Network Room

Network tour at Edgewood:

On March 22, part of our class time was spent at Edgewood's networking room. We were warned of the small space which was set aside for all of the college's computer and phone connections, but I was still amazed at its size when the door with the duck-in-a-row picture was opened.

However, it was really amazing to see the actual cables that are used to connect the countless servers and computers that make Edgewood run. Edgewood uses Class B subnetting, which is the typical subnet for universities and allows for 65,000+ subnets. Within this small room, there were colorful Cat5 cables running along the walls and overhead on catwalks. Most of the cables were plugged into one mainframe with a 10 gigabtye ethernet, and there were smaller cables going into the phone network as well. There was a seperate box which connects Edgewood to our Demming Way campus, and it uses ethernet hand-off as a way to avoid having a server station at Demming Way.

With 600 workstations and 80 virtual machines in the utility room, the air can't go above 85 degrees. But as Issac (our tour guide) pointed out, the room used to be wall-to-wall crammed with machines. Over the years, technology has been able to compound more into smaller and efficient hardware. This is great news since Edgewood is continuously looking at having to expand. Part of this is because we are relying more on voice over IP, the wireless connections of its students, and the smart phones which need to connect to Edgewood's network.

But Edgewood does get help once and awhile. In regards to what skills it takes if you want to help with the networking, Issac stated that he's able to manage or learn anything with level 2 protocols. For the more challenging things, we outsource to TDS. Questions such as how to secure our network from illegal downloads in dorm activities is definitely a challenge, and so Issac and the team works with TDS to help minimize the traffic flow.

All in all, I thought it was an interesting experience. Despite its size, the network room supports and handles all of Edgewood's connection needs. I take it for granted what goes into the physical requirements that allow me to access the internet, but Issac and Edgewood do a great job at meeting the needs of its students and faculty.

Oh, yeah, there was a poster of Dana Carvey as the Church Lady, a popular SNL character, hanging on the back of the door. It was put up because of the catchphrase, 'Isn't that SPE-CIAL?!'. The network team borrows the phrase when they run into a problem or scene which has no other words to explain the situation. Just like in any other career, IT people need to have a sense of humor when dealing with challenges :)