How To Ax Your Lousy Network Replace it With One that Supports Density

“We’re working on it because we understand a non-blocking architecture based on the type of activities students are doing, whether it’s social, entertainment, or learning,” Tilley says. “These are the kinds of things we try to educate early – when you have the blown fiber, it’s absolutely key. We’ve seen this a number of times in different universities like Duquesne where we put in this new world, students come in at the start of the year and say this is great, and within two terms, they’re like, we need to get ready for next year because these things aren’t working. The governing board is then coming back and going, ‘wait, I just paid for this, didn’t I?'”

[Students] want to have that “home” experience wherever they go on campus as well…These are the things we have to educate the governing bodies of these universities to understand, that that is where we’re going, whether you like it or not, and that’s how education has to reflect. You can’t just keep passing the bill off to students because they’re going to go somewhere else.”

Neal Tilley, Business Development Director for Alcatel-Lucent

Since installing the new network, Reinhard says she hasn’t heard any feedback from students – which is a good thing.

“No news is good news, for the most part,” she says. “We’ll hear about it when it isn’t good.”

Here, however, silence isn’t always golden.

Reinhard says her team meets with student organizations to make sure the network is working as it should, and is keeping students happy.

The university also joined Internet2 to assist with traffic routing tactics, and hopped on Carnegie Mellon’s Three Rivers Optical Exchange (3ROX), to “swing over” their commodity internet.

“They’re very higher ed-specific with how they’re managing traffic, so that’s going to be very strategic for us,” Reinhard says. “We’re going to be able to manage our bandwidth better because for the most part, all of these peering agreements they have, we’re going to get a direct route rather than going out and back through commodity internet. They’re right up against it because everything is more or less travelling up the same route. We’re looking to see major improvements there. I think they’re going to start to realize very quickly that these exchanges all together, the wireless, routing, peering and caching are going to make a significant difference in their experience, and that’s what it’s all about.”

Due to the new network’s success, Duquesne’s next endeavor is to implement gaming capabilities on campus.

“Gaming is big,” Reinhard says. “That’s something we haven’t yet been able to provide. That will be the next offering, but everything has to happen in the right order to be able to position us to offer that. We know that [students] want it, and their parents expect them to have the same experience as the one they have at home. That’s a challenge.”