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16,000 CWRU Computers Getting Gigabit Ethernet
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."
and they thought they were having a problem with file sharing before .....
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
Being mature educated college students i'm sure this bandwidth will be used for nothing other than strict educational purposes.
I can finally use the Gigabit ethernet card in my PowerMac!
http://www.apple.com/powermac/
--
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.
and a bit of a pet peeve.
The name of the school is "Case Western Reserve". I know because I work, teach, and take classes here. Feel free to post your questions about it and I'll do my best to answer.
It's sad what admins will convince businesses and colleges to do just to get ahead in the SETI ratings.
Never confuse volume with power.
If some folks were smart, they would try to do two things:
1. Set up VoIP systems. This might kill their telephone bills. Who knows? Find a way to make VoIP work, work, work.
2. Set up wireless hubs everywhere in the area. See how people get creative with the access. Always on, always fast. Yum!
How to Download YouTube Videos
At least they'll have little lag issues with Quake, and one can really find out who the fastest gun in the west is. Or at least the Case Western! (I'm just not sure how Cleveland, OH is considered part of the west....)
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Forgot movies. With 100mbps sharing music is painless, but movies will still a few minutes to move around. But go to 1000mbps an you can swap DixX like crazy, and streaming DVDs is vary possible.
This is intereresting but not that all unexepected --- Case has always been on the cutting edge of networking technology. I almost ended up going to school there just because they already have ATM Fiber conncetions in all the rooms already (155Mb/sec IIRC). Gigabit ethernet in itself is interesting because I Don't know of any hard drives that can actually move 100 megabytes a second conitinuously, but I'm sure it will catch up one day. I wouldn't be surprised if students started building RAID striping arrays just to get the bandwidth up.
On another note, the article doesn't seem to mention the speed of the actual internet hookup. Anyone know what they have over there? If they haven't upgraded that, then the whole thing won't seem any faster than 10-base-T when using the net.
Won't this really only be useful for the people on campus, even if someone in New York had an equivalent HS connection because of the inherent bottlenecks that exists on the current internet.
~ kjrose
yes mom... I'm taking care of myself... I get enough fiber...
:-)
Porn.
Duh.
Um this is good for the 16,000 people who have access to the 1 Gbps connections. Quite a large community that is plenty for moving data and live streams around. Heck, even some campuses block outside access now except for strict http traffic, yet p2p and games etc seem to run rampant there.
at college. I'm sure that it's very important for Case to have a "leg up" on the bigger universities but is this going to produce better educated students? The teacher can control lights, sound system and link to the web....oh boy. I'm not dismissing the importance of research at universities but damn, isn't 100 mb networking enough for most dorm computers? Wouldn't the money they're spending on this be better spent elsewhere because $400/student isn't going to cover their costs!? The only possible use I can see for this is porn, warez, etc, etc, etc. Although maybe someone could scan one of those $200, 50 page paperback textbooks and make it available....
Running a server isn't illegal with my cable co (NTL in the UK)
And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour Isaiah 3:5
Non-starters:
I guess for a while we'll just see Fasttrack and Gnutella used to distribute movies... How utterly boring.
-- Stanislav Shalunov
makes going back to college more tempting than usual
Sorry, but personally, fast internet connections don't rate quite as highly as 18 year old girls...
Ok lets take this recipe
:)
College students.
Computers.
Gigabit eth0 interface.
Porn.
Warez.
Muzic.
And these "ADMINISTRATORS" dont yet know how the bandwith is going to be utilized ?!?!?!
I think someone is asleep at the wheel. Or just dosent have a clue what college students are all about. I mean sure, some will be running spatial simulations of the end of time on their gigabit beowulf cluster that geek squad 101 puts togeter on this network and all that acedemia but, but how about the most kick ass perr to peer network know to man ?
I wonder if they'll pu that in the brocures
I am curios what type of traffic shaping and filtereing they are going to do on the campuses in and outbound pipe to the net ?
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
the same way everyone else does... music, porn, and games.
Why do college students need a Gigabit Ethernet connection to download porn? When I was a student we had these great things called girls who let you have sex with them. Or is the fibre just being installed in the dorms of Computer Science students?
I want to meet the sales guy that sold them the switches.
How much does GigE run per port? $500?
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Case Western Reverse University,
at least when I went there. aka See double, you are you.
