ITS connects; no more blackouts
Cody Ewers
Issue date: 2/26/09 Section: News
As part of a combined initiative to increase available bandwidth and maximize the capacity of connection circuits in Hillsdale County, construction on a project connecting the college to a major fiber-optic pipeline in Jackson, Mich. should be finished around the end of the school year, said David Zenz, executive director of Hillsdale College's Informational Technology Services.
Construction will connect existing fiber lines in Jonesville to a statewide high-performance network, via the Jackson Intermediate School District in Horton, about 16 miles away.
ITS Network and Systems Manager Patrick Chartrand said in order to prevent a connection blackout similar to the recent one, the college plans to retain the current AT&T connection as a backup until it can negotiate another redundant route to the Merit network in Lenawee County.
The company hired to bury the new fiber cannot officially start construction until it receives permits necessary for certain stretches along Moscow Road, but it has started working unofficially to get a head start, Zenz said.
Zenz declined to release any projected costs or budgetary figures for the project, due to college policy, but he did say he purchased a T3 circuit, enabling a 100-gigabyte circuit capacity, for $26,000.
"We're not interested in being the Internet provider for Hillsdale County," Zenz said. "We wanted to figure out how to get fiber to Hillsdale and have a relatively 'unlimited circuit capacity.' The cost was just too high to connect to the Jackson Intermediate School District's network on our own."
Chartrand said the new connection will allow a generous one gigabyte of bandwidth, compared to the 45 megabytes permitted in the current circuit.
This means more campus users will transfer more data at higher speeds, once the connection is made, Zenz said.
The project is the second step in plans to improve Hillsdale's fiber-optic connection.
Phase one, finished in Oct. 2008, links all four entities in a ring of high-speed fiber designed to withstand a break in the line by rerouting data in the opposite direction, Zenz said.
Construction will connect existing fiber lines in Jonesville to a statewide high-performance network, via the Jackson Intermediate School District in Horton, about 16 miles away.
ITS Network and Systems Manager Patrick Chartrand said in order to prevent a connection blackout similar to the recent one, the college plans to retain the current AT&T connection as a backup until it can negotiate another redundant route to the Merit network in Lenawee County.
The company hired to bury the new fiber cannot officially start construction until it receives permits necessary for certain stretches along Moscow Road, but it has started working unofficially to get a head start, Zenz said.
Zenz declined to release any projected costs or budgetary figures for the project, due to college policy, but he did say he purchased a T3 circuit, enabling a 100-gigabyte circuit capacity, for $26,000.
"We're not interested in being the Internet provider for Hillsdale County," Zenz said. "We wanted to figure out how to get fiber to Hillsdale and have a relatively 'unlimited circuit capacity.' The cost was just too high to connect to the Jackson Intermediate School District's network on our own."
Chartrand said the new connection will allow a generous one gigabyte of bandwidth, compared to the 45 megabytes permitted in the current circuit.
This means more campus users will transfer more data at higher speeds, once the connection is made, Zenz said.
The project is the second step in plans to improve Hillsdale's fiber-optic connection.
Phase one, finished in Oct. 2008, links all four entities in a ring of high-speed fiber designed to withstand a break in the line by rerouting data in the opposite direction, Zenz said.
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