Meeting the Goals of Internet2: Where We Stand at SIUC (November 1999)
Drafted by David Blakesley, Department of English and Communication Across the Curriculum
Southern Illinois University Carbondale is a student-centered, research university serving the people of Illinois. As such, SIUC plays a pivotal role in the economic and educational superstructure of the Southern Illinois region. To meet our commitment to our students and faculty, to the region, and to the State of Illinois, SIUC should also serve as a boarding station for Internet2, which will extend the Internet's capacity to breakdown geographical boundaries and encourage collaboration among education, industry, and government. To this end, this document establishes our current status with regard to meeting the goals of the Internet2 project.
Campus Area Network Overview
SIUnet is a multi-tiered network with campus backbones, building backbones, and horizontal wire connected by electronics and serves departmental logical LANs. The campus backbone consists of 21 major buildings connected with fiber optic cable. Cisco routers provide the electronics for FDDI between them. An additional 59 locations are currently linked into the network using either serial connections via T1 circuits or by fiber extensions from an existing network building. These 80 buildings form the current core of the campus network. The building backbones in most cases consist of a 16M Token Ring that connects all wiring closets within a specific building. Token ring bridges and Cisco routers are used in floor closets to provide connection of the various departmental networks to the building backbone. The departmental network topology is the choice of the department as long as it is either 4M or 16M Token Ring, 10M Ethernet (10BaseT), or 100M Ethernet (100BaseT).
The primary computing facilities on campus are housed in Wham building. The University's' mainframe computer, Internet access, and approximately 30 servers are located there. These devices are divided between a 4mbps token ring, a 16mbps token ring, 10M Ethernet, 100M Ethernet and a 100mbps FDDI. The network management facility in use is Netview 6000. It is used to monitor all IP routers on campus and with the LNM component it also monitors bridges. Netview also collects data for statistical analysis. All of the buildings not currently wired for fiber optic service should be completed by 2003. Internet access should be available in all classrooms by the same date.
SIUC's primary pipeline to the Internet is through 20M circuit (or circuits), which handles all Illinois State Board of Education traffic from Southern Illinois, including all of the area school districts and SIUC. SIUC's contract is for the equivalent of 4 T1 circuits (a T1 circuit being 1.54M) or 6.6M. The circuit is not restricted to 6.6M so our usage may sometimes peak at more than 6.6M. We average about 7M during prime hours. Currently, infrastructure is in place (routers and switches) to allow for Internet 2 connectivity in the Student Center, Trueblood and Lindegren Halls, Morris Library, and the Communication Building. Quigley Hall and the Wham Building have 100 MB capability to the desktop. We also have high-speed routers and links to the campus network, connecting Trueblood Hall and the Communication, Engineering, and Wham buildings.
Participation/Formation of a Gigapop
SIUC is not presently attached to a Gigapop and thus a major goal during the first year of UCAID membership will be to begin the process of forming such a partnership while drawing on the support of the Illinois Century Network, an Illinois Board of Higher Education initiative to provide broadband connectivity throughout Illinois. At the moment, three opportunities avail themselves.
One is STAR TAP (Science, Technology, And Research Transit Access Point). Physically, STAR TAP connects with the Ameritech Network Access Point (NAP) in Chicago, as does the vBNS and other high-speed research networks. It enables traffic to flow to international collaborators from over 100 U.S. leading-edge research universities and supercomputer centers that are now, or will be, attached to the vBNS or other high-performance U.S. research networks. Abilene, an Internet2 backbone network, interconnects at the STAR TAP with the networks of several advanced Internet Research and Education organizations with whom Internet2 collaborates.
The Metropolitan Research and Education Network (MREN) is one of the world's most advanced high-performance broadband networks and consists of a consortium of research institutions throughout the Midwest, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which would be SIUC's nearest connection point. UIUC is also a member of Internet2 and STAR TAP. MREN accepts new members provided certain networking preconditions are met.
The other opportunity for participation in a Gigapop is via the University of Missouri-St. Louis, which is the nearest Internet2 partner. Further information about the prospect of interconnecting with a Gigapop in the St. Louis area needs to be collected.
Development of Advanced Applications
The hub for future development of advanced applications on the SIUC campus will likely be the Regional Center for Distance Learning and Multimedia Development. The Regional Center, in cooperation with Instructional Support Services (ISS) and housed in Morris Library, provides training and facilities for teaching faculty who wish to develop multimedia products for distance learning, classroom, and individualized use. The Regional Center is a shared resource of the Southern Illinois Collegiate Common Market (SICCM) and the Southwestern Illinois Higher Education Consortium (SIHEC). Multimedia and instructional technology are a focus of the Regional Center and ISS activities. Training concentrates on assisting teaching faculty in adapting specific curriculum to technology and the unique aspects of interactive video (distance learning) classrooms. Considerable interest has been generated for training in distance learning applications of multimedia and emerging technologies. With the Regional Center and ISS, the Communication Across the Curriculum Program will also be heavily vested in enabling opportunities for new teaching and learning technologies.
Across campus, faculty have indicated strong interest in developing applications that would take advantage of high-speed connectivity. The following list is a snapshot of current and future needs:
- The College of Agriculture needs to develop networking solutions and applications for making best use of GIS (Geographical Information Systems)
- The College of Applied Sciences and Arts has immediate need for the following: improved access to telemedicine applications; sharability of information and instructional resources in its many off-campus programs; streaming audio, video, and animation in all of CASA's programs; remote control via the Internet of various manufacturing functions; technology to support delivery of online courses, including one addressing the challenges of administering Internet services in industry and education; and the ability to take advantage of a new Tegrity system, which requires high bandwidth for full utilization
- The College of Business and Administration needs to continue and further develop research and teaching in state-of-the-art eBusiness applications, which require streaming video and audio, visual and graphical simulation, and other collaborative technologies. CoBA is or will soon deliver MBA programs in Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as in the Chicago area.
- The College of Education currently provides ongoing professional development via the Internet for teachers throughout the region. For example, "Blazing Learning Trails" is a Federal Technology Innovation Grant Project that builds the capacity of Illinois Educators by implementing a 3-tiered, 3-strand professional development model in order to establish student-centered, technology-enriched environments that improve student performance and economic viability.
- The College of Engineering's Department of Technology has earned an NSF grant for promoting advanced technological education throughout Southern Illinois and and improving articulation between High School, Community College, and University studies. High-speed connectivity would improve this effort to disseminate learning about the composite manufacturing used in high-tech industries.
- The College of Liberal Arts has numerous programs that require advanced Internet applications in web design and production; that need the infrastructure allowing for cross-disciplinary and multimedia research and instruction, which has intra-institutional as well as K-12 and regional business applications; and that make use of conferencing and collaboration software to improve electronic communication across the disciplines and throughout business, industry, and government. The Center of Archeological Investigations, Geography, and Administration of Justice presently need high-speed connectivity.
- The College of Science has numerous research and teaching programs that would benefit from high-speed connectivity, including Computer Science and its faculty, who provide focus for the use of advanced Internet applications.
- Last Modified: 25 November 1999--DB