HPE7-A11: HPE Aruba Networking Certified Professional - Campus Access ArchitectDemo

A global cruise line company needs to modernize its existing fleet. It will refresh the ship’s “insides” to improve cost-effectiveness and sustainability, replacing all WLAN/LAN hardware. During this refresh, the company will retain its existing security requirements. The CIO also wants to minimize unused switch ports. Any future expansion will always involve a hardware refresh. The project begins with the smallest ship, which has a maximum of 800 guests.

Each ship has a LAN infrastructure comprising two core switches, up to 10 redundant distribution switches, and up to 500 access switches (400 cabins and 100 technical rooms). The core switches are in the ship’s MDF, and the distribution switches are in the IDFs. Every cabin and technical room receives one access switch.

The ship’s cabling structure will remain unchanged. Each IDF connects to the MDF through SMF, with two pairs available for the interconnect between core and distribution. The SMF distance between MDF and IDF is under 300 meters (980 ft), and it is OS1. Each cabin connects to the IDF through a single OM2 pair, with a maximum distance of 60 meters (200 ft). Each technical room connects to the IDF through a single OM2 pair, with distances from 100 to 150 meters (320 to 500 ft).

For every cabin and technical room, the customer wants to replace the existing fan-less 2530/2540 switches without changing requirements, except that the uplink to the distribution switch must be upgraded to 10GbE to accommodate increased network traffic, and technical rooms require redundant power.

The WLAN infrastructure will be refreshed 1:1, with no new cabling or AP locations. It uses 200/300 series indoor and outdoor APs running InstantOS (fewer than 300 APs), and the customer has no WLAN requirement changes.

The cruise line company will replace its existing Internet connection before the LAN/WLAN refresh. The new Internet connection will provide 99.8% uptime, needed to keep paid guest Wi-Fi operational. With this new Internet connection, the CIO wants to base the design on Aruba’s ESP architecture because the Internet connection is guaranteed.

Based on best practices, what optic type should be recommended for the connection between the IDF and the cabins?