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Harvard Offers Sneak Peek Into Their Network
Bob Brown writes "Harvard University doesn't usually talk much about its internal network, but here, the guy overseeing it opens up about the homegrown and commercial tools used to manage the massive system." From the article: "Harvard, as of late, has been exhibiting another telco trait - considering the network as part of the university's critical infrastructure. As such, its construction is considered during the initial planning phases of building renovation, new construction and campus expansion projects. The data networks that are being built today, at Harvard and similar institutions, are being built to host a variety of IP-based traffic. Most every physical-plant control device, whether it be security cameras, chilled water-valve actuators or parking garage card readers, are being designed to work with the IP network"
Wait till MIT hears about it !! :P
I'd like to work in that size of environment.
*sigh*
[goes back to fixing another spyware ridden windows box]
All that, and they still don't know how to set up DNS properly.
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$ host harvard.edu
harvard.edu A record currently not present
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I notified them about this months ago, but they didn't seem to care. Most web browsers automatically try the "www" prefix when you type, say, "harvard.edu" into your address bar, so you don't notice this problem generally. However, if you try wget, you can see it fail.
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$ wget harvard.edu
--14:38:45-- http://harvard.edu/
=> `index.html'
Resolving harvard.edu... failed: Host not found.
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Pretty sloppy if you ask me.
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My favorite piece of network technology at Harvard is their system to shut off a student's WiFi network access when they have a scheduled class. :) Been in use for a while now, and it sure cut down on the kids at the back of the class yelling "PWNED YOU!" during a lecture.
Crimson brags about its class B address -- MIT has a class A! And if you look at the physical connection, last I heard the Harvard campus was served by a fiber strung along the MBTA Red Line tunnels -- straight from an MIT router!
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
What's the point of being able to control a cold water valve actuator through the internet? Wiring everything into their internet servers just creates a lot more problems when something goes down.
If a server goes down you would expect that internet access would not work. But now if a server goes down you can't access the internet and you can't get water either. Considering the fact that most networks are poorly configured anyway, the amount of problems that could be generated from something like this far outweigh the ability to actuate a cold water valve through the network,
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I worked for the network and telecommunications department for a smaller university for a few years. Building the infrastructure in place like this is critical. We constantly found ourselves working out awkward solutions to providing access to older buildings. A couple of the buildings are running ethernet over phone wires and served by hubs that are 20 years old because they are the only thing with a strong enough signal for the quality of the wires. Two of the dorms are using Cisco's LRE DSL technology. Locating IDF's when we did major upgrades was a pain in the butt. Sometimes we would spend most of a day adding a couple drops to a single office that needed more space, but rewiring that wing wasn't in the budget. In the long run, the costs add up, as do the frustrations.
In contrast, our newest building is thoroughly wired (with the perplexing and random exception of two small labs that I spent several days running cable to last summer). Even the closets have multiple ports, just in case, and that has been important several times.
Documentation is equally important, and someplace where we currently lag. Currently, what goes where is stored in our heads, and gets lost every time someone leaves. The mix of old and new standards, as well non-standard crap has made the documenting process difficult. Also, it is impossible if there isn't a method in place for ensuring that changes made as documentation is being built up aren't recorded.
Another challenge is correctly anticipating what your future needs are and building in expandability. Our athletic center was built right before the networking became standard, and while it has plenty of phone lines, the distance is too far to run ethernet in some cases, and the routing makes spot-upgrades close to impossible.
huh, interesting. i take the t every day between harvard and central and i've always thought, as i stand in the car... looking at those bundles of cables, "what if i chopped through them?"
so... if that is right... i could, theoritcally, break the intarweb for all of harvard?
oh, did i just say that outloud? i mean come on! what do you think when you see large bundles of cable?
sad robot making broken music
so... if that is right... i could, theoritcally, break the intarweb for all of harvard? +5 Interesting? Only on slashdot.
It used to be a microwave link to MIT. When whether was bad (and remember this is Boston), we had massive packet loss.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
It's not nearly as rosy a picture as is painted in the article. I've been working in IT at Harvard for quite a few years and until recently we've had too small of a budget with priorities on gadgets for VIPs and not regular infrastructure replacement. We're still in the dark ages in many ways.
Those custom apps he brags about? They break, are poorly documented, and we're in fact trying to move away from them as much as possible. Testing of major network changes is so poorly done as to be nonexistant in many cases. And let's not even get into the uptime of critical systems like email and webspace (those have been down for hours at a time, days in a row for week son end).
And those staff numbers? Inflated. We are really short-staffed.
Twice, actually. Once for the design/architecture area. Nice gentelman interviewed me, and I was delighted to see that he was also into printing things. I was bombarded with recruiters at the time.
The other person I interviewed with was an asshole, insulting me in the interview. It was a Solaris shop, and at the time, the guy said that E10Ks were 'small', and that I needed experience with something bigger before I 'wasted any more' of his time. I scratched my head, and wondered what part of Sun's product line he was thinking of.
After repeatedly trying to get the position of someone I *knew* who's slot was now open, I gave up on Harvard, and worked at MIT's media lab as a volunteer. Besides, MIT had more interesting coffee machines, and lots of legos.
Disclaimer: I have only a GED.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.