News
High-tech phones and streaming videos to student desktops may soon become reality as Dartmouth finishes the final stage of a multi-year update to its aging computer network.
The College is on the verge of completing a process that started eight years ago to upgrade its technology infrastructure in order to include some of the fastest available network connections.
Attempting the most seamless changeover possible to the new system, a team from Computer Services replaced much of the network hardware over spring break when students were not on campus.
With the upgrades, students using newer network cards -- like those included in recent Macintosh computers -- will be able to connect to the network at a speed of one gigabyte per second.
One gigabyte, equal to 1,000 megabytes, is about the size of 1,500 two-page Word documents or 350 MP3 song files.
Before the changes, students could download files at a theoretical maximum of 100 megabytes per second, though slower transfers were more common.
"You'd be really lucky if you ever got the advertised speed," said Bill Brawley, director of user communications at Computing Services.
Connections to the outside Internet sites will not necessarily be faster, Brawley warned, since other factors such as Internet congestion could limit the speed.
A network of single-mode fiber-optic cable, the same sort of cord that carries the nation's telephone traffic, serves as the basis for the new high-speed connections.
Laid originally in 1995 while other wiring work was underway, the College did not activate the high-speed cable until recently because Computer Services lacked the hardware to use it effectively.
"At the time, the electronics that would be cost-effective and mature enough to work on our network weren't ready," Brawley said.
The very first Dartmouth network was small, but in 1984 the College was one of the first universities to expand its Apple LocalTalk network to every dormitory and office on campus.
