THE CENTERFOLD

Princeton University's Big Network On Campus

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What is older than the United States and has a fiber optic network? Itis Princeton University, which celebrates its 250th anniversary next year,and has installed an FDDI network in its 140 b uildings, including the originalNassau Hall. Last summer, Princeton completed implementation of a fiberoptic network,

replacing a seven-year-old broadband (CATV) system on Tigernet, the campuswidenetwork. The hybrid result is a fiber network for academic and administrativefunctions, and Dormnet, a broadband dormitory network, serving an undergraduatepopulation of 4,500 students. These two networks encompass 7,000 Ethernetconnections. The broadband network still exists because "products weren'tavailable to upgrade our broadband to," explains Peter Olenick, managerof networking. "There are no manufacturers that make equipment thatgoes above 10 Mbps. We installed a fiber plant to meet the requirementsof capacity greater than 10 Mbps." This summer the dorms' broadbandbackbone will be replaced with fiber.

Public cluster s of Macs, PCs, Silicon Graphics IRISes, Sun workstationsand X terminals are available throughout the campus. Dormnet is an extensionof this service, bringing Et hernet into the dorm room to 2,300 subscribers.For $50 a year, students get an Internet connection with Dormnet. Dormnethas its own Class B IP address space, which is routed to the campus' secondClass B IP address space, routed to the Internet. Global Enterprise Systems(GES), the manager of JVNCnet, provides Internet service. JVNCnet, namedfor John Von Neumann, a computer scientist at Princeton, was part of thesupercomputing initiative funded by the National Science Foundation. JVNCnetthen became GES. Private T1 links connect with the Energy Services Networkand Chicago's Fermi Lab for scientific research projects.

The campus' 140 buildings are connected by fiber to hub sites that connectwith 87 Prospect, the computer center. Fine Hall, the math building, isan 11-story tower with a microwave dish providing connectivity to the Forrestalresearch campus, separated by a highway and lake. Buildings with low orhigh density of connections are being moved onto virtual LANs. Virtual LANsupport is provided by Wh ittaker. Interconnection of different LAN technologiesis achieved using a Cisco 7010 router, which will be upgraded to a 7500this summer to handle new 100-Mbps service. Ethernet-to-broadband bridgesare being replaced with Ethernet-to-ATM switches. "We're removing thebottleneck of Ethernet and building a network that is tiered in speed,"says Olenick. "Hopefully, once ATM technology matures, we will providea single tap at the desktop over fiber that provides video, voice and data.Our goal is to provide the best Ethernet service for the campus until wemake a cost-effective transition to ATM."



April 15, 1996