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16,000 CWRU Computers Getting Gigabit Ethernet

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fair-bit-of-bandwidth dept.

lowlypeon writes "In a move that makes going back to college more tempting than usual, Case Western is installing fiber connections in 16,000 computers over the next year to give students a 1 gigabit per second Ethernet connection. Administrators aren't sure what anybody needs that kind of bandwidth for yet, but they are curious to see how it gets used."

1 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Case networking, the early days by Animats · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Case was into networking very early, but not too successfully. In the late 1960s, Case was briefly on the ARPANET, but became the only site to be kicked off by ARPA because their R&D project didn't produce much. An early laser link (helium-neon, in air) carried 2400 baud synchronous data for a card reader/printer across Cedar Avenue.

    Case was once famous for doing the wrong thing really well. Just as interactive computing started to work, Case developed one of the best batch operating systems of the era. This was so cost-effective that it kept Case studends on punched cards much later than other comparable schools. The entire school ran on a 1 MIPS machine, with enough free time to support a private company selling excess time to commercial users.