Are the Spitwad and the Fountain still in the quad? Is Presti's Donuts still in business, and are the Best Cinnamon Rolls in the known universe still available there at 1:15 AM?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
There's plenty of legal free music and videos out here just look at mp3.com and any film trailers...
I find Broadband is great for the speed of loading webpages and also sharing it with another computer at home at the same time. Dial-up was appalling hen shared between two, especially as I like to load several pages, collect mail and chat on irc all at the same time!
The RIAA has struck yet again, this time seizing every non-Apple computer at Case Western Reserve. When questioned why they did not confiscate any Apple computers the RIAA stated, " Well, lets put it this way, Steve's nickname around here is Hand"
"Administrators aren't sure what anybody needs that kind of bandwidth for yet, but they are curious to see how it gets used"
I am interested to find out how the administrators will find out how the links are being used. What hardware/software has the power to track this level of traffic on a switched network.
Will they be using integrated RMON2 NAM cards in the switches or possibly analysis of Netflow data from the routers.
However they do it there will be a geat deal of data to crunch
slashnik
The network administration folks at CWRU have some very clueful geeks (used bash lately?), but when I left, there were never enough of them. All this fancy new hardware will do the university little good unless they give the people running it enough budget to do a first-rate job.
No, fiber will be going to every desktop that can support it... all staff, all faculty and all students, regardless of major or degree. In fact, I bet some of the non comp-sci students here can think of better ways to use it than the comp-sci students themselves!
(Disclaimer, I work in the EECS department at CWRU!)
...what the hell for? I'm the netadmin at Unv and I'm fighting to not run GigE to all my buildings. It simply isn't needed here. I can't imagine running GigE to the desktop. They must have a helluva lot of grant money to waste. The nic cards along aren't cheap. A 3c996 SX card runs about $475 at discount. Are they expecting the users to go out and buy them? That card doesn't have Mac drivers either. I wonder if they expect new Mac users that already have 10/100/1000 to waste a PCI slot for a 1000Base-SX nic. This is just plain weird. I wonder what they connect the building to the campus with... One thing it does do is give the users more than enough umph to DoS most modern processors. It also gives them more than enough umph (if they connect to the campus LAN at say 10GigE to DoS their server farm firewall or worse yet, the actual server. Wanna fill the queue on their I1/I2 border router? Here GigE kids; go have fun.
I think that is journalists picking up the word Fiber and misusing it. It is a fiber optic network, just like most other large universities use. The fiber will only go to the GigE switches, which will provide several GigE drops per room. It would not be cost effective to provide 1Gbit fiber (Ethernet or otherwise) to every workstation when copper GigE NICs are so much cheaper.
Living in an all Computer Engineering floor, I can tell you what it's going to be used for:
1) Downloading pr0n
2) Counterstrike
3) Getting Porn
4) Downloading every episode of every season of every Star Trek series ever made (including the animated one)
5) Hosting Porn
I had a friend who was attending CWRU in 1992-1993 whose Frat House (!) had fiber to each room. He had a 386 with an ISA card had an AUI port, which had a fiber transceiver attached. It may have only been attached to a 10 megabit hub/switch, but the fiber was there.
My classmate took her PowerMac 7100 to CWRU in the fall of 1994, and she also had to buy a fiber to AUI transceiver to hook up her machine in her dorm room. Strosacker auditorium/lecture hall has had fiber ALN drops readily accessable since the early 90s as well.
So it's my belief that the campus has been wired with fiber for at least 10 years; perhaps they're just upgrading thw switches to Gigabit?
Why did they run fiber that long ago? Well, they had to do SOMETHING with all that technology grant money they were getting for CWRUnet/Cleveland Freenet besides buy modems... plus the $26,000 a year tuition/board costs at the time probably made it easier as well. *Smirk*
-RT (Once known as "Iceman" on CFN, as a teen in the early 90s. Scary.)
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
I work at a University now with Gig to every building. I monitor the links constantly and have never see more then 2 or 3% usage, even to the dorms - Why ...
.02$
Because we have not real apps that use it and our link to the Internet is only Frac-T3.
We even use VoIP and some streaming video tech.
My Advice - By 100M uplinks (Channel if you need more to other buildings) and spend the savings on a better Internet Pipe and applications.
Gig is good for servers, not to a building with 50 people in it, or to a desktop!!!!!
