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Fiber To The Dorm Room
alertpopes writes "Looking for a great education AND a dedicated personal fiber internet connection in your dorm room? Students enrolling at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH get both! Just don't bring any 10/100 equiptment - it's gigabit only around here. All students have access to over 16,000 fiber ports throughout the university plus 802.11g campus-wide! Registered students must buy a Netgear GC102 Gigabit Ethernet Media Converter through the University eStore for a mere $216.50 to connect to the service, but isn't it worth it? CWRU recommends the purchase of either a Dell or Apple for incoming students to meet networking requirements. The University was voted the 'Most wired Campus' by Yahoo! Internet Life magazine in 1999."
Get one of these babies SK 9844.
Offloads damn near everything, vlans, checksums etc. Doesn't do IPSEC, but then if you're spending about 700 on a NIC you'd get a separate crypto accelerator for that.
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I know this would be the first problem that came to mind for me. How will people be forced to deal with the problem that there's probably not a single laptop out there that has fiber gigabit in it? Of course, my Powerbook has gigabit copper on it, as does my recently upgraded motherboard. So there're two gigabit units that wouldn't be able to work here. There's a time and place where backwards compatibility has to be maintained, and most certainly a time to ditch it. It seems to me that we're about a decade away from fiber being the most efficient and effective way to push gigabit to the dorm room.
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While Case does have a lot going for it in this regard, please disregard that Yahoo story; Yahoo's 'research' into that reward was done by distributing surveys to the various institutions, and it's widely known that the VP in charge of ITS at the time 'won' CWRU that rank by lying through his teeth. Here's a reference, look near the bottom: http://www.onecleveland.org/Observer%204-9-04.htm.
There are seveal reasons to use fiber. It takes up less conduit space, it's tougher for the students to tap into and randomly splice in stupid things like telephones, the switches often support superior levels of router control, and the superior bandwidth offers greater flexibility for both dorm use and lab use, especially for backup and PXE baed network re-installations. MIT, for example, reloads the OS on its workstations every time you reboot them. That sort of thing takes serious bandwidth. Better to spend the money up front now to get the fiber laid for the next 20 years of use than be stuck with out of date networking and continuous upgrades for the next 20 years, which adds up to a lot of money.
As copper ethernet is nearing its end, fiber only seems like the only other logical way to go for networking.
What, are you an idiot? Copper is here to stay.
Many reasons why:
1. copper is cheap
2. copper is durable - try bending your fiber too much
3. any idiot (ie, me) can make high-quality RJ-45 copper connections
4. copper connectors are FAR more durable than fiber connectors
5. putting connectors on a fiber requires FAR more equipment & training
6. gigabit ethernet on copper is so fast - even my brand new $5k dell server can't saturate gigabit
Now of course, fiber has enourmous advantages when you need to go any significant distance (> 100m), but otherwise, there is no point.
Nah, copper ethernet is going just as strong as fiber ethernet:8 337
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=4
Whose HD can constantly suck up more than a 100 MB pipe?
100 MByte/sec HD != 100Mbit network
You only realistically get about 10MBytes/second over a 100Mbit network. So Gigabit (1000 Mbit) would be closer to the hard drive limit. SATA drive are capable of 150 MByte/second transfer rate, although not many production drive currently do today.
Plus, downloading to your HD isn't the only thing you can do with a network. You can stream live lectures to people's rooms, use a network application server to allow students to access large server programs, VNC from the helpdesk with no choppiness, etc.
why run expensive fiber when you can run cheapo Cat 5
Becase it's a big undertaking to rewire a campus, so you'd better do it right and prepare for the future, instead of locking yourself into today/yesterday's technology.
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Yup.. My girlfriend goes there now and has fiber running directly to her room. However, the media converter they give you outputs 10mbit if I remember correctly.
The fiber gig network isn't good for anything but downloading porn from the guy down the hall. For awhile now Case has paid for a 45 mbit outbound connection, but the provider never actually enforced the cap. They started enforcing it towards the end of the spring semester and everything slowed to a crawl. Gig is great, but before I left campus for summer I never got more than a few kbit for most downloads.
CWRU has had fiber to every dorm room on campus since 1988 (yes, 16 years ago).
I was a student there when they installed it. Most of the academic building where wired in 1987, dorms in 1988 (at least 6 pair to every room) and off campus housing (e.g Fraternities and Sororities) in 1989 and 1990.
