CC*IIE Campus Design: Network Upgrade and Science DMZ to Enable High-Performance Data Transfer

Wabash College, Crawfordsville IN

Investigators

Abstract

Wabash College has a strong history of educating undergraduates in STEM disciplines, and for decades the college has been highly ranked among baccalaureate institutions in originating PhD recipients in the physical sciences. In order to provide the highest-quality research and scholarship opportunities for the next generation of scientists, high-performance data networks are essential to support transfer of large data sets, as well as high-speed access to remote instruments and collaborators. This project improves the campus cyberinfrastructure at Wabash College in three areas to support increased demand by researchers, both across campus and beyond: 1) it increases Wabash's connection to Internet2 and other national research networks from 1Gbps to 10Gbps via Indiana's regional network provider, I-Light; 2) it increases the connection speed from the network core to the campus science buildings to 10Gbps and provides redundant network paths to those buildings; and 3) the new 10Gbps-capable Science DMZ ensures unimpeded high-performance data transfer for researchers across the regional and national research networks. These infrastructure improvements significantly increase data transfer rates and network reliability for Wabash's science research network, benefitting all researchers and students in STEM disciplines at the College. They address immediate research needs for projects in physics, chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and mathematics, including work at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL), and with the Midwest Undergraduate Computational Chemistry Consortium (MU3C).