Notre Dame lights optical-fiber link

Major boost to University's Internet connections

6/7/2004

By James Cope

Spurred by the growing bandwidth demands of Notre Dame's research efforts and the natural growth in student, faculty and staff Internet usage, the University in late-May announced that it had fully implemented an optical-fiber link to Chicago.

Notre Dame CIO, Gordon Wishon says the approach, which employs existing dark (unused) optical-fiber cable between South Bend and Chicago, has enabled Notre Dame to more than double its commodity (public) Internet bandwidth and increase five-fold its research bandwidth for the same money as it was paying in the South Bend market.

Wishon made the announcement in a presentation to a group of 60 area community leaders at last month's business technology symposium hosted by the St. Joseph County Chamber of Commerce.

Notre Dame's optical-fiber path terminates in Chicago at StarLight, a global optical network exchange for advanced national and international research networks founded by Northwestern University.

“An optical link to StarLight,” Wishon says, “connects Notre Dame to the vast resources of one of the world's most advanced network infrastructures, including a path to Abilene, the high-speed national research network operated by Internet2.”

Moreover, Wishon notes, the optical initiative brings to Notre Dame the cost-saving advantages enjoyed by universities in the Chicago market where there is fierce competition among leading service providers.

Two optical fiber links, each terminating at different points on the Notre Dame campus, provide redundancy. In the event one fails, the other automatically takes over, says the University's Chief Technology Officer, Dewitt Latimer, who was instrumental in developing the network architecture.

“We're currently using less than 2.0% of the network's total capacity, so there's plenty of headroom to accommodate future bandwidth demand,” Latimer explains.

The University's deployment is a catalyst for the St. Joseph Valley MetroNet, a metropolitan area network project launched in cooperation with the cities of South Bend and Mishawaka, Indiana, the St. Joseph County Chamber of Commerce and Project Future. The latter is an area organization that helps attract new businesses to the South Bend and Mishawaka communities.

Notre Dame has partnered with Global Access Point, a new South Bend-based company created to bring high-speed communication services to the local market, to manage the optical network service on the University's behalf.