In 1988, the campus bookstore would loan you an ethernet card and a fiber transceiver (I believe at that time it was 10Mb/s, a precursor to the 10BaseFL standard).
The Economics of Website Security
Couple of links:
100 Most Wired, 1999
100 Most Wired, 2000 (Case Western drops off the list)
The University of Delaware moved up to #2... then their network was brought to its knees due to file sharing (presumably it fell off the list in 2001).
What really surprises me is that "traditional" tech universities don't hold the top spots.
Disclaimer: UD alumn
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Just to answer you, since I was just having a conversation with our campus IT guy, who had a tour of that network. I'll answer these as I understood it:
1. They bought a whole lotta fiber quite a bit back, with the idea that it would be more useful over time. (For example, we're just upgrading from 10Mbit in our halls to fast ethernet switches. They really don't need to do that...) I was also told that some years ago, they were the exclusive provider of a modified NIC you needed to buy, so it was also a revenue stream. (Though I can't imagine that got them much.) Additionally, that kind of insane bandwidth makes large engineering tasks that need the bandwidth pretty easy. Granted, they found something like 60% of their network usage is streaming pr0n, but the possibility is there.
2. There is a HECK OF A LOT of bandwidth. It seems like the slashdot crowd is having a hard time coping with multiple strands. Yes, there are hyuuuuuge bundles moving out of the dorms, with more than enough bandwidth to serve those rooms. (Again, as I understood it. I'm told they went under the main road there quite a number of times to lay cable at insane cost.)
Also, just as a pet peeve....for anyone that says fiber "saves" them so much money, keep in mind that each new fiber port they want on a switch costs over $1000 bucks, adding in users is NOT cheap!
We've had fiber to the desktop since 1989!
As for that Yahoo award? Ray Neff, former IT director at CWRU (but now cursing Berkeley with his presence) was responsible for bringing ATM to the desktop in the mid-late '90s, which was widely regarded as a disaster. The Yahoo's most wired campus award? Well, the results of that were based solely on a survey submitted to Yahoo by each campus's IT director. Many of the answers that CWRU submitted on that survey were exaggerations, while others were simply untrue. Neff left the university around the same time that a University audit detected about half a million dollars in misplaced department funds, and while no guilt was ever placed or admitted, I'll let you connect the dots.
Since those "glory years", however, we've ditched ATM on the desktop, and better yet, we no longer have the world's largest flat-topology IP network (back in the day, a few people playing unpatched Doom 1 could bring the network to its knees due to the use of broadcast packets). Instead, we have gigabit over fiber, and Intel has ranked us the 4th most unwired campus as well.
Still, this is hardly *news* to anyone. It's been like this here for a long time.
Universities often recomend specific computers, why? Well there are several resons, but majorly you know some of the computers will break and students will drag them down to the university computer shop and therefore it helps if you limit what most people are using to a few brands.
OK the geeks are going to buy what they want. But then again they probably can fix it on their own too.
I'm glad when I was at brandeis they had standard cat 5, my laptop at the time was a 10 year old powerbook duo that I picked up cheap on ebay and it would not be able to do anything with fiber.
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Link to stats
Actually, we have an OC12 to our service provider's PoP, with commodity Internet capped at 45Mb/s (usually pegged during the afternoons and evenings when the dorms are occupied) and (afaik) uncapped Internet 2 which usually sits around 18Mb/s.
To add to the problem, most commodity PCs can't handle gigabit anyway. The garden-variety PCI implementation tops out at about 50 MB/s, so you aren't even getting everything you're paying for unless you pay for a system with PCI-X or better.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
As a former CWRU undergrad I will agree that Case has always been 'over-wired' in order to score well on technical reviews. They have had at least one (sometimes two) fiber lines to each dorm room for almost a decade now. However, you suggest that Case has bandwidth I'll never realistically utilize. Believe me, the network gets well-used, and I have pushed the limits on a daily basis. True, a basic hard drive cannot write as fast as the network can transmit data...but that is why so many students like myself made striped raid arrays to be faster than the network!
Believe me, downloading a 700 MB movie in 20 seconds is a dream.
-Sparky
What about wireless? It says on the site that they have 802.11g implemented across the campus.
