Transcript IT Networking in Higher Education

Information Technology
Networking in Higher Education:
Campus Commodity and
Competitive Differentiator
Robert B. Kvavik
Associate Vice President
University of Minnesota
ECAR Senior Fellow
EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research
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The Network’s Growing
Importance in Higher Ed…
Institution's Network is Much More Important to Our
Strategic Goals than Three Years Ago (N=517)
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
61.9%
1.2%
Strongly
Disagree
1.4%
Disagree
4.1%
Neutral
31.5%
Agree
Strongly
Agree
• Networks are fundamental in higher education, used in
diverse and creative ways to facilitate strategic goals
• However, knowledge of current state and future networking
plans was largely anecdotal.
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…Prompted ECAR to
Conduct this Study
• To provide comprehensive empirical information
about the higher education networking environment
• To help institutions make more-informed decisions
regarding their networking approaches and plans
• Identifies networking technology and practices are
currently in place
• Examines adoption of emerging technologies and
evolution of the central IT network
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Study Methodology
Survey Respondents by
Carnegie Class
Other,
36
Canada,
30
DR, 130
AA, 85
MA, 137
BA, 99
N=517
• Literature search
• Consultation with EDUCAUSE
Net@EDU Integrated
Communications Solutions
Working Group
• Online survey in June/July
2004
• In-depth telephone interviews
with 19 IT executives at 13
institutions
• Informal CIO roundtable
• Follow-up email questions on
specific subjects on selected
respondents
• Three case studies
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Most Respondents’
Networks are Small
Number of Institutional Users
(N=513)
40,001 to
60,000,
4.1%
60,001 to
80,000,
1.9%
Over
80,000, Under
1.8% 1,000,
8.0%
20,001 to
40,000,
14.6%
5,001 to
20,000,
32.4%
Number of Devices (N=508)
More than
40,000,
5.5%
20,001 to
40,000,
6.8%
Over
80,000,
1.8%
Under
1,000,
11.5%
10,001 to
20,000,
11.3%
1,001 to
5,000,
37.2%
5,001 to
10,000,
18.1%
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1,001 to
5,000,
46.8%
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Higher Education is Wired;
Wireless is Growing
Comparison of Wired and Wireless Installations
2.39
Administrative offices
4.98
2.35
Faculty offices
Libraries
4.55
3.03
3.01
2.79
2.54
Indoor public spaces
Classrooms: One connection per seat
0.00
4.57
2.13
0.00
0.00
Wired Mean*
4.68
2.60
Labs / research facilities
Outdoor spaces
4.72
2.12
Residence halls
Classrooms: Single connection
4.96
3.63
1.00
Wireless Mean*
2.00
3.00
4.00
5.00
6.00
* Scale = 1 (none) to 5 (almost all)
• Wireless is prevalent in areas not as quickly hardwired
• Wireless mainly supplements hardwired connectivity,
especially where bandwidth and security are important
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Higher Ed Network
Infrastructure Snapshot
Transmission Medium
Standard/Bandwidth
Backbone transmission
Multimode fiber optic cable
Backbone bandwidth
1 to 4.99 gigabits per second
Backbone data transmission
Gigabit Ethernet
Backbone-to-end-device transmission
Category 5 and 5e twisted pair
Wired end-device transmission
Fast Ethernet
Wireless end-device transmission
802.11b
Commodity Internet bandwidth
4.5 to 89 megabits per second
• Larger and more complex network environments often use
higher bandwidths and transmission standards
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Private Education & Research
Networks Gain Momentum
Connection to External Networks (Multiple Responses Allowed)
43.0%
State research or educational network
39.3%
University system-wide network
38.0%
Internet2/Abilene
24.8%
Regional gigapop
23.8%
Regional research or educational network
22.8%
Other multi-institutional network
17.1%
National research network
8.1%
Other
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
• 34 research and educational networks are now in place or
being implemented to conduct multi-institutional and leadingedge research, hold cross-institutional classes, and/or access
public networks
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Institutions Gear Up for
Converged Networks
Changes Being Made to Reflect Converged Networks (Multiple Responses Allowed)
Number of Institutions
160
143
126
109
120
96
80
53
40
0
Organizational
structure
Central
operations
User support
Policies
Financial model
• Most respondents say they are somewhere on the
adoption curve between evaluating and actually running
converged networks for some applications.
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Emerging Technology Adoption
Focuses on Video Applications
• About half of respondents indicate that IP video
streaming and/or desktop video conferencing is already
in limited use on their campuses
• Most other institutions are either planning to implement or
evaluating these technologies.
• There is less use of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)—
about one-fourth of institutions.
• An even smaller number of institutions are currently
implementing other converged services such as cable
TV over the network and integrated messaging.
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Network Management is
Increasingly Crucial
• Placing network restriction practices is common
• Restricting relaying of e-mail (63.1 percent)
• Access to selected TCP/IP ports (54.4 percent).
• Use packet shaping (69.6 percent ) to minimize the impact
of P2P file sharing and other applications that consume
large amounts of bandwidth.
• Almost three-quarters use stand-alone vendor
products (71 percent); two-thirds use open source
network management software tools.
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Which Institutions Report a HigherQuality Network Infrastructure?
