The CoC Network

Our facilities in the College of Computing Building (CCB), the Klaus Building (KACB), the Technology Square Research Building (TSRB), the Aware Home, are each equipped with network switches which are interconnected with multi-Gigabit Ethernet links to a primary backbone.  A group of Cisco Catalyst 6500 LAN switches form the core of the network, with largely Cisco Catalyst 3500 and 2900 series  switches as edge devices. The College's connection to the Georgia Tech Network (GTNet) is provided by a high-performance multi-Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) link.

Our centrally-used servers connect directly through switched Gigabit Ethernet ports, supplying excellent bandwidth for network services such as file service and digital media. All ports in KACB are hot and operate at switched Gigabit speed.  FastEthernet is our baseline network connection for desktop computing, printers, etc.  Provisions for wired, authenticated laptop network access are available at every graduate student desk, faculty office, conference room, common area and classroom in the College.  Fiber optic cabling is employed throughout our building risers to uplink edge switches to the main network core routers. Multimode and singlemode optical fiber is available in selected research labs and utilized only where distance or speed is required.  The Colleges Cisco routers are configured so that they are able to receive and redistribute (route) multicast traffic to any College network.

Wireless 802.11g access is available in all areas occupied of the College of Computing in CCB, TSRB, and KACB, as well as a number of other buildings on campus. Wireless 802.11b is available in the Aware Home.  The wireless network service is managed by OIT and is referred to as LAWN (Local Area Wireless/Wakup Network).  Wired access to LAWN is also available on nearly all networking ports in CoC Buildings.  Access to LAWN is available to all students and faculty using their campus GT ID.

External Connectivity

Georgia Tech is currently involved in several initiatives that bring high-speed network services to the Tech campus, the Southeast and beyond that serve as critical infrastructure for the long term (10+ years).  Our campus network employs a high-performance multi-gigabit backbone, which is migrating to 10GigE links.  Our external connections include diverse commodity Internet links (Qwest, Level3, and Cogent) and a 10GigE Internet2 link via SoX.  The Georgia Tech Network is managed by OIT.

Southern Light Rail: A  Georgia Tech affiliated organization structured as a not-for-profit membership corporation formed to implement, operate and maintain connectivity to the Atlanta National LambdaRail (NLR) node on behalf of Georgia Tech and other research institutions in the Southeast.  This “Southern Light Rail (SLR)” corporation is responsible for representing the interests of its members with NLR and facilitating access to the NLR network for its members.  SLR also serves as an umbrella organization for managing the Southern Crossroads (SoX) initiative and interconnections with regional optical networks in the Southeast.

National LambdaRail (NLR): a consortium of leading U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies comprised 15 Members and several Associates that include over 150 universities, research institutions and other organizations.  NLR has deployed of a new and unique national networking infrastructure to foster the concurrent advancement of networking research and next generation network-based applications in science, engineering and medicine.  NLR’s goal is to stimulate research and development for next generation network technologies, protocols, services and applications. Georgia Tech is connected to the NLR Atlanta node via a local access DWDM fiber optic network capable of multiple 10-Gbps wavelengths or Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. National LambdaRail's nationwide advanced optical network infrastructure has nodes located in 28 US cities and is capable of meeting the needs of the most demanding network and scientific research. 

• NLR WaveNet offers point-to-point, high-capacity 10-gigabit Ethernet LAN-PHY or OC-192 lambdas between any two nodes on the NLR infrastructure.  The NLR WaveNet service is a full-production, unprotected point-to-point wavelength. 
• NLR FrameNet offers Ethernet-based transport services over the nationwide NLR optical infrastructure.  These services facilitate point-to-point or multipoint Ethernet transport at subgigabit, gigabit and multigigabit data rates.  All Ethernet-based services are available from any of the FrameNet-enabled nodes of the NLR infrastructure. 
• NLR PacketNet provides nationwide IP-based services utilizing Cisco CRS-1 routers.  A 10-gigabit Ethernet connection to one of the two types of NLR PacketNet services is included as part of SLR’s NLR membership.

Southern Crossroads (SoX): a SLR initiative, contracted to Georgia Tech, has been providing value to the southeast for the past nine years by offering cost effective Internet2 and commodity Internet access to Georgia Tech and other southeastern US universities.  SoX today has 21 research university and state network participants and manages about a gigabit of commodity service and 2.4 gigabits of research services today. 

The Georgia Board of Regents – PeachNet: The University System of Georgia has implemented a statewide fiber optic network to connect the Georgia colleges and universities to each other and the R&E networking resources in Atlanta.   The PeachNet network provides, Internet2, commodity Internet and network connectivity in addition to dedicated 10 GigE wave to Georgia’s major research universities such as University of Georgia, Medical College of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Tech-Savannah.  SLR and Georgia Tech are interconnected with PeachNet.

Atlantic Wave (A-Wave): Georgia Tech and SLR are participating in an initiative called Atlantic Wave (A-Wave) that will represent a distributed exchange and peering fabric along the Atlantic coast of North and South America.   A-Wave’s objective is to facilitate exchange and peering services for the national and international networks that interconnect at international exchange and peering points such as MANLAN in NYC, MAX in Washington DC, AMPATH in Miami, and the Sao Paulo Open Exchange (operated by the Academic Network of Sao Paulo - ANSP).  The A-Wave service on the East Coast will also link to the Pacific Wave (P-Wave) service, led by Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and the Pacific Northwest GigaPoP (PNWGP), which links the international peering points in LA, Seattle and Chicago.  A-Wave will also provide options for trans-continental connectivity between the key international connections points including CANARIE in Canada and RedCLARA in South America.