I-Light is coming to Valpo
No, it's not the latest internet-enabled gadget from Apple. It's a new high-speed network link being provided through the State of Indiana Research Network I-Light. How much faster will it be?  The simple answer is—at least twice as fast. The real answer is a little more complicated.

How fast?
Increasing our network speed requires a large investment in fiber optic network links. Contractors are working now to install new fiber connections to Valparaiso University.  This is part of a $7M expansion of the I-Light network that is being funded by the state of Indiana. When our I-Light link is complete, we should have an available bandwidth of 100 Mbps for what is called “commodity Internet” or Internet 1. This is what most people refer to as the “Internet” as it is equivalent to what you might have access to at home with a DSL or cable modem connection.  The new fiber optic network connection will actually be configured for a bandwidth of 1Gbps and can theoretically carry in excess of 10Gbps. The choice of 100 Mbps is purely economic. (See: http://www.ilight.net/pricing.php) When it comes time for the next upgrade, it should be relatively simple; we write a check and they open a few more lanes as long as we stay within the configured link size.  

How fast is fast?
If 45 Mbps (our current Internet connection bandwidth) is one lane, and 100 Mbps is two lanes, then 1 Gbps is 20 lanes. What will those other 18 lanes be doing? This is where the answer starts to get complicated. Communication with academic and research networks can bypass the regular Internet. For this purpose several years ago, a second Internet was built to connect universities to each other and to research networks. This network is called: Internet2. Due to I-Light’s membership in Internet2, the other 18 lanes can be used for access to Internet2 at higher speeds and larger bandwidth than is possible with the current Internet1 connection.

Since today our research traffic flows together with our regular Internet traffic, once it moves over to the express lanes, the commodity traffic should move faster too. We may see an improvement of more than a factor of 2.

Who needs faster anyway?
Over in Neils Science Center, faculty and staff are looking forward to better access to research data and better interaction with computer systems at national labs. Massive experiments like STAR and TWIST generate huge sets of data and simulations. With the current network connection, downloading even a small portion of that data is prohibitive. A simple data set might be a 2 GB file. In recent tests, the congestion on the network slowed down such file transfers so severely that researchers were able to copy no more than one file per day. The amount of data contained in these files is a small portion of the data collected. If we could get that data to campus more quickly, such a file could be analyzed in just a few hours on a standard PC.

VU is no slouch when it comes to producing data either. The new Doppler weather radar is capable of producing raw data output at a rate of about 1GB per hour. The system is a new type of advanced Doppler radar and is not yet part of the National Weather Service network. Weather resources on campus continue to develop to make more efficient use of that system. The technology is maturing and will soon be better integrated with national databases. Unless every day in Valpo is sunny and warm, we expect the network demands to continue to grow.

Over in Engineering, Dr. Tougaw is analyzing nanotechnology simulations created at other Indiana colleges.  The files sizes are typically larger than 1GB . Past efforts to transfer these files over the network have been disappointing. Tougaw said, “Usually there would be some error. It would start transferring for a couple of hours and then get stuck.” The most practical method to transfer these files turned out to be much more low-tech: “I’d just put them on a thumb drive or another media and send them through the US mail.”

The Scientific Visualization Lab will also be able to make good use of the larger bandwidth. Interactive collaboration with researchers at other universities requires real-time video links between the sites. Engineers are definitely looking forward to the possibilities that a higher speed network link will bring.

In addition to all these things already ongoing, the new link will also make it possible to join academic computing grids to process complex mathematical analysis.