Progress Report

In May 2007, CITES published a progress report detailing its progress at the halfway point of the five-year Campus Network Upgrade Project, the ambitious five-year, $20-million initiative to upgrade the network in more than 260 campus buildings with the latest in state-of-art data networking technology.

Download the pdf here (576 KB) or read the executive summary below.

Executive summary

CITES is currently just over three years into the project, an ambitious five-year, $20-million initiative that began in late 2004 to upgrade more than 260 campus buildings with the latest in state-of-art data networking technology. In the majority of buildings on campus, most data cabling has not been updated in more than 20 years. Much has changed in networking technology in the intervening two decades, including computer and network usage on campus. In order to meet the increased demand, CITES staff, in cooperation with academic units, academic advisory groups, and Facilities and Services (F&S), is now in the process of upgrading the campus network to meet the current needs of the University and to plant the seeds for future growth.

Work continues today so that by 2010 every building on campus will be equipped with a data network that will be orders of magnitude faster, more reliable and secure than pre-2004 campus levels, while also being scalable to meet the changing needs of the campus community networking technology and evolving networking technology.

100 Mbps to the Desktop of Every Computer on Campus

UIUCnet, the campus data network, has become an essential component of everyday life at Illinois. UIUCnet is a resource that virtually everyone on campus—students, faculty, staff—has come to depend on for carrying out the University’s mission of education, research, economic development, and public engagement. Because the campus network has become so critical to the day-to-day functioning of the University, one of the goals of the Campus Network Upgrade Project is to bring 100 Mbps connectivity to every computer desktop on campus connected to a UIUCnet jack.

Why is this increase in bandwidth so important for campus connectivity? Well, do you remember that old 56k dial-up modem so prevalent a decade ago? The time to download a 50-megabyte file (for example, podcasts of a professor’s lectures; a multimedia presentation; a large research project with data, pictures, and charts; an advertising project with photo illustrations) over dial-up would be anywhere from 5 to 10 hours. With 100 Mbps connectivity, that same transfer could be completed in a matter of seconds.

Why upgrade the campus network?

Some of the benefits of the new network include:

Staying Competitive: An upgraded network guarantees that Illinois’s networking capabilities are ready for the demands of a world-class public research university.

Higher Quality: The improved connectivity allows for innovative methods of online teaching, learning, and scholarship.

More Information, Faster: Large files of data can move seamlessly from building-to-building on campus, to databases off-campus, and beyond to peer universities and research institutions. Transfers that once took hours can be completed in minutes or seconds.

Ready for Tomorrow: CITES has built scalability into the current network upgrade to stay ahead of the technological curve.

Project Goals

Security and Reliability

Since the project began, network reliability has been 99-plus percent. Thanks to the upgrade, the network is now more secure and less vulnerable to threats and malicious attacks.

For students, faculty, and staff members at the University, a modern, reliable network will result in:

For researchers at the University:

Blanket UIUCnet Wireless Coverage

Another goal of the Campus Network Upgrade Project is to provide UIUCnet Wireless access to all interior public spaces on the Urbana campus. By the end of 2006, UIUCnet wireless coverage had expanded to more than 60 percent of classrooms and labs on campus.

When the upgrade is complete, 100 percent of all “public space” in campus buildings will be covered by UIUCnet Wireless.

With blanket UIUCnet wireless coverage in all public spaces on campus, students (over 70 percent of whom own a laptop computer) will be able to take their network connection with them—to the Undergraduate Library, the Illini Union, or Foellinger Auditorium—and still be fully connected to UIUCnet. Faculty and staff will be able to communicate with students and each other without being tethered to an Ethernet jack.

Between classes, students can check their email, perform research on the Web, and prepare assignments. A wireless connection provides full access to all UIUCnet resources, including CITES Express Email, CITES NetFiles, and Illinois Compass. Through our licensed Virtual Private Network (VPN) system, they’ll be able to stay connected with full access to university resources wherever they are—off-campus, at home, out of state, even out of the country.

Preparing for Tomorrow

Upgrading the network is a necessary prerequisite to prepare both for the future growth of the University and the upcoming convergence of voice and data communications. By building scalability into the project, CITES is helping the campus stay ahead of the technological curve.

Initiatives and technologies that would not have been possible before the project began—VoIP, remote storage and backup (critical for successful disaster and business continuity planning), high-definition videoconferencing, and multicast machine imaging, for example—are now all viable options for the University thanks to advances in networking capability brought about by the Campus Network Upgrade Project.

Since 1998, data traffic on the University network has increased by 450 percent; since 2002, almost 200 percent. Network bandwidth usage at the University has grown (and continues to grow) at an exponential rate. Over the course of the next 10 years, CITES conservatively projects network usage to increase by at least 10 percent per year, which makes upgrading the campus network that much more urgent and necessary.

By the numbers

The first two years of the Campus Network Upgrade Project, by the numbers:

Campus Network Upgrade Project