Optical extends university LAN: Randy Anderson and Ann Agee selected an Ethernet solution to connect George Mason University's three campuses - Cover Story

Communications News,  Jan, 2003  

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The distributed campus nature of George Mason University (GMU) in Virginia created an interesting challenge for Deputy CIO Ann Agee her network engineers. Each of the school's three campuses, which are separated by 20 miles or more, has a different academic focus. Students and faculty on each campus, however, need to communicate with one another as if they are all located on one site.

The task for Agee's staff involved upgrading data communications between the three campuses in Fairfax, Arlington and Prince William County--all located within the Washington area--with a network that would accommodate an increasing enrollment and new, bandwidth-hungry applications. Of course, costs were a factor but, as importantly, GMU wanted to continue to enhance its collaborative-research and distance-learning capabilities.

"Each site has unique requirements in terms of applications," says Agee, also the university's executive director, division of instructional and technology support service. "At the same time, it is very important to us to maintain a sense of community--maintaining a common environment for students, faculty and staff similar to being located on one large virtual campus."

With a projected growth rate of 4% per year and student enrollment reaching 26,000, GMU is quickly becoming a major educational institution within the United States. This rapid growth created several challenges for the university's network engineers, including quickly increasing the number of network users; accommodating moves, adds and changes; and supporting new applications required for research and distance learning.

"We needed to avoid costs associated with the rapid growth at each of our three campuses, while also being able to accommodate the applications we saw coming," says Randy Anderson, director of network engineering and technology. "Optical Ethernet has allowed us to accommodate this growth while enabling new educational applications."

NEW NETWORK, MORE BANDWIDTH

Recently, GMU deployed a highly scalable optical Ethernet network infrastructure from Nortel Networks, utilizing dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) and providing the university with 50 times more bandwidth than it had previously. This new network, Anderson says, will enable GMU to offer students and faculty many new applications, including video-based programs, Web-based applications and streaming media.

"Having the optical Ethernet network in place is going to allow us to bring resources to all our campuses and attract more students," adds Agee.

The George Mason law school, for example, based in Arlington, is positioned to make use of the many people in the area who are at the forefront of the development of new concepts in law and politics. When hosting special lectures and events, the school plans to use videoconferencing or streaming video to make the lectures available to students at other campuses.

"It's going to be a great resource for us in terms of collaborating and sharing expertise across our campuses," says Agee.

With the optical Ethernet solution, GMU has been able to virtually extend its LAN to all three of its campuses, a key requirement for the distributed university initiative. The network also substantially reduces the duplication of IT resources.

The university's website is loaded with examples of enhanced learning through technology and research--from accessing a newly developed CD-ROM-based textbook on American history to taking a virtual reality walk through the brain. "Technology Across the Curriculum" is a large instructional initiative at George Mason, where the faculty introduces technology into courses designed to help students acquire technology skills.

DISTANCE LEARNING ENABLED

"Technology and technology innovation are key areas of focus at GMU," says Agee. "The optical network is going to allow us to work with faculty in the various instructional programs to create assignments that use certain kinds of technology. With the additional bandwidth, we now only have to develop these courses and programs in one place. We don't have to recreate the programs on other campuses because we can serve them out or make them accessible over the network. It's really important to our sense of the distributed university to have a good balance among our campuses."

The university's counseling center is already utilizing videoconferencing to advise students at other campus locations, since travel between locations can be a challenge in and around the nation's capital. This type of counseling was initially used on a limited basis, but has become increasing popular with the students.

"All of these applications would have been very difficult to accommodate under the old infrastructure, due to network complexities and insufficient bandwidth," says Anderson. "Our new optical Ethernet network gives us the bandwidth scalability and control required to support these increasingly intense applications and make the best use of our resources."

GMU was spending more than $12,000 a month for T-1 and T-3 wide-area and metro-area access between campus sites. g to work within strict annual it needed a to accommodate the expected bandwidth demands without recurring additional costs. In to offset the amount it was paying for the carrier-provided connections with the cost of a fiber lease GMU decided to its own network.