upgrade their network quickly, reliably and cost-effectively. Network outages and connectivity problems were ongoing. With a disparate collection of multi-vendor hubs and switches and no network interface, ITS staff spent hours addressing network issues. Converse required a reliable network for all campus operations with centralized management for diagnosing and resolving network issues. The old network did not support these goals. "Can you imagine having a computer lab full of students and the majority of them can't access valuable academic resources?" says Judy Folk, director of ITS for Converse College. "The college realized that we needed to move forward and one of the first things we identified was that we didn't have a strong foundation. We needed a high performance network that would sustain both current and future demands."Converse College addresses these challenges with the implementation of an enhanced network infrastructure based on HP ProCurve Networking Adaptive EDGE solutions. Converse now has the capability to implement online admissions, registration, grading and fundraising. Students and faculty can access the network from anywhere on campus. HP ProCurve also enables Information Technology Service (ITS) staff to monitor and resolve network connectivity issues via the Internet, thus saving valuable time and increasing productivity in the department.Using a combination of HP ProCurve switches including HP ProCurve Switch 2524, HP ProCurve Switch 4108gl and HP ProCurve Routing Switch 9304m, the new local area network (LAN) connects approximately 26 campus buildings. ProCurve Switch 2524 is a high-speed 24-port switch ideal for low-cost migration to 10/100 managed switching with uplinks. The ProCurve Switch 4108gl is a Layer 2 modular switch.With the deployment of the ProCurve solution, Converse has seen a major improvement in network performance and reliability. In addition, frequent network outages and connectivity problems required the ITS team to replace hardware on a weekly basis. With the ProCurve Networking solution, Converse also now has the ability to monitor the network from a central location, and if aproblem occurs, can automatically check via the Internet if a particular switch has connectivity. This saves valuable staff time as they are often able to resolve issues before going out to the location.Converse students now enjoy faster, more reliable Internet connectivity from the ProCurve solution and can save files to their own space on the server, which they can then access anywhere on campus. This is especially beneficial to commuting students who can easily access their e-mail over the Web. In addition, the new e-mail system and client server have enabled the upgrade of administrative programs, including online admissions and class registration. Faculty members can even enter grades online. As Converse moves toward the future, including the construction of a new building and the incorporation of distance education, it is ensured that campus services are operating more quickly, reliably and efficiently with the new system.

Questions
1. In your opinion what were the core problems of the system?
2. Do you think that Converse has invested a lot to over come the problems? What are the hidden costs involved with the new system?
3. If you were to improve the performance of this establishment, what would you do? How? Explain