Fiber != Static IP in each room
The Political Programmer
Well, I went to Case from 94-98 and worked in the network engineering group in 99. The fiber was put in a long time ago. It wasn't an upgrade, it was just how they wired everything. Every dorm room has two faceplates. Each faceplate has 2 SM fiber pairs, 2 MM fiber pairs, 1 Coax and 1 Cat3 cable for phone. It's unfortunate that they didn't install Cat5, but that's the way it is. Retrofitting with Cat5 was going to be a tremendous cost, so we just avoided doing it.
Derek
Don't Panic...
My school 'strongly suggests' getting an IBM notebook, but it makes sense since you can bulk buy with the other thousand people who need to buy one, and there's enough IBM machines in operation to get us an on-site IBM repair facility. Of course, any machine (within reason) will work with the network, its just that for the purposes of getting a machine and having it maintained that sticking to the standard is better for you.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
At Gigabit speeds, fiber lets you run much longer drops...the NOC can be much, much farther away from your computer.
Over twisted pair, you have to be within 100m, by cable length. I don't think there's a signal-based limit to fiber.
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Fiber ethernet nstalled in 1986.
Student presentations these days don't involve standing in front of an OHP talking. A lot of students use PowerPoint, embedded sound and video clips, digital photographs and so forth.
Students use a full range of media when doing course work. At least they do in the UK, and I mean all courses not just media. IT and art based ones.
Which means they need far more than 3GB of drive space. And they need plenty of RAM for video editing and PhotoShop.
As for gigabit networks being unneccessary apart from trading warez. I assume you also aren't aware that many campuses offer streaming facilities for lectures, allowing you to watch lectures again, or catch up on ones you missed? A few dozen students streaming lectures during revision week will soon soak up that gigabit of bandwidth.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. --Albert Einstein
I don't think there's a signal-based limit to fiber.
There are limits, but the limits are pretty long. Multimode fiber typically has a limit of about 2km. Singlemode fiber will typically have ranges up to 100km. Multimode is less expensive then singlemode and probably what this university is useing.
So for a campus...no problem.
Another thing to consider is they may have actually been looking ahead to the future. I remember reading an article in 1991-1992 timeframe saying that the current PC technology had hit a plateau and there was little need for more powerful machines. Granted for a class of users this is true, but not many would want to be stuck with a 1 year old machine if they had a choice.
Putting network infrastructure into older buildings not originally designed for it is expensive. I can see how they may want a solution that will last them more then 2 or 3 years before a major upgrade cycle.
Another thought is this...apologies in advance to any alumni of this institution... but this is great marketing for a school that may otherwise have trouble distinguishing itself from the pack.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
OK, let me try to explain how this campus works to those who assume that Case just dumped tens or hundreds of millions of dollars on a fiber network in recent years.
r s/CWRUnet_Timeline.html
The real answer is, we've had this fiber network in place since the late 1980s. That's right. So to those who are talking about "why not just run cat6?". Well, let me tell you, that wasn't exactly even around back then. Here's a brief (and somewhat dated) timeline of how this campus network was built: http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/tour/Tours/CWRUnet_Tou
I know this because I was a student here and now a technical and facilities manager and have been on the campus for about a decade.
Also, gig fiber to the desktop *is* nice. Try pulling down a complete set of ISOs (MSDNAA, BSD, Linux, whatever). The more the better, in my opinion. The equipment really isn't that expensive.
Yes, one of our limiting factors is that currently we are uplinked at an oc-3 with only about 45 megabits partitioned off for commodity internet usage. The rest is devoted to Internet2 traffic. However, as I understand it, this will change and in the near future we will have a full gigabit uplink to our provider (maybe even more, it's been awhile).
In regards to the recommendations made, no, I don't think they were really necessary. Who outside of this school really cares anyway? However, that said, the University does get a really nice discount on some Dell products. Enough to make it worth it for most students (whom would probably buy Dell anyway based upon current market share).
So there you have it. Quit bitching about the use of fiber. I know this won't stop the arguing, but might as well not fight a decision that was made 15 YEARS AGO. Oh, and by the way, kind of nice to know that that same infrastructure has WORKED for that entire 15 years without need to repull copper and likely will continue to work for many more decades to come. A low long-term TCO is kind of a nice thing you know.
Finally, my opinions do not necessarily reflect the official opinions of my employe, Case Western Reserve University and I speak in no official public relations capacity... I simply speak as an alumnus and current employee.
Q: Why did they use fiber instead of coper cables?
