Network 2000 Transforms Campus Network Infrastructure

Gil Alterovitz The Tartan 28 October 1996

The Network 2000 initiative officially started in January, 1996. However, "[Computing Services has] been working on various iterations of the same basic network design since 1990," said Napjus. From March to May of this year, the infrastructure was evaluated at Cyert Hall.

During the summer, Computing Services discussed the initiative with vendors and ordered the equipment. The goal of Network 2000 is to deploy the new system in all academic buildings on campus, including the computing clusters, by Fall 1997 with dorms and fraternities to follow.

"Over the last twelve months, we [Computing Services] have been quietly deploying fast ethernet operating at 100 Mbps [megabits per second]... throughout the core infrastructure of the campus network," noted Napjus.

According to a press release, the Network 2000 infrastructure "enables campus network users to move from a shared 10 megabits per second (Mbps) connecting... to either a switched 10 Mbps or a shared 100 Mbps connection." In the current shared 10 Mbps connection, all machines on a given network segment share the 10 Mbps capacity, while the switched 10 Mbps allows each machine to have its own maximum 10 Mbps capacity. A shared 100 Mbps connection gives a machine access to a shared network segment whose maximum capacity is 100 Mbps (ten times more than the current maximum).

Since around the beginning of this school year, the new system infrastructure has been deployed in five academic buildings: Cyert Hall, Mellon Institute, Hamerschlag Hall, Wean Hall, and Baker/Porter Hall. In the near future, five more academic buildings will be added to the list, according to Charles Bartel, director of operations at Computing Services.

In addition, Napjus said some upgrades were made in the dorms over the past summer in preparation for eventual migration over to the Network 2000 infrastructure. "[Computing Services] upgraded the router serving the dormitories both to link into the core Network 2000 infrastructure as well as to provide a path toward upgrading all of the dormitories to Network 2000 service."

Napjus said that "a change [in the network infrastructure] was necessary to cope with the increased use and importance of high bandwidth network connectivity." Network usage has been more than doubling every year since the advent of the World Wide Web, noted Bartel.

Increased network bandwidth would be a boon to web-based applications and multimedia computing, according to Bartel, "It was clear that the campus would need a new generation of campus networking to support these new uses of networks and computing."

Napjus gave several examples of how Network 2000 is already being used for research and for learning in the classroom. "Researchers in the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition are using Network 2000 to tie their researchers together... A professor in the College of Fine Arts is teaching a class called 'Virtual Worlds' which will allow students and others to explore virtual reality over Network 2000."

He added that Computing Services expects the availability of high speed networking to spur new projects that take advantage of the technology.

One of the current constraints is funding. The upgrade cost for academic buildings was originally estimated at $2.3 million. However, through discounts, the Universty was able to lower that amount to around $1.3 million.

Of that total, $700,000 has been secured so far. It is estimated that costs for replacement of the computing software in the dorms would run from $1-2 million.

The University is employing several means to fund the Network 2000 project. Carnegie Mellon has developed a strategic relationship with Cisco Systems over the years, which has helped in implementing this initiative.

"We've been using Cisco equipment at the core of our network since 1988. In 1990, we entered into an agreement with Cisco to develop network monitoring software in exchange for our campus backbone routers (network switches). Since then, we have been both a major use and abuser of Cisco equipment throughout the core of our network."

In addition, the high speed network outlets will be available in academic buildings for a fee of $325.00 for the switched 10 Mbps and $575.00 per outlet for the 100 Mbps shared version. However, even users who do not upgrade are expected to see a performance increase, according to a press release on Network 2000.

While deploying the system, Computing Services is also investigating nascent technologies like Gigabit Ethernet and ATM for linking the various backbone routers, said Bartel.

Napjus also mentioned some of the other areas the University is investigating for the future. "[Computing Services is] working on additional features to the network such as native multicasting (MBONE) and quality of service controls for resource reservation. These features will utilize the Network 2000 infrastructure we've put in place to help support new multimedia tools [that have] started to appear [like] video conferencing."

While different universities are looking at other networking options to meet the increasing demand for their campus networks and Internet applications, Bartel believes that "Carnegie Mellon is one of the leaders in implementing next generation networks. We have presented our plans to our peers and several [of them] are looking to incorporate approaches similar to ours."