Just my
pr0n, mp3s, avis, vobs, warez ... the usual
Obviously they will start out using the usual suspects, but if the bandwidth is sufficient, I suspect that these boring old illegimate uses will evolve into more interesting illegimate and legimate uses.
Perhaps sharing entire music collections at once, or developing a good P2P TV sharing system. Maybe high resolution webcams and intra-dorm video conferencing. I think it will be interesting to see the communities and cultural shifts that emerge from this kind of concentrated bandwidth. Mini-cultural shifts from some of the above examples might include 'Dorm TV', with a floor or individual rescheduling (and retransmitting) distributely stored TV programs to fit in with classes, along with some ripped movies and home-made messages thrown into the mix. Also, in an age of reality shows, access to higher resolution web-cams/video conferencing might generate totally different perspectives on privacy, especially within an enviroment where students are already likely to share rooms, showers, and eating areas. Like those first exposed to e-mail and the web, these students will surely have different attitudes and higher expectations when they move out and begin work.
Total speculation on my part, but high bandwidth should take us well beyond mp3's and warez, making this a very interesting experiment indeed. The big question will be how this use is monitored (traffic or anecdotal) and if the university/provider will step in prematurely to stop illegal or suspect use, since so much of the ultimately interesting (and even legimate uses) are likely to sprout from initial hacks for illegimate use.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Want to use a VPN so you can work from home easily? Legal.
Want to watch streaming concerts and keynotes of big events? Maybe view videos of your classes? Legal.
Want to have a decent ping on game servers? Legal.
Want to download the latest 200MB game demo in a matter of minutes? Legal.
Want to try videoconferencing with your loved ones to save phone bills? Legal.
If you can't think of legal uses for broadband, then maybe you're one of those people that's content to stick with a dial-up modem.
Music won't be shared non-lossy. Sure, the transfers rates may be up, but this didn't have the beneficial side effect of increasing hard drive space. Very few people would be willing to d/l WAVs of CDs instead of MP3s for the extra bit of quality due to the 12x (average for 128bit MP3) file size increase. For now, at least.
Same goes with movies. Right now, a high-quality DiVX run you .5+ gig, and while harddrive sizes are increasing, we have a ways to go before we do straight DVD rips.
And again, we still have limitations of the system itself. Sure, you can run 1Gbps fiber into a 533 Celeron. The typical personal computer can't push 1Gbps through the system, and certainly not through the drives.
Maybe someone will set up a beowulf/distributed.net hybrid, using the low-latency network to set up parallel computing on a dynamic basis (systems going on/offline). It would be interesting to see, and would be great proof-of-concept for autonomous computer projects, like IBM's SMASH (part of Blue Gene).
Well, my .02$US at any rate
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
In related news the university has also been sued by the RIAA. In a writen statment the spokesman for the RIAA said "Of course were sueing What the hell else do you think theyll use that network for besides stealing our intelectual property."
This suit is the first in a series of legal actions that the RIAA hopes will solve the P2P dilema. The longterm goal of the law suits is to return everyone to 9600kbps modems or as the same spokesman was quoted saying "If users cant handel the responsibility that comes with a broadband connection we'll have to limit it to corpate america, the last bastion of trust and integrity in america today."
--aiee
It's actually a test to see how many people connect their computer to their dorm phone line and sell Internet access over the university system!!
And it's done by ALIENS!!! ALIENS!!!
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Where I work, we just got around to upgrading the network from 10BaseT to 100BaseT. Things did get faster -- but not ten times as fast. In a few extreme cases, apps that transfer umpteen megabytes in a short span were maybe 2 or 3 times as fast. Fifty percent was more typical.
OK, then, what's a Reserve University? Is it anything like a Junior University? As in Leland Stanford Junior University.
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.
Only internally. Some unhappy CS student could set up a massive DDoS on the prof's computer, but not outside. The only thing they would acheive in attempting DDos on an outside location would be to flood their router(s) and, just maybe, make a minor impact on the target server.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
.....must...not state...obvious.... .......Arrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhh!
(snap)
Wow! Can you image the Beowulf cluster they could set up with this???
Sounds like a backbone for Sony's Cell Computing.