A: Because they are using the fiber optic cables they installed into the dorm rooms in the early ninties. I'm not sure of the exact year, but I believe that the wiring was completed in 1992 or 1993. I started at Case in 1994 and every dorm room had a faceplate with phone, cable, and multimode and singlemode fiber optic. The multimode fiber was used for the network connection. Even back then, my brand spanking new PowerMac 7100/66, which had a built-in AAUI Ethernet port, required an AAUI to AUI adapter and then an AUI to 10-baseFL converter to hook to the wall.
The reason Case can go to gigabit in the first place is that they don't have to replace the Cat 3 cable that they probably would have installed back then. Unfortunately, the bet did not pay of in the sense that copper is still the standard, and fiber optic NICs are very expensive. It did pay off in the sense that they can switch to Gigabit for the cost of expensive NICs, rather than the cost of having to lay new cable.
Oh, and that whole "Most Wired Campus" thing from Yahoo Internet Life was a bunch of bunk. The head network guy fabricated most of what was reported in that article. He finally got fired, and it seems the network is in much better hands now. Back in 1996, Case began an ill-fated switch from Ethernet to ATM, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but the ATM network never worked well, and ATM has never, and probably will never, catch on as a technology to the desktop. Old users never got ATM, they remained on the old, reliable, 10-Megabit network. They finally scrapped that system a few years ago and announced that they were going to convert the entire network over to switched gigabit, which should be pretty damn cool, and is an established technology.
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The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
So, the fact that I have a 10/100/1000 copper connection means that I can't connect to their network?
I went to Case from 1997-99. At least back then, you are right.
Case was using 155Mb ATM over fiber into each dorm room. I think I still have my PCI ATM adapter somewhere (don't tell anyone, they cost a fortune back then). I believe they boasted the largest ATM installation outside of General Motors. (The fiber has been in place for well over 10 years - I think they chose to install it in 1988.)
Anyway, not everyone could use the fiber directly, (were there ISA ATM cards?) and while I don't recall the details from the time, there was some sort of dongle+packet translation into Ethernet, which played havoc with the overall network traffic regarless of what kind of machine you brought to the party.
I do remember hearing things had changed a bit (I transfered out to NYU) - and here is a good article that seems to discuss a good bit of Case's IT history.
As an aside, CWRU students do put this to work - Hell, I knew someone who got a RIAA letter in 1997 for ftp serving. Even back then, files on the local SMB network would put many P2P systems to shame. To be fair though, there were many who put it to good and innovative use. And if you ever have to deal with ATM and Linux, CWRULUG (though out of date) would be a good place to start.
At Case, its probably only 50% that have no use for Gig Ethernet - and the other half is very happy to take their share of the bandwidth.
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I am not sure why ATM sucked so bad at CASE but the ATM network deployed at Pearl Harbor works great (155Mbit to the desktop even with 300MHz P2). Tons and tons and tons of fiber all around the base and everything runs great. They even provide a few of the popular cable news network feeds over this ATM network such as FOX, CNN, Bloomber, and I think a few others that I can't recall. The only copper drop that was around was for the analog phones. In fact, even a year ago you would probablly still have a hard time trying to find a cat-5 drop. Keeps people from 'hooking' un-authorized equipment (personal systems) into the network so less chance for an outside contamination. Too bad now they are moving over to ethernet and no more on-demand video. *sigh*
As a student at Case Western Reserve University I can say that the fiber provides nice bandwidth but is a hassle in many other respects. If you have a gigibit copper port on your machine you can get away with the GC102, however if you have 10/100 equipment you are forced to buy a $500 Allied Telesyn 12 Port switch with gigabit uplink. If you were an upper classman and were around when they changed over from the ATM system they provide you with the necessary equipment. The whole system is overkill; fiber is everywhere, even in the library. Which is great if you want to lug a fiber to Ethernet converter or 12 port switch and all the associated cables with you. The ITS department is working to improve this, wireless is available virtually anywhere on campus, however to use any restricted resources you have to use a VPN client (In order to download this client you have to connect your computer to a faceplate, so you cant just be totally wireless). There are new dorms going up as we /. And they are being wired with gigabit copper, so I guess they have seen the folly of their ways. We only get gigabit speeds across campus, our outbound internet connection was 100Mbps for most of the year, but our ISP got tired of giving us bandwidth for free and cut us back to the 44mbps we pay for. When this happened you could actually hear the nerds start crying because this bandwidth is shared between all the dorms, academic, administrative and research buildings. Bottom line: Its may be glamorous but it is an expensive investment to fuel the on-campus porn ring.