Notre Dame, Auburn and Georgetown build AI-ready campus networks with Cisco

Notre Dame consolidates on a unified platform

According to Cisco, it and Notre Dame Athletics announced a multi-year partnership this month to modernize the University of Notre Dame's campus-wide network. The South Bend, Indiana, campus relies on nearly 1,000 switches, so simple operation is essential.

Cisco Catalyst Center is meant to help with that. Cisco says it streamlines device deployment, software updates and configuration templates, and uses AI to monitor network health, trace traffic paths and troubleshoot issues quickly. It also integrates with tools such as Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE). Notre Dame is piloting Cisco ThousandEyes for network visibility, and Cisco Professional Services provides continuous support.

John Buysse, senior director network & telephony services at Notre Dame, said that by consolidating infrastructure onto a unified Cisco multi-gigabit platform managed through Cisco Catalyst Center, "we have transformed our operations." Cisco points to immersive virtual-reality labs and AI-powered experiences as the kinds of uses the network must be ready for.

Auburn scales security with Splunk and Cisco XDR

At Auburn University in Alabama, Splunk, a Cisco Company, supports a relatively small security operations center (SOC) team. Jay James, cybersecurity operations manager at Auburn, said the team had to find something scalable for the growth of emerging threats, and that Splunk "really filled that gap for us."

James noted that growing AI use by students and researchers can open security vulnerabilities, while bad actors also use AI in more sophisticated ways. He said the university is not trying to prevent innovation, but wants to protect students so they can use these tools.

Adding Cisco XDR has, in his words, been about building a comprehensive SOC architecture. The team can pull application logs into Splunk Enterprise Security or into XDR for networking context. James said the streamlining freed time to work with student interns, who are placed on training paths and can take on specialized projects beyond daily alerts.

Georgetown rolls out Wi-Fi 7 across its main campus

Earlier this year, Georgetown University launched a network overhaul and Wi-Fi 7 deployment across its main campus in Washington, D.C. Gary DePreta, Cisco's senior vice president of U.S. public sector, said the multi-year partnership "marks one of the largest Wi-Fi 7 deployments in higher education."

Doug Little, Georgetown's CIO, said the upgrade will support multi-streaming video for professors and students in large lecture spaces, and the quick download of huge shared online data sets for analysis. He added that it prepares the university for the next generation of simulation instruction, which may include holographic images.

Little said the campus has over 6,000 wireless access points and 50,000 active devices. The access points dynamically adjust channel, power and bandwidth settings and coordinate traffic load with one another. For security, Georgetown has deployed a multi-layered framework built on Cisco's portfolio, including multi-factor authentication, end-to-end network visibility and advanced security operations analytics.

What it means for higher education

The three examples reflect Cisco's pitch that universities need infrastructure that is secure, simple to run and ready for AI workloads. The company stresses a unified platform approach, from switching and wireless to security analytics, as a way to ease the load on IT teams.

The accounts come from Cisco and its customers, and the source gives no performance figures or contract values. Still, the universities' own descriptions show where demand is heading: heavier data use, more AI activity and security teams that must scale without growing in step.