Well, except 100Mbits networks can support such activity without any problem. You can even feed a decent video stream over 10Mbit. Or 2.5Mbit DSL. Video conferencing could have taken off at any point the last three decades. It hasnt happened. That you cant transmit 'full motion, full screen high definition' Just Aint The Problem. It just isnt interesting or practical for most people. It isnt interesting or practical in low res, nor is it interesting or practical in high definition. And for the JenniCam people of the world they already have it.
Massivly paralell computing clusters would be one field where you could use it. Or for running all the computers as a single system image if someone felt like developing an OS that could handle it. Except I dont really think that many students would care.
Backup servers is the only place where I've found any use for it, but then they have to take multiple 100Mbit streams at a time. And while not Gigabit, Fibre Channel is useful for consolidated storage. But then I dont think many students would like to pay $20 per gigabyte per month in storage costs.
Personally, apart from infrastructure needs, I dont think there are many applications for Gigabit. The bandwidth is there for most things already. It's only when you start shifting the infrastructure from client/server/peer-to-peer to something completely different that there will be a use for it. And the bandwidth wont be the most serious problem in many cases anyway; latency is far worse.
As a Case grad I can inform you that there really is Fibre to every dorm room, class room, etc at Case. It was just running 10mb/s Ethernet when I graduated in '98. This included a fibre optic cable going right up into the computer on a fibre card. My first card in '93 was an AT&T ISA behemoth, going almost the entire length of my case, packed with chips. Now, this doesn't guarantee that they will follow the strategy for gigabit, but if they wasted all that money for fibre for 10mb/s Ethernet, I'd be surprised if they flinched now.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
This would make quite the interesting playground for Massively Mutli-Player First Person Shooters (MMPFPS?) - of course your computer would need serious processing power...
Wouldn't you want to play Unreal Ultimate: up to 1000 players in maps up to 5 square miles (scale)?!
Of course, making the maps would be a huge undertaking...
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Administrators aren't sure what anybody needs that kind of bandwidth for yet, but they are curious to see how it gets used.
At a wildly conservative estimate of $75 per run, that's over $1 million being spent "to see what happens." I'm all in favor of the experimental nature of the University and I'm strongly in favor of trying to buy ahead of the curve where possible.
But...couldn't an experiment to see what everyone might do with 1 Gbps fiber be scaled to a quarter of that size or even a tenth of that size and the rest of the money spent on other equipment or infrastructure needs?
It might future-proof them, but AFAIK Gbit ethernet is running just fine on four pair Cat 5, which they probably already have installed. The annoying nature of fiber optics has IMHO kept it from being "the next step" in end-user distributive network technology -- it's fragile, complex to fix and the interfaces are more expensive and non-standard on most equipment that 16k people would use.
Given the budget crunches that most states are feeling, it seems strangely inappropriate to blow at least $1 million to see what happens (yes, CWRU gets money from Ohio).
Perhaps there will be a huge video-conferenced/digitally-recorded class initiative!
Stream or download your lectures in full MPEG2 broadcast quality with stereo sound. Also available on DVD for a modest production fee.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Case Western used to have an ATM network available to all of its students which was all super fast and had high bandwidth. However, they found that a pure network of ATM was too unstable (there were numerous random outages that got really annoying) and started switching back to ethernet.
However it looks like they are not going to settle with 100mbps and just go straight to Gigabit.
I guess they like to have their network be as fast as possible.
If Ihad a GB network connection and was at collage I'd make sure I could get the leatures pumped through to my bed room.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Likely more... the equipment to handle this is a lot different than your garden variety CompUSA switch or, for that matter, your run of the mill Cisco.
Can you say "solution in search of a problem"?
One of those "our school is better than yours" type of things, I guess.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
As stated previously, we already have fiber run to every desktop. Besides, we all know the length limitations for GigE over copper aren't that good.
In short, we already have the necessary fiber infrastructure there, so why not use that?
It should be noted, though, that new faceplate installations (notably, for our business school) also have copper run to them as well as fiber optics (both single and multimode)
My wife is getting her Ph.D. at CWRU, so I've had a chance to check out their infrastructure. CWRU jumped on the ATM bandwaggon in the early 90s, back when ATM was the holy grail of networking (was there any Byte edition that didn't have an article on ATM?), so they deployed ATM-over-fiber to every office and every dorm room on campus. Talk about misreading the future. Now I guess since they've got all that fiber in place already, they're probably thinking they might as well capitalize on it and move to gigabit. I can only assume that they're making use of the same fiber, otherwise they'd be out a whole lotta money. This is more of a case of a lucky second chance than exceptional foresight.
