IT nears completion of the single-largest technology upgrade in Rice

Wired for success
IT nears completion of the single-largest technology upgrade in Rice’s 94-year history

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

The blur of activity that surrounds Information Technology’s William Deigaard these days brings to mind the old saying, ”Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”

Deigaard ’92, director of networking, telecommunications and data center operations, is overseeing the single-largest technology upgrade in Rice’s 94-year history: a complete $22 million update of the entire campus network infrastructure that includes network equipment, network wiring, data storage and backup, numerous servers, security enhancements and a much-needed physical renovation of IT data closets.

When completed, RiceNet2 will encompass a mind-boggling 1,400 miles of wire strung between 40,000 data ports in virtually every room and office on campus.

”Our goal is to have the campus buildings wired by Jan. 31,” Deigaard said. ”Considering the scope of this project, it’s amazing to see what we’ve accomplished in the past 18 months.”

As of Dec. 1, 44 of the 61 buildings on campus have been rewired, with work currently taking place in another 12. This past summer, all but one of the residential colleges were re-cabled. Baker College, which was heavily occupied last year, will be re-cabled in the summer of 2007. Most of the work in other campus buildings has occurred at night and on the weekends to minimize staff inconvenience.

The payoff for the massive refit will be more than just lightning-fast Web page downloads.

”Reliability, security and quality of service are the big drivers for this,” said Kamran Khan, vice provost for information technology. ”Strategically, building this cyberinfrastructure to support teaching, learning and research for the next decade is pivotal in aligning with Rice’s Vision for the Second Century.”

Khan and Deigaard said the advantages of a complete rebuild will accrue to everyone at Rice.

Nearly all users — staff, faculty students and visitors — will find the network easier to use. For starters, the way computers are addressed, or located, on the network will be fundamentally different. With wireless networks planned in most of the common spaces on campus, the new network will no longer rely on fixed numeric addresses for every computer on campus. Instead, it will parcel out addresses on an as-needed basis, as users log on and log off. The upshot is that users won’t need to call the help desk for an address or get an IT desktop support staff member to configure their computers — even if they buy a brand new one. All users should have to do is plug the computer into the wall and log on to the network.

Another advantage will be added security. RiceNet2 verifies that every computer that tries to connect to it is properly configured for antivirus and operating-system updates. Deigaard said that should prevent the types of malicious outbreaks that have sometimes idled

computers across campus.

Deigaard said another failing of the old network was just that — failures. When a key data router or another piece of hardware crashed, all too often it took a large chunk of the network with it. That shouldn’t happen at all anymore because the new network has redundant connections and hardware throughout.

The design is already proving itself in day-to-day use.

”We haven’t had to go to the residential colleges to resolve any network outages all semester long, and normally we’d have something to fix in one of them every week,” Deigaard said.

Deigaard joined Rice’s IT staff in the early ’90s, when most people did only one thing online — send e-mail. Fast-forward to 2005, and with some network infrastructure still in place from early ’90s, Rice was struggling to provide high-quality network services to some 13,000 daily users, including dozens of Rice staffers who stay logged on to Banner all day, every day; resident students who communicate with family and friends via Web-based phones and cameras; faculty who publish entire textbooks and courses online; students and faculty who access scholarly literature, music, film and new media online; and  faculty who run simulations and programs on the world’s most powerful supercomputers — be they on campus or in another state.

”The purpose of a campus data network is to allow people to work together, collaborate and share information,” Deigaard said. ”A lot of this communication is internal to Rice, but the campus’s connections to outside networks are essential to the partnerships Rice forms with other institutions and faculty.”

As a director of the board of the Lonestar Educational and Research Network (LEARN) and the chair of the Southeast Texas Gigapop, Khan said, ”I can clearly see how much Rice benefits from its location in Houston and the aggregation of network services. These opportunities are good for research and keep Rice at the forefront of national networks while keeping our costs down.”

Deigaard said RiceNet2 came along at an opportune time with regard to external networking, because Rice is a member of several network projects that are also in the midst of upgrades or technology rollouts. These include Internet2, the LoneStar Education and Research Network, and National Lambda Rail.

”By virtue of fortunate timing and careful planning, we’re going to be among the handful of institutions nationwide that can really make the most of these high-bandwidth network infrastructures,” Deigaard said.