The plan to replace two campus mainframes with client/server systems and re-engineer legacy administrative applications by 1997 or 1998 challenges Syracuse today. Other changes include a pilot project that delivers Ethernet services to students' residence hall rooms.
Beyond the dorms, the university is addressing the remote-access needs of faculty, staff and commuter students with more sophisticated and secure services, including multiprotocol, remote-node dial-up systems. In time, new applications requiring higher bandwidth will challenge the university's basic network infrastructure, but Syracuse is ready to move with the market. One recently constructed campus building, for example, is equipped with fiber to the desktop to support FDDI. Syracuse also is partnering with Nynex Corp. to deploy NYNET, a wide-area ATM network.
The Syracuse Network Today
Much of the network is centralized in one building, Machinery Hall, and managed by the university's network systems group. The network is routed through a collapsed Ethernet backbone and fiber hubs, a system designed for manageability and cost-efficiency. More than 100 miles of fiber cabling provide connectivity among 60 buildings, while a uniform wiring plan brings Level 3 or Level 5 unshielded twisted-pair outlets to most campus offices.
In addition to the mainframes, network systems include an IDX 3000 Data PBX, an 800-node Systems Network Architecture (SNA) network, Unix time-sharing servers, SQL database servers, Network File System (NFS) servers running over TCP/IP and Novell servers supporting TCP/IP, IPX and AppleTalk protocols. Scattered across the campus are 14 networked microcomputer laboratory clusters housing Macintoshes, PCs and Unix workstations. Dial-in access is provided through a bank of 80 V.32bis dial-up modems. Academic computing resources are varied and include a new campuswide information system called SyraCWIS.
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