IT plans upgrades to campus-wide network

IT plans upgrades to campus-wide network

With the arrival of the new vice provost for Information Technology, Rice is embarking upon a major Information Technology priority: a campus-wide network architecture and design initiative.

With the goal of making the Rice network “second to none in supporting teaching and research while meeting the needs of our campus-wide community and beyond for years to come,” Kamran Khan, vice provost for Information Technology, said Rice will get to where the university needs to be.

The most essential component is having a first-rate network architecture and ensuring the diverse components come together to create a complete solution, he said. To that end, an Information Technology team will begin an architecture and design phase, during which it will seek input from both inside and outside the hedges.

In June, the team will select and engage a technology consulting firm that will assist Rice in redesigning the network. Also during the month, members of the Rice community will be invited to provide feedback and discuss their networking needs through forums and an online survey.

Khan said the Rice community’s participation in the process will be essential to the success of Rice’s “future ready” network.

The first major initiative to provide a campus-wide network was in fiscal year 1994, giving faculty and staff access to the new World Wide Web, access to online Banner accounts and additional computing capacity for research. Although the campus was wired for the network, there were no Ethernet switches on campus at the time; everyone who was connected to the network in their building was going through the same channel or hub.

“Imagine a crowded room of 250 people all shouting their conversations at once,” explained Glenn Larratt, senior network architect at Rice. “Now imagine those same 250 people and that same room divided into hallways and meeting rooms. Two people in a small room can now talk to each other and have a quiet conversation.” Similarly, sending and receiving information through the network is like having a conversation, and the Ethernet switches provide the hallways and rooms for network traffic. By dividing up the network with switches, the flow of information through the network moves much more quickly.

As Rice expanded the campus network to keep up with the demands of the user community, the network grew more and more fragmented. The original network was designed to move information for several hundred 1994-style computers. Today, 13,000 computers connect to the Rice network on a daily basis. While the number of computers has increased and the computers have become more sophisticated, the network has not matured with the same speed. Traffic capacity and equipment aging are the primary causes of stress on the network and switches.

“In the mid-1990s, Rice primarily used the Web for e-mail,” said Long Pham, assistant director for networking. “Today, users go online to get e-mail, reallocate expenses, register for benefits, register for classes, apply for student employment, complete research and course work, download video clips for class assignments and keep up with current events in their field.”

William Deigaard, director of educational technology and networking infrastructure, said, “Ultimately, the true purpose of a campus data network is to foster collaboration and support the exchange of information among and between faculty, students and staff. Much of this communication is internal to Rice, but the interconnections to outside networks are essential to the collaborations and partnerships that Rice forms with other institutions and faculty.”

Recognizing this, Rice participates in many high-performance networking activities, including Internet2, the LoneStar Education and Research Network (LEARN) as well as the future National Lambda Rail (NLR) connection. In order to realize the full potential of these opportunities, Rice’s campus network must be significantly improved, Deigaard said.

For more information on this project, visit <www.rice.edu/IT/network/newnet> or contact Pham at <lhpham@rice.edu> or 713-349-4988.