On March 13, Jim Hall posted the following on his blog. He shared it with OIT communications staff so we could repost it here:

First network upgrade successful

I'd like to thank Dave Savela (Computing Services) and our partners in OIT for a very successful network upgrade yesterday. In this phase, we needed to re-route traffic from each of the campus buildings through the new network equipment. re-route traffic from each of the campus buildings through the new equipment. Our schedule involved changing about 10 campus buildings per hour. We chose the Monday of Spring Break to minimize the disruption to campus.

I'm pleased to report that the network changes went very smoothly. We were actually ahead of schedule in each hour, leaving some time to plan for the next set of changes. I'm not aware of any problems on the network as of this morning.

After yesterday's upgrades, we do not expect to have any visible changes on the network until after graduation in May.

Next steps

March:

  • Review of remaining campus network wiring and equipment.

April:

  • Upgrade network equipment in residence halls, campus apartments, and similar non-academic buildings.

May: (after graduation)

  • Upgrade network equipment in academic buildings. Computing Services will coordinate with the summer program to minimize the impact of these changes.

During the summer, we will upgrade the wireless network across campus. Based on similar network upgrades at the Twin Cities, we expect to see a 20% improvement of our wireless network just by replacing the wireless access points with new devices. This will also give us a new wireless network for guests to use when visiting the campus. After the wireless upgrade, we will collect statistics and analyze our wireless network coverage, and work to improve wireless in areas that need the most help. Our focus areas will include the Library, Student Center, and HFA buildings.

We expect to finish all network upgrades before the start of Fall term.