Artificial intelligence. Mobile technology. Online shopping. Streaming services. George Mason University, an R1 Research Institution. What do these have in common? These all need a robust, secure, and highly resilient network infrastructure.
George Mason’s core network is built on 10Gbps link technology, but the current industry trends are 100Gbps and 400Gbps link technologies. To prepare for now and the future, George Mason invested $8M in a new core to replace aging equipment, scale its core capacity, and take advantage of the efficiencies and features.
This project aims to transition George Mason’s current network architecture to the next generation in direct support of the university’s strategic goals by offering an expanded virtual classroom capability and improved research infrastructure to better retain and attract students and faculty, as well as improve the user experience.
The network upgrade project is one of the largest ones to date for ITS. To better understand the magnitude of work, Larry Song from Network and Security Engineering described the project as “going from the old dial-up modems to FIOS networking,” and Devin Bist from Network and Security Engineering described the project as a “really small town that experienced a population explosion, much like George Mason, and needed an upgrade to its infrastructure.”
The Architecture for Tomorrow Today
Enterprise Infrastructure Services (EIS) wanted to design and implement a future-proof network infrastructure that would last ten years. Ben Allen, Executive Director of EIS, views this project as more than a simple refresh or upgrade but rather “It is a whole-scale transformation in how we actually run and maintain our network.”
The results are better scalability, flexibility, auditing, user connectivity, network redundancies and resiliencies, automated maintenance, research community support, improved security, and faster speeds.
EIS developed a generalized set of system and router role requirements to test the different makes and models against and strove to maintain its design goals of network segmentation and hardware resiliency. EIS wanted to avoid vendor-proprietary technologies and features as much as possible to reduce costs and issues in the future. The new architecture and infrastructure will allow EIS to employ more automation and allow easier updates to network configuration.
Network Security and Engineering developed a test plan that included a demonstration of configurations and performance, especially in failure scenarios, and had hands-on time with the demonstration system to compare typical views, troubleshooting, and configuration processes.
Engineers Ethan Ervin and Peter Duong tested the vendor switches and learned about Cloud vision, a large part of EIS’ current provisioning. They learned about the new system, then documented and shared this knowledge with other team members to help Advanced Technologies with the new platform and configuration.
Taking Care of Business
The work is being done in four phases:
- Site survey, testing and configuration of different vendor solutions, and a security risk assessment.
- Equipment delivery, power and hardware installation, and configuring routers and switches in preparation for cutover.
- Deploy the core routers, then the provider edge routers, then rebuild links, and verify routing, forwarding, and reachability on switches.
- Decommission and remove Cisco hardware.
Replacing the network infrastructure has been a herculean task. Many teams worked to replace switches, dark fiber optic cables, and connections while maintaining continuous network service. Replacing the dark fiber optic cables increased the network capacity to 1.6 terabytes per second, approximately 40 times faster than what George Mason previously had.
In the buildings outside the data centers, network engineers often work in cramped spaces and go floor by floor, replacing switches and redoing wiring. Each switch weighs approximately 50 pounds and is quite bulky, requiring at least one person to hold it in place while another person uninstalls the old switch, installs the new switch, and avoids pulling all the wires down with it. In addition, each fiber connection has to be closely examined to ensure it’s clean and has no dirt, dust, or fingerprints. The fiber wires and connections need to be cleaned and protected. There also may be fiber incompatibilities or limitations that need to be addressed.
What Next?
EIS is laying the foundation for new technologies in the future so that it’s a matter of turning something on instead of trying to retrofit the network and can handle research equipment that requires high data transfer rates without buying a new switch.
ITS has already replaced the dark fiber optical network, which delivers wired and wireless networks to all the buildings on all George Mason campuses and locations. Next, EIS will cut over to the new network outside of business and during class hours when the impact is minimal.
The IT landscape is moving away from siloed practices and extreme specialties and toward generalists. EIS teamwork and collaboration are a move toward this trend and prepare George Mason for the industry transition.