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Backbone

UCInet Backbone Upgrade Complete

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As part of an ongoing effort to keep UCInet up to date and able to meet the research and instructional needs of the campus, NACS is pleased to announce the completion of the network backbone upgrade.

The upgrade consisted of replacing and configuring the routers in the four core sites as well as upgrading UCI’s border router. Collectively UCI now enjoys a 10 gigabit (10 billion bits per second) redundantly connected backbone core, including two 10-gigabit connections to the border router and two to the Calit2 building.

Some schools such as Engineering, ICS, Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, and parts of the College of Medicine, already have Gigabit Ethernet (1 billion bits per second) connections to the backbone and will see an immediate speed boost in some applications.

The next network upgrade project will focus on the “distribution layer” which will allow many of the remaining buildings at UCI to take advantage of the high-performance network backbone. In addition to the increase in network transfer speeds, NACS looks forward to helping the campus use this new architecture for future network protocols and applications.

After the current distribution layer upgrade is complete, there will still be UCI building network equipment and cabling that requires upgrade over coming years. NACS will work with the administration to determine a funding source and timeline for these projects.

Backbone Upgrade

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NACS completed the implementation of a new campus network backbone in September when the last UCI buildings were switched to it from the old backbone. The new, Gigabit, fault-tolerant backbone core connects UCI’s approximately 350 Local Area Networks (LANs), and provides the underpinnings required for further improvement of performance on these LANs. The most immediate effect of the backbone upgrade is an improvement in building-to-building communication and centralized server performance. Campus services such as DCSlib, EEE, E4E and the campus Web server are now on “fat pipes” to the new backbone.

At a cost of slightly under $1.5 million, the project — completed within budget and on time — brings the campus network:

  • at least a ten-fold improvement in backbone bandwidth with the capacity to support growing campus network demands;
  • a more robust and maintainable backbone;
  • the flexibility to upgrade building-to-building communications to gigabit speeds;
  • additional fiber around the campus to support new growth;
  • the ability to run newer versions of network software;
  • Y2K compliance.

NACS continues to make progress on “network edge upgrades” for departmental networks, which are facilitated by the new backbone. The design and planning stage of the School of Engineering network upgrade is now complete, and we will soon be starting to plan the upgrade in the school of Biological Sciences.

New UCInet Backbone

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The implementation of UCI’s new network backbone began in January and is proceeding on schedule. The Gigabit Ethernet, fault-tolerant, backbone “core” has been tested and placed into production. The implementation team is in the process of connecting buildings to the new core that had been on an interim Fast Ethernet backbone. The team is also configuring and testing the building switches that comprise the rest of the backbone.

The plan is to move the bulk of campus subnets to the new backbone over the summer. Moving departmental subnets will require a few hours of network downtime in each building. Each outage will be scheduled in advance and announced on the UCInet-OPS@UCI.EDU LISTSERV mailing list. In addition, the full schedule will be maintained on the Web:

http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/backbone-schedule.html

The new backbone will address rapidly growing communication needs, provide a foundation for ongoing departmental network improvement projects, and ensure continued, reliable operation of the critical campus data communication infrastructure. For more information, please see:

http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/plans/backbone-plan-1998.html

Questions about the project may be addressed to Garrett Hildebrand, whose e-mail address is GDH@UCI.EDU.

Campus Network Backbone To Be Upgraded

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NACS has received approval to implement a major upgrade of the UCInet backbone over the next year. The backbone is the primary data network infrastructure connecting every building at UCI. The planned upgrade will address rapidly growing communication needs, and provide a foundation for ongoing departmental network improvement projects. It will ensure continued, transparent operation of the critical campus data communications infrastructure, and provide for deployment of CalREN-2, the UC-wide, high-speed regional network.

The new backbone will employ a Gigabit (1,000 Megabits/second) Ethernet fault-tolerant core to connect campus buildings at Fast Ethernet (100 Megabits/second) and Gigabit Ethernet speeds. Existing departmental networks will be connected to this core through newer, higher-speed routing and switching devices over fiber optic cable.

For detailed information, please see NACS’ Backbone Upgrade Plan in the Web:

http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/plans/backbone-plan-1998.html

Questions about the plan may be addressed to Garrett Hildebrand, whose e-mail address is GDH@UCI.EDU.

UCInet Performance Considerations

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In the last NACS-News, we presented an overview of UCInet (see http://www.nacs.uci.edu/news/97.9.html). Continuing in our UCInet series, we examine some important UCI network performance issues below.

Performance at “the Edges” of the Network

A key network performance consideration is how networks are used within departments and among other groups of people who work together (workgroups). E-mail is exchanged, data and programs are accessed from local servers, printers are shared, and so forth. In the best case, members of a given workgroup are connected to a single Local Area Network (LAN). These workgroup LANs constitute the “edges” of UCInet.

Workgroup LAN performance is often limited by the shared 10 Mbps (Megabits per second) Ethernet speed typical of most campus LANs. Shared Ethernet requires all users to share bandwidth – the more users that are added to the LAN, and the more the network is used, the slower the network becomes. In fact, a single user can unknowingly monopolize shared network bandwidth, and slow response for everyone else.

When workgroups are split over multiple LANs, communication must travel through multiple network “routers” and the network backbone. Latency (response time) in this case is always worse than in single-LAN workgroups. Routers require more time to do their work than LAN switches or hubs, because their task is more complicated, and resource intensive.

Networking in many UCI workgroups currently suffers from LANs with too many computers sharing bandwidth, and from being split across multiple LANs. There is no “quick fix”, as network wiring in many UCI buildings will not support new, higher speed network technologies such as “Fast Ethernet”.

Backbone Considerations

UCInet’s backbone consists of six subnets, five of which use 10 Mbps ethernet, and one of which uses a 100 Mbps Fiber Digital Device Interface (FDDI) ring. The speed of traffic across the backbone depends on which of these subnets is required according to the source and destination of the traffic.

Another issue is the age of routers (up to 8 years old) on the slower UCInet segments. Older routers cannot support current software revisions, in much the same way that older PCs cannot run new system software like Windows NT. Important new features cannot be employed without replacing these routers. The good news is that there is bandwidth available on the FDDI backbone ring to support some additional, new routers and LANs as older routers are replaced.

The Internet and other Considerations

UCI’s off-campus connection can handle more traffic than is currently flowing through it. Unfortunately, the Internet itself has become so slow that some people are expanding the acronym WWW to World Wide Wait! A typical Web request can suffer from a variety of bottlenecks including slow Domain Name Service (DNS) lookup of host names, congestion on networks traversed en-route, a slow destination network, or a slow destination system. Slow response is one motivation for the recent nation-wide interest in a “new” Internet, which will address many of these problems.

UCI’s own network services, such as campus DNS, can also contribute to slow network response if not upgraded to handle expanding demand.

What’s the Plan?

Improving the speed and configuration of campus LANs is a critical UCI network need, as is the upgrade of data wiring and network backbone components. There is much to be done. We will discuss current plans and considerations next time.