Construction on the two year upgrade of the College's campus-wide computer network,from the currently installed LocalTalk to Ethernet, is currently underway.
Installation began on the first phase of upgrades on June 16, in several residence halls on campus including French, Hinman, McLane, Richardson, North Massachusetts, South Massachusetts and Topliff dormitories.
Other dormitories scheduled to be rewired before the end of summer include Hitchcock, Ripley, Smith and Woodward.
"This work is being done in two phases," Computer Services Director of Technical Services Punch Taylor said. "The first phase is putting new wires in the walls of buildings that were originally wired in 1982, 1983 and 1984 and have not been rewired since."
A total of 65 buildings on campus need rewiring, Taylor said. Buildings newly built or renovated within the last five years already have had this new wiring implemented as part of their construction or renovation.
Work will also be beginning soon on upgrading network access in administrative buildings, Taylor said.
"This is not an insignificant amount of effort," Assistant Director of Engineering and Utilities Stephen Mischissin said. "We have to drill holes in floors and run access to buildings to provide wiring."
"Facilities, Operations and Management is helping Kiewit and Computing Services do the project," Mischissin said. "We are involved in making sure the cabling is blended into the building, that raceway [a piece of metal pipe or metal covering that protects the cables] is installed and that any modifications in buildings are done to our standards."
All the wiring in dormitory rooms will be replaced with the new ports and new telephone wiring, Mischissin said.
"It is all being done very neatly and when students move back in the dorms, they won't notice the major construction," he said.
The computers currently used on campus are all Ethernet-ready, Taylor said.
"You may need new wires," Taylor said. "A different port is used for an Ethernet connection."
In addition to the speed boost given by Ethernet wiring, Computing Services is also using another method to boost speed.
"Right now, in most cases, all the people in a building are on the same LocalTalk zone," Taylor said. "That means that they are sharing amongst them the 230 kilobits a second speed of the wire."
This sort of sharing can slow the network down tremendously if many people are logged on at the same time, Taylor said.
"With the new network, each port will run at 10 megabits a second but only 10 to 24 people will share that speed," he said. "It will be a much faster connection with fewer people connected at once."
The same AppleTalk zones will still appear under the Chooser menu, Taylor added.
"This will be invisible divisions," he said.
The second phase of the network upgrade is scheduled to start later this summer, Taylor said.
"This is upgrading the College's underground connections," he said. "This is called the backbone because it is what connects buildings together."
The current speed of the underground cables is inadequate to support the new Ethernet speeds, Taylor said.
"When all buildings run at 10 megabits per second [Ethernet speed] we will need to replace the coaxial cables that currently exist with fiber optic cables," he said. "This is a smaller project than rewiring buildings. We hope to use existing underground conduits."
This installation will not required massive amounts of digging or construction, Mischissin said.
"The roadway ripped up at the River has nothing to do with this data project," he said. "That is the replacement of a steam tunnel. Everything for the data project is already inside."
