Thursday, October 25, 2001

Penn's Bandwidth Impresses Some and Frustrates Others By DAN CARNEVALE Philadelphia Josh Duncan revels in how fast the computer network is here at the University of Pennsylvania. ALSO SEE: Colloquy Live: Join a live, online discussion with information-technology officials at Williams College and West Virginia U. about how colleges are dealing with bandwidth issues, on Thursday, November 1, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time. For freshman physics -- he's planning to major in bioengineering -- he can use the campus computing network to download videotaped instructions on how to complete lab work. While he's doing that, he can nab a few more music files off the Internet almost instantaneously. "It's great -- I came from Wyoming, where you download 2.3 kilobits a second," Mr. Duncan says as his professor explains the physics of motion in a little window on the computer screen. "Now you can download 10 megabits a second." Because the university's network is so fast, music and movies are easy to download, and instant messaging lives up to its name. Administrators say they are committed to providing a network robust enough so that professors and students can experiment with new technologies -- like virtual conference rooms and digital video libraries -- but they also say there are limits on what the university can spend on bandwidth. Not All Are Satisfied Some faculty members wish the university would do more. David Farber, a professor of telecommunications, says an institution of higher education needs much more bandwidth than Penn now provides. New possibilities -- like surgical procedures conducted with the doctor and patient in different hemispheres -- are on the horizon, he says. And Mr. Farber thinks researchers and students should start practicing now. "I'm trying to push the boundaries of high-tech education," says Mr. Farber, who served for a year as chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission in the Clinton administration. Some business networks, he says, are already running at 622 megabits a second. That's much faster than the university's network, which operates at speeds ranging from 10 to 100 megabits a second from the desktop (the university's connection to the Internet is faster -- 265 megabits a second). "You're not as well off as most industrial places," he says. So how much is enough? Although students at Penn have enough bandwidth to do just about anything they need to do, are they really being offered the chance to push technology to the edge -- the way it will be used in the future? At the very least, the university makes sure that the computer network is more than capable of handling the needs of most professors and students. "We try to stay ahead of the demand," says Michael A. Palladino, associate vice president of networking and telecommunications at the university. Penn sets its technology spending from the bottom up. A technology committee made up of representatives from each of the university's colleges helps make the decision every year how much money should be spent on technology upgrades. For the most part, the technology committee has approved significant upgrades to assure a fast network and plenty of computers. For the 2001-2002 academic year, it expects its outlay to be about $13-million to operate the computer network. Back in 1994, Penn spent about $5-million. But as more connections were needed on campus and faster speeds were demanded, the costs went up. One thing the technology committee has not been enthusiastic to approve are wireless networks. Although committee members see the benefits of wireless computers, a wireless network would be expensive to install and not completely secure to use. As a result, wireless is only being set up in four of the university's colleges: business, dental, engineering, and law. Limits on Wireless Service Currently Penn's network offers about 40,000 hard-wired network connections around the campus. Just about all of these are Ethernet connections that run about 10 megabits a second. Some high-speed Ethernet connections for researchers support the full 100 megabits a second. The connections also provide access to the high-speed network run by the Internet2 consortium, which runs at 155 megabits a second now and is expected to jump to 622 in December. The technology that can be used because Penn's network has been upgraded regularly is also fun, says Dikran Kassabian, technical director for the university's network engineering, systems, and services. One apparatus, referred to as "the cave," lets someone walk into a room set up to look like a slice of a conference room, with monitors ahead and on the sides. The cave's virtual-reality system lets people in different cities see and talk with one another as if they were all sitting around the same table. "It's very natural," Mr. Kassabian says, adding that one cave user could see another user roll his eyes in annoyance or gesture with enthusiasm. James J. O'Donnell, vice provost of information systems and computing, says the university attempts to stay at the forefront of experimentation. "People said, 'We're not sure what we're going to use it for, we can't guarantee a return on the investment, but we're going to do it because that's the kind of place Penn is, '" Mr. O'Donnell says. "Here is a space in which to experiment." "The challenge," he adds, "is to keep on providing that sort of on-the-edge capability." One thing administrators don't worry about is bandwidth's going unused. Whenever more is provided, the university community sucks it up like a vacuum cleaner. "If you build it, then they will come," says Mr. Palladino. Even at peak times, the network never really bogs down, Mr. Palladino says. In part, that's because professors and students seem to use it most heavily at different times of day, spreading out the load somewhat. "Fortunately, they don't overlap heavily," he says. The university does not regulate Internet use by blocking sites or limiting file transfers. This means many of the peer-to-peer networks that let users trade music and movies are available for anyone to use on the university's computer system. Originally the university had all of its fiber-optic cables and routers in one place, but administrators decided two years ago to distribute the central portion of the network to five different buildings with various redundancies built in. That way, if there were a disaster or fire in one building, the entire network wouldn't be shut down. But higher-education institutions, including Penn, need to push the envelope further, Mr. Farber says. The government and universities need to take more chances by pouring more money into technology research, he says. "That's a hard thing to preach when budgets get tight," Mr. Farber admits. Virtual conference rooms aren't enough, he says. If a doctor in the United States is going to perform a surgery in Africa over a computer network, that system must be foolproof. To test the network, he would like to see a string quartet play a recital with each of the four members in a different city -- and have all four musicians feel like they're in the same room. "That would be a step," Mr. Farber says. "You pick these experiments that force the system." After that, the stronger technology can be easily adapted to perform more useful functions. "You're not going to try remote surgery first," Mr. Farber says. "At least I'm not going to volunteer." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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