Residence Halls on the Campus Network

by

Mike Miller

Work continues on connecting the residence halls to the campus network. To date West, McVey, Selke, Bek, Swanson, and the Conference Center have active network connections in each room. Brannon will be the next hall to be completed. This brings the total active room connections to 2075. Even though the other halls are not entirely activated, there is adequate equipment to provide for all requested rooms this coming year.

The Computer Center has invested over $150,000 in equipment costs to connect the residence halls to the campus network and provide high-speed access for the students. Residence hall networks are built around the campus ATM backbone with each hall connected to the backbone through a 100 megabit Ethernet switch via fiber optic wire, while 10 megabit shared media Ethernet hubs then connect each of the rooms. The network is designed so that a maximum of 48 shared media ports utilize one 10 megabit switched port. This design minimizes congestion (collisions) while maximizing efficiency. For students using the residence hall network, up to a 250-fold increase in speed for compressed binary files and higher speeds for uncompressed text files can be realized compared to a 33.6k modem.

By connecting residence halls to the campus network students have access to resources normally available only in lab environments. Internet and library resources are now available to students in their dorm rooms.