Centerfold

A Smart Network For Alberta's University

by Maureen Zapryluk

In western Canada, the University of Alberta conducts advanced research on an extensive, fiber-connected network. The University of Alberta is prepared for an expected 30,000 students and 6,000 staff to take advantage of the broad educational and technological resources of this academic network.

In September 1994, the University of Alberta completed the two-year installation of a fiber-optic FDDI backbone network. The older network technologies and legacy systems were a bottleneck to the university's plans to develop distributed applications. The network extends more than 50 kilometers to allow access to more than 140 Ethernet and Token-Ring LANs connecting more than 7,000 workstations and peripherals, and links 40 buildings that house 200 University departments. The network depends on more than 75 NetWare servers, several Andrew File System (AFS) servers and three database servers.

Rapid migration of the client base from mainframe to distributed computing occurred simultaneously with the FDDI installation project. There has been a growth of applications and services based on the new client/server paradigm. Becau se of the bandwidth and speed of its campus network, the university is developing electronic forms (using JetForm products) and other mail-enabled applications, as well as World Wide Web services using Netscape browsers. The campuswide information system is based on Gopher. Commercial news feeds that arrive via a ClariNet news service. Essential network applications are e-mail, NetNews, Netscape, Telnet and FTP. A campus workstation "farm" encourages researchers to migrate from centralized statistical and numerical mainframe applications to flexible alternatives housed on network-accessible RS/6000 servers. TCP/IP is the main protocol on the backbone network and the university is investigating support for IP Multicast to allow audio and video over the existing networks.

The University of Alberta has 155-Mbps bandwidth capability, making it a component of an ATM testbed project through the Western Universities Research Consortium Network (WURCnet). It connects with eight other universities at the cost-effective speeds of 45 Mbps to 155 Mbps. The ATM testbed is being used as a 24-hour circuit for distance learning and interactive videoconferencing between the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta. Classes provided include computing, sociology, history and engineering. The university also conducts testing of video services over 10-Mbps shared Ethernet.

The university uses a variety of WAN connections, including spread-spectrum radio, ISDN, dedicated 56 Kbps, Switched56 and 200 regular telephone lines with modems. In most cases, the university manages Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) devices using NetView/6000.

October 15, 1995