Upgrade Boosts Net Speed for Engineering Faculty, Students, Research
7/28/2004
By James Cope
In a three-month project that is just now winding down, the OIT's Integrated
Communications Services group replaced the network switches serving the
College of Engineering 's Fitzpatrick and Cushing Halls with new more
robust equipment.
"The effort is the biggest single campus network switch replacement
effort so far," says Tom Klimek, manager of network engineering for
the OIT.
Klimek's group worked closely with the College of Engineering to install
66 new Cisco switches that provide a faster and more manageable network
for Engineering faculty and students and to support the college's research
programs.
Computer users in Fitzpatrick and Cushing now have 100Mb/sec (megabits
per second) network connections in all of the offices as a result of the
combined effort, says Curt Freeland, a member of the College of Engineering
staff and faculty who manages the Engineering College's computer systems.
That, Freeland explains, is in marked contrast to the older switched network
based on a slower 10MB/sec Ethernet system.
Nine of the new switches support Gigabit Ethernet, a networking standard
that passes data at up to one gigabit per second (Gb/sec), 10 times that
of a Fast Ethernet connection, according to Tom Marentette, an OIT network
engineer who planned and coordinated the switch replacement project.
"We have 40 of the Gigabit Ethernet drops into research areas,"
Freeland says, noting that the faster network will benefit research work
in nanotechnology, electronic human face recognition, control systems
and other areas.
Besides the speed gains from the new switches and wiring segments that
support Gigabit Ethernet, physically moving computers from one part of
the network to another is now easier because of a Web-based front end
developed by OIT Sr. Software Engineer Zuwei Liu. Liu's application connects
to a VLAN Membership Policy Server (VMPS) from Cisco Systems that works
in conjunction with the new switches, Klimek says.