• Several similar characteristics emerge among
institutions that agreed that their institution has a
higher quality network infrastructure:
• secure, fault tolerant, and its central backbone, desktop
connectivity, and wireless connectivity are optimally
designed to meet future needs for
• Of particular note is the role that the “softer” or nontechnical side of IT networking plays.
• Technology is indeed important in network design and
management, but
• The network is also contextually shaped and constrained
by factors like senior leadership attitudes, funding
resources, and institutional mission.
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Which Institutions Report a HigherQuality Network Infrastructure?
Institutions that…
• consider the network to be a strategic resource
• have a primary network goal of providing leading-edge network
performance and services
• do not consider inadequate funding to be a barrier to the delivery
of networking services
• have formal, comprehensive policies and procedures that cover
networking issues; enforce these policies and procedures
consistently; and update them regularly
• provide more redundancy measures for the institution's central
network
• have a disaster recovery plan for the institution's data-networking
capabilities
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Leadership Recognizes the
Network’s Value
• Respondents overwhelmingly agree that their
leadership views the campus network as:
• an essential resource (98 percent) and critical
infrastructure (89 percent).
• a strategic resource (81 percent).
• Over one-quarter (28 percent) characterized
networking at their institution not only as strategic but
also as a “strategic differentiator” for the campus.
• ECAR found that respondents whose campus leaders
consider the network to be strategic rated the quality of
their network infrastructure higher than others.
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Respondents’ Institution’s Primary
Networking Goal Evenly Distributed
Primary Network Goal
Descriptor
%
Provide reliable performance and se\vices at the
lowest possible cost
Costminimizer
19.8%
Provide appropriate levels of performance &
services to different users, based upon their
needs
Demand
Driven
28.4%
Provide high-speed networking to the entire
institution
High-speed
for all
25.9%
Provide leading-edge network performance and
services to the institution
Leading edge
25.9%
• Institutions whose primary network goal is leading-edge
network rate the quality of their network infrastructure—design
of the backbone, desktop connectivity, and wireless networks,
as well as network security and fault tolerance—higher than
other institutions.
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Networking Funding is Up
Despite Financial Uncertainties
Change in Data Network Spending
28.5%
Institutions
30%
21.1%
20%
25.9%
22.9%
22.7%
20.2%
16.6%
14.9%
10%
4.0%
3.6%
2.6%
2.6%
1.2%
0.8%
0%
-15%
-10%
-5%
0%
5%
Percentage Change
Past three years (mid-2001 to mid-2004)
•
•
10%
15%
Next three years (mid-2004 to mid-2007).
Yet 59 percent indicate that inadequate funding is a barrier to delivering
network services.
Those institutions that feel they are not experiencing inadequate funding
rate their network infrastructure as stronger, especially for the optimal
design of desktop connectivity and for the fault tolerance of the network.
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Effective Network Policies and
Procedures are Important
Network Policy Characteristic
Mean*
Easily Accessible
3.84
Clear and Easy to Read
3.75
Applied Consistently Across the Institution
3.50
Enforced Consistently
3.32
Regularly Updated
3.19
Comprehensive
3.14
*Scale= 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neutral), 4 (agree), 5 (strongly agree)
• 77.9 percent of respondents now have formal network policies and
procedures
• Institutions that possess formal networking policies and procedures that
are enforced consistently and comprehensively and are regularly
updated are more likely to rate the quality of their network infrastructure
higher.
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Network Redundancy
Efforts Lag
Central Network Redundancy
(Multiple Responses Allowed)
Redundancy
for all points
of failure
Multiple Physical Routes (Multiple
Responses Allowed)
Mulitple
Service
Providers
9.0%
28.0%
Multiple
Physical
Routes off
Campus
Redundancy
of some
single
points of
failure
74.0%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
37.0%
Multiple
Physical
Routes on
Campus
0%
43.0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
• Institutions that focus on redundancy report their backbone network is both
fault tolerant and optimally designed to meet future needs.
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Disaster Recovery Efforts
Need Improvement, too
• Perhaps it is a matter of priorities, funding,
and perceived risk, but 40 percent of
respondents report that they do not have a
disaster recovery plan for data networking on
campus.
• ECAR research shows that institutions with a
documented disaster recovery plan for their
network characterize the quality of their
network infrastructure more positively
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The Future of Network
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Implications
• Align the institution and the network.
• It is important to explicitly understand the overarching
institutional characteristics and reflect these in campus
network plans and goals.
• The network is never done
• Because higher education thrives on discovery and
experimentation, user networking needs cannot be fully
anticipated.
• IT leaders must constantly look within and beyond higher
education to anticipate emerging technologies that will
transform the institution and potentially create new security,
integration, and support issues.
• As networks grow, demands are made not only for higher
bandwidth and transmission speeds but also for more
automation to support network management, for extended
user support hours, and for stronger network redundancy.
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Implications
•
Ensure ample network investment
•
IT leaders are implementing new ways to secure adequate
financing for their networks including building new funding
models to sustain their network infrastructure, enhancing vendor
partnerships beyond equipment discounts, and investigating the
addition of value-added or new services to generate revenue.
• Focus resources on network security and reliability
•
•
As networks become essential—and often strategic—to core
institutional processes, network security and reliability become
even more critical and will continue to require significant IT and
financial resources.
Make use of opportunities provided by private higher
education networks
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