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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 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.
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...
Well, yes and no. The current off campus connection is equivalent to about an OC-3, with portions for both commodity Internet and Internet 2. I believe the idea is that we'll be increasing those caps and installing additional fiber to connect to the rest of the world. Granted, there will be a bottleneck SOMEWHERE.
;)
The Internet2 is actually going to make a big difference here... cheap costs to hook up host institutions and no need to deal with the hassles of the current crappy commodity Internet. Other Universities will probably follow step, I2 will be upgraded and then it will make a bit more sense.
In any case, the whole upgrade will take about 18 months and we've just gotten started. Students are already set up to go, and the comp-sci buildings are going to be next (I know, because I'm responsible for making sure the upgrades go as smoothly as possible for my users).
Still, I think there's a lot of experimentation to do with the GigE network even if we can only realize those speeds off campus. Will this make us a huge target for DDoS attack machines? Sure, but that's why we try to be proactive in protecting our machines.
Well, I think it's going to be a good idea, too. Previously people had a choice between a shared 10 Mbps network (yes, shared... sloooow) or a 155 Mbps ATM connection (ATM never became the standard we thought it was going to be back in 1994/1995... oh well).
I know students who already have striped RAID arrays (have to hold those research reports on something, eh?) I think, too, that that kind of thing will become more prevalent. There are already some high profile centers on campus that could use the bandwidth... and those folks stuck on the basic 10 Mbps network are going to gladly move up to something faster and actually switched.
As far as off-campus connectivity goes, we have the equivalent of an OC-3, but only handle about 36 Mbps in commodity internet and the rest for Internet 2 (minus about 55 Mbps or so.... the firewall only has 100 Mbps cards or something like that).
In any case, we have plenty of bandwidth to the outside world, but I expect we acquire more as time progresses.
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
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.
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" =)
- 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.