Discovery Networks Europe is the European arm of Discovery Communications Inc. Their main focus is producing high quality documentary and educational programs for a wide audience. They work closely with a large number of other broadcasters and depend on their systems and networks to provide close support to both the office environment and also the broadcast chain. 

Project Requirements
The complexity of networking within DNE has grown over the last few years as an increasing number of business partners have required a connection into the DNE network. All of these links have required extra firewall functionality and some of these have been implemented with low cost application level gateways. This growing level of network and systems complexity needed to be consolidated into a world class design, reducing single point failure risk and simplifying support across multiple time zones. The requirement was to address the above issues and where possible to simplify the overall design without compromising security or reliability, increasing robustness where possible. 

The Solution
Layer3 documented the current configuration of all European inter-network devices and brought this together into a single document to summarise operation. The configuration was analysed to identify the need for and types of security present in the overall design. This was then translated into a generic design that could be modified to provide a solution for all European centres. A design was then developed for each of the European centres and extended to cover requirements for the rest of the world. 

Benefits
• £350000 saving in network links, support and maintenance.
• Great simplification and standardisation of design
• Cost saving design can be fully managed globally 24x7
• Scalable and consistent approach
• Fully secured and can be made robust according to requirement
• Reduces dependency on main office
• Low bandwidth network usage.