I'm also not particularly impressed with their IT department. They like touting their computing horn, but my wife wasn't able to obtain one of their elusive ethernet-over-ATM adapters for two summer sessions now, being forced instead to connect via their notoriously flakey PPP dial-in at glacial modem speeds--while on campus. So much for their leadership in advanced campus networking. Oh, but they do have 802.11b in their main library, so I guess they get one point for that.
How it will be used. Get real use your brain and think what it was like being 19 and away from home and without a girlfriend cuz your a geek.
"You lucky, lucky bastards!"
Probably someone will start coding those interactive video pron games
I leave it as an exercise for your imaginations as to the best way to implement this.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Fiber may run into every room, but it would seem (to me, anyway) that the "last foot" solution will be a tranceiver and a Cat5 cable into the back of a computer. Some people may choose to install fiber cards, but many people won't feel comfortable enough to have someone play around inside their system.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
You do realize that 1000Mbps is actually faster than most IDE hard drives? (I don't know what kind of drives they have..) The fastest ATA-100 drive I have gets about 35MB/sec at peak.. That's 65MB/sec you can't even really use for file transfers.
Anything above 100baseT isn't really all that useful for induvidual workstations and servers, but it increases throughput for MANY workstations and servers, all sending traffic on the net at the same time.
Also, remember that your PCI bus can only talk at a maximum 133MB/sec (and if you have many peripherals, some of that is already being used), so anything faster than 1 gigabit, and your computer can't even talk that fast.
As a current CWRU student who is currently living in the dorms over the summer and currently has his computer hooked up to the network I can try to clear up any confusion on this =) The network does, indeed, feature fiber running to every desktop. As several individuals have stated previously, the University ran fiber optic cable to every dorm room and office several years back (longer back than I remember). That same fiber is now being used to provide gigabit connections to every room. Every student was (or will be) provided a Netgear GA621 gigabit fiber optic network card for their personal computer, which does, indeed, equate to "fiber to the desktop" =)
They actually ran FDDI (100Mbit over fiber) ten years ago, and put FDDI cards in everyone's PCs.
My guess is that they're using the same fiber, just switching to a Gigabit protocol, since the migration to ATM a few years ago was kinda lame. (Yes, they were doing ATM to the desktop.)
-- Spring: Forces, coiled again!
Immersive Video Conferencing? (cough)pr0n(cough)
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I would have loved fibre in my dorm room back in college, as kicking back X applications to one's PC wouldn't have been a chore. It was ok with 10Mbit, but the latency drop and bandwidth boost with fibre would have made it seem like I was really in the engineering labs.
Yes... if/when there is a legit application for gigabit P2P, it will probably emerge in arenas like this, before making its way to the wide world. :)
Gigabit P2P would be a great way to exhaust the excessive capacity of the post-WorldCom era.
My personal bet: P2P Reality TV. Maybe I should go and patent this...
My blog
Actually, all of the fiber cards to be used are still multimode. There isn't a need (yet) to use the singlemode fibers. Besides, the multimode equipment is far cheaper!
Of course, most of their machines will most likely be configured such that they can't use that full bandwidth over anything but a subnet anyhow, so this is kinda ridiculous...
There are a lot of people on here complaining that gigabit just isn't good for anything and no one needs a connection that fast. While I agree that is true in general, there are (non-porn) uses for the connections that universities can really use. For example, I'm a student in an astronomy department. An image from an average-sized digital detector is, oh, 300 MB. Before people start yelling about compression, realize that we have to retain all the information. Of course, this doesn't take into account the fact that there are mosaic cameras that put out a few gigs per image. So, as you can see, a night of 40 images or so can really add up. For us, it makes sense to not only have lots of storage space (mmmmm. . . 1 TB array), but also to have fast connections. We are just starting to experiment with gigabit-over-copper now, and I must say that, so far, it seems to be totally worth it. Having to wait 30 seconds for an image to display on your screen (because it's stored on the disk array at the other end of the office) is a huge pain.
So, I'm not saying that CWRU needs to wire all of their dorms, but gigabit certainly makes sense in some areas.
