Last updated on January 26, 2002
Background
Since the start of the 2001 fall semester, the network has been experienced
major slowdowns.
Goal
Increase the capacity of the Internet connection for the campus.
Current Status
As of the start of spring 2002, the increased bandwidth has been turned on and functioning properly.
History
As of December 14th, the DS3 line is in the process of being installed. As soon as it is completed, increasing the bandwidth will not take long.
View Gordon Suggs' presentation and handout from the November 28th General Meeting.
November 15th report from Gordon Suggs, Director of Technology Services, office of information systems and services.
We are proceeding with getting a DS3 line into the campus. Cincinnati Bell was out late last week scouting possible paths for bringing the fiber necessary for this line into campus. They provided quotes for 2 options earlier this week and we are working with them to finalize a contract to get started. Our current schedule is to have this line in by 12/31/01. We are finalizing Cincinnati Bell's commitment to that time line. This gets us a larger pipe to work with.
As for deciding how much of that pipe to use, there have been discussions on that and we are still checking the finances to be sure that there is funding to cover what we would like to do. I expect that we will be ready to announce those plans by the end of the month.
Gordon will be presenting on technology issues at the November 28th General Meeting.
Extended Background
Within the past year the Internet connection used by the University has
nearly reached it's capacity. The internal system, which uses network cable and
switches, is not close to its capacity. A firewall was put in place over the
summer to increase security on the network. It in no way slows the traffic in
the system down - it simply permits or denies specific types of traffic on the
network.
The office of information systems and services has been investigating several short term and long term options to accommodate the increased Internet traffic.
Currently 1400 students in addition to lab and employee computers access the network. In order to regulate traffic, a system (separate from the firewall) is in place that prioritizes traffic across the Internet connection. This is done by the system identifying the type of traffic (i.e. accessing a web page, conducting an instant messenger conversation, downloading a specific file). Academic, research, and administrative traffic is given first priority. Entertainment traffic is given second priority. Priority is not given per the machine, but per the type of traffic being generated. Therefore, the priorities work equally for all computers on the network (student and University alike).
The $70 resident data and cable access fee is currently used to cover the following expenses:
Various short term options are being investigated to improve performance. In the meantime, network users are encouraged to use the Internet between midnight and 10 a.m. for peak performance.
In the long term, the University is awaiting the availability of Internet 2. Internet 2 is the "next version" of the Internet, so-to-speak. It is being used by academic and research institutions at this time. Xavier University's Internet service provider is working on providing Xavier access to this system as soon as possible.