News

The University’s Internet has for some time been plagued by criticism due to its inconsistent speeds, varying performance and general unreliability. However, a key project for Information Technology Services (ITS) this year is the overhaul and significant upgrade of the University Network and Wireless Network. With over $20 million set down to complete the project, the wireless service across campus is to be extended across all University campuses and network speeds are to be significantly improved.

The improvement seems undeniably necessary when the network currently hosts over 18,952 devices every day, according to the 2014/15 ITS Divisional Plan. In 2013, the CIO 100 ranked the University of Otago as having the ninth largest network in the country. Critic spoke with ITS director Mike Harte who said that when the network upgrade is finished, “our suppliers reckon this will be the single biggest local area network in the country – that’s how big it is.” He highlighted the sheer number of devices attached to the network, emphasising that 20,000 students all have more than one wireless device, from iPhones and smartphones to laptops and tablets.

Harte is quick to sympathise with the incompetence of the current systems. “For the last few years, students have been moaning – and quite rightly so – about the speed of the Internet.” He said that this “has always been a big issue, along with the reliability and signal of the network.” He describes the current network as going “up and down like a yoyo. My team are trying to keep it together with number eight fencing wire; they lift up rocks, little things scurry out.”

A process of “putting together a business case of upgrading the existing network” was prompted a couple of years ago, and with over $20 million of capital approved, Harte reiterated, “this is not just an upgrade. This is a complete rebuild of the University network from scratch.” The need for a new network can be partly attributed to the old network’s incapacity to handle modern traffic loads, and the difficulty of merely upgrading that network. “When the old network was built there was no such thing as YouTube. Now the single biggest user of our broadband network is YouTube.” The new network will enable ITS to increase speeds without having to replace the physical infrastructure, simply by upgrading the software.

The primary focus is currently the wireless network, but Harte is quick to acknowledge that without a wired network, there would be no wireless network. The network upgrade takes two paths: a complete upgrade of the wired network and the subsequent upgrade of the wireless network. “The wired project progresses in advance of the wireless – we need to lay the [wired] system for it to work.” Harte elaborates, “that means all the fibre-optics in the ground are being replaced completely, so that there is no one single point in fail.” This will ensure that where there are areas where only one cable goes to a certain building, one lost cable will not put the entire building out, largely due to different and multiple paths to each significant point in the network being put in place. Once complete, there will be around 90 kilometres of fibre-optic cable in place.

The wireless infrastructure is to have a bigger capacity, faster speed, bigger pipes, and bigger fibre, and, “come July, we will start to see people coming onto the new network,” according to Harte. From that, the wireless will roll out across all campuses so that every major building and certain outdoor areas will have access. Harte describes it as “ubiquitous wireless, basically.”

As to why there has been no official announcement of when the new network would be up and running, Harte said that his team is currently working through the timetable and they would publish it as soon as they can. Harte said that they will be presenting their material in a number of formats, but will also be holding public forums and publishing visual guides to show the progress of the upgrade, particularly a heat map of the campus highlighting what areas of campus have been connected to the new network. “You’ll be able to see [the area] start to go red, as [the connection] expands out, and as more and more buildings get connected.”

The new wireless ports that are being installed are much faster and much more reliable than what is currently available, and already over the Christmas break, an extra 100 wireless access points were installed in the Central Library. Although these ports have reduced an element of congestion, they are still on the old network, at the old speed. “The ports in the wall at the moment are 100 megabits per second. We are going to at least one gigabit per second, which will be the slowest port on the network. And this network may have the capability to blow that out, depending on the needs. The new wireless ports we are putting out there are much faster and much more reliable.”

A significant part of the infrastructure currently in use will become redundant as a result of the project. “All the stuff that sits in the core is being totally replaced. It’s outdated. It’s getting past its use-by. It’s getting into an unsupported mode, and is at the end of its useful life.” Ultimately, this means a huge amount of expensive material will be worthless; one single box, which sits at the core of the network, can be worth several hundred thousand dollars. “So that’s why the project itself is costing around $20 million. It is not an insignificant amount of money, but by the end of it you are going to see really fast Internet speeds, and much better wireless capabilities right across the campus wherever you go.”

Some have speculated that the upgrade will supersede that of the speed on offer under the Gigatown promotion currently underway, which sees the winning town have access to gigabit speed as long as users have Ultra Fast Broadband capabilities. However, Harte distinguishes what the campaign has to offer as “meaningless” because of the University’s need to service staff and students and the network’s capacity to already offer such speeds. “We are doing gigabit to every desktop at a minimum, to every port in the wall, with the capability of going faster. But you don’t [always] experience a 10 gigabit speed.” He adds that while a gigabit pipe enables there to be a lot of traffic on the network without noticing derogation, a user may experience gigabit speed if there are no other users but that is “different to having a gigabit speed in your home dedicated to one or two people.”

Coming hand-in-hand with the network upgrade will be the demise of the dreaded student proxy. Harte said that student proxy servers have been in the network forever and provide a means for students to authenticate their right to access the network, and help to identify inappropriate Internet activity from users. However, as anyone with a tablet or smartphone will know, the proxies “don’t play friendly,” and make Internet use incredibly frustrating. The new network will have no student proxy server for either the wired or wireless network but we won’t see this change “until we are pretty close to the end of the project.” In the mean time, the ITS team have developed the “student wireless bypass” which bypasses the student proxy. While he said there were still teething issues with a few particular apps, in general, the bypass appeared to be working well and a lot of volume appeared to be going through the bypass.

The University selected Dimension Data as its preferred Network Services Partner largely due to its huge area of expertise, and one of the contract negotiation points was that they open a business here. Dimension Data are an international company with 60 offices in 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Harte said that Dimension Data would be used “right through the design process.” “They are responsible for the installation, but right up front from the design of the network to prototyping it, testing it, and implementing it. Then [Dimension Data] will play a role afterwards in terms of supporting [the network]. When something goes wrong, they’ll be helping fix it. So it’s a big contract for them.”

The complexities of such a colossal project are well articulated by Harte. “It’s quite a difficult process. You’ve got an existing network and then you’ve got this new one you’re building. There might be some services, like blackboard, the management system, etc., that all sit in our data centre and those servers all sit in our network because you need a network to talk to this stuff. Then you are building a new network that these things aren’t on. It’s a very complex business to gain access before you can turn this old network off. It’s a gradual process, bit by bit, building by building.”