gogan@samba.acs.unc.edu (Jim Gogan) (07/09/90)
I'd like to know what other campuses are using (and what success they've had) to connect networks at off-campus locations to their campus backbone. Increasingly, as space on campus becomes a greater premium, our university is buying or leasing space around town to house departments and centers. Due to their low need for classroom access, it is the research centers and research-oriented departments (Health Services Research Center, medical school departments, Population Center, etc.) that are being located in these off-campus locations. However, these are also the departments and centers with the greatest needs for computing services and, in many cases, have been some of the campus pioneers in networking. As we move towards a distributed processing and file system environment, we need to include these off-campus locations as well. What approaches are other campuses in similar situations using? How are they working? What have been the costs (direct, indirect, support)? Thanks in advance for any info. -- Jim Gogan (ugogan@unc.bitnet --or-- gogan@samba.acs.unc.edu) Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Office of Data and Video Communications
kwe@bu-it.bu.edu (Kent England) (07/17/90)
In article <525@beguine.UUCP>, gogan@samba.acs.unc.edu (Jim Gogan) writes: > > I'd like to know what other campuses are using (and what > success they've had) to connect networks at off-campus locations > to their campus backbone. Increasingly, as space on campus > becomes a greater premium, our university is buying or leasing > space around town to house departments and centers. Due to > their low need for classroom access, it is the research centers > and research-oriented departments (Health Services Research > Center, medical school departments, Population Center, etc.) > that are being located in these off-campus locations. However, > these are also the departments and centers with the greatest > needs for computing services and, in many cases, have been some > of the campus pioneers in networking. As we move towards a > distributed processing and file system environment, we need to > include these off-campus locations as well. > The low road to dealing with this problem is to buy networking services as the local telephone company sees them today, ie, buy T1s. You will probably have to start this way, since your "distribution process" is already underway. The high road is to create a new LAN/MAN infrastructure in your area. You can deal with the local phone people on MAN issues, deal with a bypass competitor (if there are such in your area), create an opportunity for a new bypass competitor, or work with the local utilities people to gain access to rights of way to build your own distribution system. Feel up to that? Good, it's a two to five year effort, so you better get cracking. :-) Examples of high-roaders that come to my biased mind are: CMU working with Bell of Penn NEARnet and their private, metro Boston Ethernet-on-microwave network. Boston University and New England Telephone There must be many others of which I have no direct knowledge. Kent England, Boston University and NEARnet