Version
2 (4/25/01)
To
advance President Chapman’s objective of making NDSU a Carnegie I institution,
we believe that it is imperative that the university becomes a showcase of state
of the art in networking technology. The following networking visions for NDSU
are guided by this principle:
Vision:
Provide state of the art networking
resources so as to: (a) attract and retain new faculty; (b) make NDSU faculty
nationally competitive; and (c) provide student with access to cutting edge
technology.
·
Develop
and maintain IT and an IT support environment that is secure, stable and
reliable within a dynamic environment.
·
Apply
emergent information technologies that enhance the rigor of academic
programs and advance NDSU in new ways.
Value statement for the selection of technology:
·
The
networking solutions should be positioned to facilitate the convergence of
voice, video, and data integration with the objective of replacing the present
voice infrastructure.
·
The
campus network must provide state of the art security for both local and remote
access.
·
The
campus network should provide easy access to massive data storage (in the order
of terabytes), and high speed data retrieval services.
·
The
hardware and software configuration of the campus network should be designed so
as to provide NDSU faculty with easy access to state of the art parallel
computing capabilities.
·
The
network design must be cost effective.
·
The
expansion, maintenance and upgrade of the hardware components of the network
should be part of the basic campus infrastructure budget. Support and services,
should be provided for a fee.
Technologies:
· Continue the process of converting the campus network from shared to switched Ethernet. The campus must also plan for the expense of upgrading the outside wire plant to include single-mode fiber to support higher bandwidths between each building and the network core. In addition, several buildings will require upgrades of their internal wiring to support higher bandwidths. Finally, ITS should continue to monitor progress on the emergence of QoS protocol standards and insure that networking equipment can support those standards.
· NDSU should support and actively participate in the recently announced network security initiative begun at the university system level. As appropriate, NDSU should begin its own initiative to identify security threats and solutions resulting in a security program and policy. Campus administration support for policies and funding to implement a security program is required as well. Technologies should also be adopted to reduce excessive network bandwidth use by non-academic programs/processes.
· The new switched network and gigabit backbone in the IACC building is a major step toward providing NDSU faculty with access to state of the art parallel computing capabilities. Investing in additional nodes for the existing Beowulf clusters should be a significant priority in order to increase both parallel computing and data storing resources.
Vision: Enhance our
ability to provide internet-based distant education and the ability to
collaborate in course offerings among NDUS campuses.
·
Apply
information technologies to remove circumstance and location barriers to
academic participation, degree completion and student success.
Value statement for the selection of technology:
·
Provide
multicasting capabilities in all of the computer clusters.
·
The NDSU
ITS should work with the Chancellor’s office and other state campuses so a
similar capability is developed across the ND University System.
Technologies:
· NDSU now natively supports multicast via its Internet2 service. Firmware upgrades to the new core network switch will allow ITS to extend this service to the entire campus by the end of this calendar year. Applications which take advantage of multicast should be identified and deployed in campus computer clusters within the next 2 years.