Rice's New Network Project

For updated information about this project, see the Rice Network Infrastructure Project site.

What is a Network?

A network is a channel through which information flows; a channel --or connection-- is required to access the Internet, send and receive e-mail, connect to Banner, etc. The more information (or traffic) that flows through the channel, the more congested the traffic becomes.

Don't we already have a network?

The first major initiative to provide a campus-wide network was in Fiscal Year '94, a time still referred to by Information Technology (IT) staff as the "Year of the Network." That implementation was driven by an increased number of centralized issues. Faculty and staff requested access to the new World Wide Web, access to their on-line Banner accounts and additional computing capacity for their research. Although the campus was wired for the network, there was not even one Ethernet switch on campus at the time; everyone who was connected to their building network was going through the same channel or hub.

What happened to it?

"Imagine a crowded room of 250 people all shouting their conversations at once," explains Glenn Larratt, Senior Network Architect. "Now imagine those same 250 people and that same room divided into hallways and meeting rooms. Two people in a small room can now talk to each other and have a quiet conversation." In the same way, switches provide the hallways and rooms for network traffic. Sending and receiving information through the network is like having a conversation. By dividing up the room, the conversation between two people moves much more quickly. By dividing up the network with switches, the flow of information through the network moves much more quickly.

As Rice expanded the campus network to keep up with the demands of the user community, the network grew more and more fragmented. The network was stretched beyond its original usage intent, while bandwidth demand has grown exponentially. The original network was designed to move information for several hundred 1994-style computers. Today, 13,000 computers connect to the Rice network on a daily basis. Although the number of Rice computers increased and the computers grew more sophisticated through the years, the initial network could not mature with the same speed. Traffic capacity and equipment aging are the primary causes of stress upon the network and switches.

Too much water flowing through old pipes

Capacity means the amount of information that is moved through the network. If the network is like a water pipe, then the amount of water that can flow through the pipe is the pipe's capacity. Homes built at the turn of the century did not have as high a demand for water usage as current homes. With the increased number of showers, tubs and toilets in each home, plus dishwashers and clothes washers, the demand for water in the home has increased. If the house was remodeled through the years to add these features but the plumbing was never replaced, the capacity would be much greater than the pipes could transport. Similarly, Rice's demand for more Internet capacity has grown in the last decade.

I don't use the Web, do I need the network?

Although many people don't think they are using the Internet for their day-to-day activities, their routine job functions actually keep the network busy with activity. "In the mid-1990's, Rice primarily used the Web for e-mail," said Long Pham, Assistant Director of Networking. "Today, users go online to get e-mail, reallocate expenses, register for benefits, register for classes, apply for student employment, complete research and course work, download video clips for class assignments, keep up with current events in their field, and much more."

William Deigaard, Director of Educational Technology and Networking Infrastructure said, "Ultimately, the true purpose of a campus data network is to foster collaboration and support the exchange of information among and between faculty, students, and staff. Much of this communication is internal to Rice, but the interconnections to outside networks are essential to the collaborations and partnerships that Rice forms with other institutions and faculty." Recognizing this, Rice participates in many high-performance networking activities including Internet2, the LoneStar Education and Research Network (LEARN) as well as the future National Lambda Rail (NLR) connection. In order to realize the full potential of these opportunities, Rice's campus network must be significantly improved.