Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

INSIDE IOWA STATE
June 14, 2002

New route for info highway

This raceway in the Communications Building holds new "high-speed" wiring that can handle communication speeds of 1,000 million bits per second. Photo by Bob Elbert.

by Linda Charles
When telecommunications staff and their contractors complete a multi-year upgrade of several buildings on campus, they will have strung about 6,000 miles of wire -- a little farther than the distance from Des Moines to Tel Aviv.

The five-year project will equip 100 academic and administrative buildings with new communications wiring and switchgear capable of handling future high-speed performance demands. It also will make the campus network more secure, reliable and efficient, said John Kingland, director of telecommunications.

In the process, more than 9,000 miles of old wire will be removed, 30,000 voice data jacks will be replaced with 20,000 new ones, and the number of equipment rooms will be greatly reduced.

"The last time campus communications wiring was replaced was in 1985," Kingland said. "At that time, Iowa State installed a telephone system and what was then considered a high-speed data network."

That "high-speed" wiring, the highest quality available in 1985, could handle 19,200 bits of data per second.

"By comparison," Kingland said, "the wiring we are installing today will handle communication speeds up to, and exceeding, 1,000 million bits per second."

Campus buildings constructed during the past four years, including those in the residence hall system, have been wired to the new telecommunications industry standard. Residence halls also have been upgraded as existing buildings were remodeled.

Buildings slated for rewiring this year are Bessey, Communications, Coover, Davidson, Kildee/Meat Lab, Lagomarcino, MacKay, Molecular Biology, Parks Library, Physics (except Physics Addition), Ross, Science I and II, and Snedecor. Eighteen buildings currently are on the upgrade planning list.

Older computers, printers and other devices will continue to work, Kingland said, but the new wiring and equipment provides the technical capability and option for higher communication speeds.

"The bottom line," he said, "is we need to have the capability to rapidly move data bits around campus to handle applications like streaming video, large file transfers, Web traffic and e-mail."