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
Several uni's are upgrading their computer networks from 100 megabit to 1 gigabit. My university (IU) will be beginning the process soon, with a completion date in late 2003 or early 2004. That's 100,000 users, approximately. Granted, a good portion of those probably aren't on campus to enjoy that bandwidth, but I know *I* am :)
:)
I've heard of several other universities doing this as well. It just makes sense when it's time to replace wiring (or in our case, get two new Technology buildings that will hold all of our servers) to upgrade to the next level.
I guess this is our "gee-whiz, college kids are lucky" post of the week. Just remember what we have to *pay* for this stuff
- The article isn't clear about the fiber networking here at CWRU. The fiber network has been in place largely since the late 1980s. This isn't a new installation. New buildings are getting both Cat5 and fiber, but most of the older buildings already have both single and multi mode fiber already installed. Cat5 wasn't even a standard until after the current fiber infrastructure was already in place!
- Yes, the name of the school is Case Western Reserve University.
- CWRU implemented an ATM network in 1995/1996 that failed miserably. I know because I was one of the first people on it. At the time, ATM was an unproven technology. Vendor support just wasn't there. Gigabit is less of a gamble because we know it works and has much better support and a much brighter future.
- The article does not mention anything of the thousands upon thousands of wireless access points that will be installed as well. While 802.11 certainly does not provide anywhere near the performance of a wired connection, most laptop users will probably find the wireless network more useful in the long run
- CWRU isn't the greatest school in the world, but I know that the many people, including myself, work tireless to try to make it better. There are many bitter people (and rightly so) out there who have had negative experiences with the school in the past. However, things have changed and are continuing to move in a very positive direction. I know because I'm living it.
- Presti's is still open and they still sell delicious bakery.
OK... enough ranting for now. I'm going to hop out of this discussion. If anyone has any serious questions, they can email me. I can't guarantee I'll know the answer, but I'll certainly try.Slashdot ate my freaking post. Thanks, 404 error. (Maybe it was the router, the firewall, or one of the many switches. Oh well.)
:)
I wanted to say thanks to all of you who responded and confirmed my suspicions. I find it humorous (sad?) that all of the "Use it for pr0n!" and P2P karma-whores are sucking all of the modpoints, while those of us who are directly disproving the story submission's assertion that "Case Western is installing fiber connections in 16,000 computers..." are going unmodded.
Not that *I* need the points, but maybe you CRWUbies could use them, eh?
Hi, Froggy.
-RT
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
CWRU has a history of installing advanced networks for no particular reason, to sit mostly unused for years, until they install the next advanced network. They already pulled all that fiber a while ago, back when ATM was going to rule the universe.
0) it isn't BS
1) because the original plan was ATM over fiber, and they ran fiber all over campus.
2) fiber is more flexible in terms of what runs on it (somewhat) and better for long distances than copper.
3) cisco everywhere
4) uhm, many computers can keep up with it. but the bandwidth is almost never fully utilized. so this is kind of a moot question.
5) any machine hooked up to a switch is doing full duplex.
6) the main point here is that intra-campus communication will be wicked fast allowing better collaboration. many students will not realize the basic facats of networking in that you never use the full pipe, that bandwidth is width not speed, and that the firewall will most likely still be 100BaseT to the gateway.
the press is taking this way out of context. mainly the supplier of the ATM cards we were using has gone away (FORE bought by marconi, currently laying people off like crazy). the ATM cards got better, but ethernet is more common, plus, if you have a campus wired for gigabit it will do fine at lower levels of ethernet (10/100)
the aim was never to increase pr0n and war3z, although these will be issues. the tech people at CWRU are very much on the ball and nip FTP warez sites in the butt pretty much as soon as they appear.
Jandar0's other article mentioned that there's an adapter for 100Mbps service for people who can't use gig-e fiber cards (Mac users, etc.), which is probably good enough for laptops (otherwise, if you've got a roommate with a desk-top, use their PC as a bridge or something...) That shouldn't be too bad for performance - you'll be limited to 100Mbps, but the performance should be better since the backbone has more bandwidth for everybody, so you should still get decent file-server performance, and Gnutella won't be bandwidth-limited...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
it is worth noting that the school is changing its aim to appeal to more "average" students, some professors in the comp sci department don't know how to use ping (true story), and the food service is getting to the point of lethal. oh and the stress is really sucky.
