Campus Network
Overview

Like most campuses, the University of Georgia deployed "first generation", shared media networking technologies (including shared Ethernet, Token Ring and LocalTalk within buildings and token passing bus technologies over CATV broadband coaxial cabling for the backbone) from 1989 to 1996. A "second generation" ATM switched networking fabric over fiber optic cabling was deployed for the campus backbone (along with switched Ethernet within buildings) from 1996 to 2001, and a “third generation” Gigabit Ethernet backbone was deployed from September 2001 to April 2002 connecting 135 buildings, with 23 buildings remaining on the venerable broadband backbone. The total number of attached devices on campus is estimated to exceed 26,000. Network connectivity appears to be pervasive with the level of workstation network attachment in most units typically exceeding 95 percent.

The existence of multiple servers within departments is commonplace. The dominant functions these systems support are file and printer sharing (including limited application program sharing), World Wide Web (WWW) hosting, electronic mail services, and FTP/Telnet support. The most common network file server operating environments appear to be Novell Netware, Windows NT/2000 and some flavor of UNIX. The dominant UNIX network server host systems are Linux workstations followed by Sun, SGI and IBM RS6000 servers.

Four network cabling technologies are commonly in use. These are "thick", "thin", "Cat 5E twisted-pair copper" and “single- and multi-mode fiber optic” Ethernet wiring plants. This distribution of wiring technologies reflects the transitions in wiring technologies that have occurred since networking services were first deployed on the campus beginning approximately thirteen years ago. In this regard, all new or replacement building wiring implemented in the past several years has been Category 5E copper wire pairs to connect devices to wiring closets and single- and multi-mode fiber optic cabling between wiring closets and for the campus backbone. The dominant physical layer access protocol in LAN environments is Ethernet, although some limited use of Token Ring signaling is in use.

Physical connectivity is provided to 23 buildings on campus via a broadband coaxial cable trunk system for which the "head-end" is located in the Boyd Graduate Studies Building. This system consists of 7 separate legs (segments) serving distinct geographical regions of the campus. Physical layer networking services are provided on the trunk segments using the MAP (Manufacturing Application Protocol). Each campus broadband trunk segment supports three shared 10 Mbps MAP channels. Bridged connection of the trunk MAP channels to building Ethernet segments is provided through Hughes LAN bridges. The multiple campus trunk channels are combined into a common networking addressing space using a high performance CISCO router located at the head-end.

Connectivity for the vast majority of buildings consists of a 1000BaseLX (Gigabit) single-mode fiber connection to one of sixteen building core locations, each containing a Foundry BigIron “layer-three” switch. The Foundry core switches are interconnected in a meshed topology, with three to five connections from a core switch. Logical host addressing and transport management services for inter-networking across the campus backbones are provided by the TCP/IP protocols. IP packet routing is provided centrally. Wide area connectivity is provided by PeachNet which provides both commodity Internet 1 as well as.Internet 2 (I2) services for research and education between I2 members and sponsored entities.