Smith College network lets students, staff communicate everywhere

Communications News, Nov, 1991

It used to be that college students and staff did their library research in a library. But now a campus-wide computer network with inter-campus links allows card catalog searches at Smith College to be completed from the comfort of dormitory rooms and offices.

The network will even let astronomers at the Northampton, Mass., campus view stellar emissions through telescopes located anywhere in North America.

In past decades, mainframe-based systems proliferated in colleges because they were the only way to provide the communications capabilities required for interdepartmental activities.

Today, many colleges and universities realize that to streamline both intra-campus and inter-campus communications, and to support the novel applications staff and students require, networks need to be upgraded to provide access via personal computers and workstations now preferred to the dumb terminals.

The difficulty of administering their dumb terminal-based system is another reason Smith College installed a campus-wide, flexibly-architected network that can accommodate virtually any kind of terminal or peripheral.

"Historically, academic computing depended on a DEC VAX computer and dumb terminals individually wired to it with RS232 cables," says Lynn Goodhue, Smith's director of systems and network services, information systems division.

Unfortunately, to reach remote buildings required long cable runs, and whenever there was an electrical storm, lightning-induced power surges caused system failures. In addition, adding terminals was a nightmare because of the expense and logistics associated with cabling individual terminals.

The mainframe-based system architecture did not provide internetworking capabilities for PC and engineering workstation-based LANs that various departments wanted to implement."

Smith saw the opportunity to implement a network eight years ago when installing a new telephone system. They ran a broadband coaxial cable to each of 36 campus buildings along with the twisted pair required for the telephone system.

Networking equipment from Ungermann-Bass, Santa Clara, Calif., was installed in each building to provide an easy way to link terminals to the network.

Rather than hard-wiring individual terminals to a mainframe as in the earlier network, any kind of terminal can now be wired to these local network interface units using an extra pair of telephone wires; three pairs of telephone wires were run to each faculty and administrative office when the new telephone system was installed.

Any terminal linked to the network this way can have access to all other terminals, hosts, and servers similarly attached.

"In new buildings," Goodhue adds, "offices have been wired with four sets of four-pari telephone wire and we have installed two dual outlets, each of which offers a voice and data jack. In these buildings, network access is provided by Access/One smart hub enclosures. These units contain plug-in cards which consolidate all communications modules for the entire network in existing telephone wiring closets."

Smith's campus-wide network currently includes 168 Network Interface Units and Access/One smart hubs--all running TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). They link several hundred terminals dispersed throughout the campus to four DEC Micro VAX 3100s, a DEC VAX 6420, 12 Sun workstations, and 15 departmental LANs using 386 servers.

"Since the network operates under TCP/IP," Goodhue says, "any terminal connected to any smart hub can access any of our TCP hosts. Furthermore, through centralized modems, the network is also linked to common carriers; a T1 link to the Internet nationwide network provides access to virtually every other college campus in the country."

"This enables staff here to perform joint research with professors at other campuses and to access remote computer-based facilities," she continues.

"For example, through our network and Internet, our astronomy department can gain access to remote telescopes and receive data downloads online in real time. This is a stellar example of how networks can help colleges trim research costs, since the remote facility is accessed with no travel overhead."

Another interesting application being run on Smith's network provides access to a five-college computerized library card catalog system. The system stores--on two Data General computers--all library holdings for Smith as well as Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, and the University of Massachusetts, Hampshire College, and Amherst College, all located in Amherst.

Each campus on the system is allocated a number of access ports and Smith has set aside a number of these for network-wide public access. The remainder are dedicated for library access only.

"This system enables staff and students to find out where in the five-college system the library resources they require are located, and to determine if those resources are currently available in the stacks," Goodhue explains. "The system may also some day allow users to initiate inter-library loan requests so that the materials they require can be sent to their local campus library."