There'd be less latency between transmitting completed work units and getting new ones with a fast network. Unless the transfers happen while calculations are begin performed, of course, which would take a little bit of processor time away to handle the network communications, in which case less time spent transferring data would probably still be a minute benefit. :)
So "absolutely nothing to do with" is just barely an overstatement.
some of us put the ATM technology available to us to good use a few years ago. see the results here. The CWRU Beowulf Project was mankind's last best hope for Bromberg's numerical Integration Approximation Theorem...
I don't know if anybody's done 2-dimensional lossless coding, or how well it works, but it shouldn't be hard - do line-by-line differences and then compress those, if you want something crude.
You can also find lossless music coders - "Shorten" used by etree.org gets compression ratios of 2-3, which is a lot bigger than MP3s but keeps the audiophiles happy.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Maybe most users can't use a full gbps of data. Most of them *can* use more than 100mbps, so even if they only double their bandwidth, it's still nice, and there's plenty of room for growth. Obviously things like file servers can benefit from the faster connections more directly, since they're often transmitting to many recipients at once, so they'll probably get beefed up early.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I went to CWRU when the initially installed the fiber on campus. All on campus housing, and academic building had fiber installed in 1988. The off campus frat houses (there are two types of frat houses at CWRU southside on campus and northside off campus) got fiber a few years later.
The Economics of Website Security
If CWRU is installing the wireless, they'll have at least some semblence of security on it. If universities are hunting down rogue wireless, for reasons other than just clueless control-freakness, it's because they're (legitimately) concerned about uncontrolled access as a security risk. Of course, security problems are much different for academia than for businesses - here in the business world, the classic security threat is some college kid hacking into your network. But if you're *running* a university network, all those threats are already *inside* your firewall - and they're your customers....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Typically, 64kbps raw voice gets compressed to 16kbps or 8kbps, then wrapped in several layers of RTP and IP overhead that bring it back up to around 12-24kbps. Won't make a dent in your shared 10Mbps Ether, much less Gig-E-to-the desktop. The problem is that it's latency-sensitive, and getting stuck behind big ftp transfers can be a problem - and it's unlikely that a high-powered switching network will be able to prioritize it. On the other hand, utilization will probably be low enough that there won't be much jitter - the real problem becomes connecting the PBX to the outside world.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It's the P2PreCrimes unit of the RIAA.
They're using a small cadre of hip teens suspended in fluid to determine the likelihood of a particular piece of music being stolen.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
I think that it's time to pool all of your hard disks into a RAID enclosure and set up your boxes to boot over the network. (of course you'll probably have to dump Windows to do that -- but I wouldn't really mind... :-)
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
What, they have computers in Rolla? They don't even have a real bar there. It's either Applebees or drive out to that shitty-ass redneck bar "Z's place" by Doolittle. What a fucking joke of a village...
:)
:) ) there was a fair, and fireworks, and I won a Mustang! :)
Go get ticks at Merrimac Springs, or what? Go see the roadside psychic along I44? Muahahaha.
At least when I was there a couple weeks ago (Visiting a cute DJ chick from KDAA
(No, didn't win the damn mustang, some fucker from California won it...)
Gotta get the DJ chick to move in with me in Omaha, Rolla is a hella-boring shithole.
Quake on megabit ethernet and gigabit ethernet are indistinguishable.
You'll notice when you send a DivX movie over AIM file transfer, though.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
When I was a student we had these great things called girls who let you have sex with them.
You're forgetting, this is CWRU. Men outnumber women 2:1. Supposedly, that situation has given rise to a saying among Case girls: "The odds are good, but the goods are odd."
The original Howling Frog is a fictional character and has no UID.
OK, followed the link...
but still, this is a campus network for college students. I'm not saying that absolutely every single use of gigabit ethernet that actually utilized that kind of bandwidth will be illegal, i'm just saying that >95% of them will be.
some day this kind of bandwidth will have widespread application in the general population, but right now, it's mainly useful for experimental, technical, and illegal data transfer.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
You can theorize all you like about what kind of things will be enabled by this kind of jump in local access speeds. Forecasts about technology and culture are much more likely to predict non-starters like personal household robot servants or flying bubble-cars than they are to hit upon something like ultra-violent FPS games becoming popular or the creation of geocaching as a sport.
But if there's one thing a look backward can tell us it is that the answer to "How will they use it?" is:
In ways that you can barely begin to imagine, that will end up seeming glaringly obvious in hindsight.
-Sporktoast
In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.