Networking Academic Buildings - Which Infrastructure is Best?

namtro asks: "I'm on a committee at a small private college which is in charge of designing/ordering all networking equipment for a new general science building which is being built. At this point we need to finalize what infrastructure needs to be included to allow us to grow. Should we concentrate on wireless technologies, include fiber to every room, just run CAT5 to every room, put a network port every 4ft in the classrooms, etc? If you were designing a new network for an academic environment, how would spend your money?"

Stay away from wireless

[bconway]

I've done a lot of work with this, and it's not worth it at all. The only things pheasible is really a 4mbps link for about 50ft away, and often VERY unreliable. Stick with wired, even if it's only 10mbps, and run CAT5 within the building where necessary. What good would fiber to every room do for you if you're only getting minimal internet access speed from across your campus? I'd suggest that you concentrate on increasing the total throughput across the campus and then increase net connectivity as necessary. Internal networking in a wireless fashion is NOT the way to go.

Depends....

[Anonymous Coward]

This totally depends on size of the building, how the clients are using the network, type of devices on the network, type of network equipment, length of runs, campus backbone, etc. If you are asking this question, you should seriously consider hiring an outside professional to come in, analyze the situation and do the installation. They'll charge $120/hour determine what you need and probably ~ $100 per drop for wiring and then you'll need to buy the switches/hubs/routers/trasceivers/racks/punch downs/ups's. No offense, but do you really consider yourself qualified to make this decision?

*Don't* run fiber

[chamont]

I worked in a university library for three years that was built just before I started. When they told me about running fiber to every workstation in the building it really didn't sound like that bad of an idea.

The whole problem is that in universities (and maybe funding is different in private universities), is that once the money is spent, you don't get any more for a long time. So we had really cool fiber in every room, all connecting everyone with crappy shared 10Mb hubs. And they're still running that same crappy equipment today.

They assumed the prices of fiber gear would go down, and it did a bit but it's still not even close. Plus users (especially in a lab) tear it up badly. I was always replacing lines that got smashes or cut or whatever. We got bids from some people that actually recommended buying copper gear and putting transceivers on every line.

So my opinion, coming from experience is stay far away from fiber (except for servers, that is).

Good luck.

Lightning!!!

[whydna]

Please take into consideration the severity of lightning where you live. The high school that I went to (in central florida) ran fiber to all the rooms and then had a hub with CAT-5 to the individual ports. The reason for fiber was two-fold. Mainly, it was to protect against possible lightning strikes (as lightning doesn't travel down fiber very well). Secondly, it was to reduce the need of a repeater or other such device as the halls and some rooms were quite far from the networking office.

Just a thought, might not be applicable at all =)

Re:Gone fishin'

[bluGill]

correction: run cat-5 to regular rj-11 for a PBX. Even though you might be able to get by with lesser cable for the PBX don't try it, it isn't worth the hasstle. Then see if you vender has a jack option other then rj-11 and rj-45. Those two are used for analog phone and ethernet respectivly. Try to avoid making it easy for idiots to plug the wrong thing into your jacks. (Good luck, our phone system at work is rj-45 and we have to keep reminding people that the white jacks are phone only.

CAT5E

[lw54]

Run CAT5E to every nook, cranny, and corner imaginable. Place it everywhere you can fathom a future use. Then go back and install 2 drops between every original drop. Wash, Rinse, and Repeat. You can never have enough drops.

Conduit!

[bluGill]

Run conduit (pipes) to every drop. have your contractor leave pull strings inside. I don't know what the future will provide, and niether do you. (We both can make guesses and might be right) So allow for it.

Don't forget to run A/V cableing to places. I recomend a few jacks for (nearly) deaf to plug into the instructor's mike. The (nearly) blind might need a TV on their desk so they can see what is one the comptuer screen.

If you can't afford to put a projector in every room, just run the conduit to where the projector would be if you could afford it. Make sure you specify enough strengh to mount the projectors - though this shouldn't be a problem.

If your going to build labs, run jacks to every station. don't forget that some of these jacks are not for comptuers but for lab equipment. That is someone might one day want to connect all the lab equipment togather. How or why I don't know, but make sure that there is some way to do this once the equipment is designed.

Expect students to want to plug laptops in. Put every classroom on a seperate subnet (so programs can braodcast to the subnet and hit all the laptops.) Of course software to make this work needs to be written so this might never take off, but assume it will.

All of the above...

[drudd]

But seriously, CAT5 is a must... wireless is nice, but expensive, and really not ready for prime time.

Plus it's FAR easier to add wireless reciever points later then it is to wire the entire building with cat5.

Gone fishin'

[Graymalkin]

I've found the best way to plan for future upgrades is to overcompensate, at least a little bit. Fiber and Wireless stuff is hip now but not really worth the overall cost you're incurring. Wireless is pretty unreliable and is exceptionally limited in bandwidth and overall functionality. Something like AirPort can only have a relatively small number of users and has a fraction of the bandwidth of wired options. Fiber is robust but is still an expensive proposition that doesn't have enough benefits (in your case) to merit use. So that leaves copper wiring. With Cat-5 wiring you have the option of a 10, 100 or 1000Mb network which allows you to save some money now with 100Mb equipment and then upgrade to 1000Mb when you really need it (and when it is a bit cheaper).
After you've got the wire run you need to manage it properly to get the most bang for your buck. I've seen pretty large networks with expensive equipment bottleneck because the original designers didn't plan things out well enough. Put a switch on every floor with computers on it, having a switched network makes peer-to-peer communication faster and more efficient. Connect the switches and any servers all into a set of central routers. Good routers are going to balance the load of the network and connect you to the outside world. Do not merely put powered hubs on every floor and connect them to a single server that is supposed to do routing in software and manage your network. Switches are going to speed up peer-to-peer stuff which is increasingly replacing client-server transaction (although servers are still needed) and plugging those switches into routers is going to let the routers balace the load of the entire network and help out client-server communication.
Aside from copper networking wire and the like, run some audio and video wire and leave plenty of open space for more wiring. I really wish my school has had the forsight a while ago to add the A/V cabling. A few cables inserted into labeled outlets and you've got a projector hooked up to a workstation in another room. Run some regular RJ-11 wire for a decent PBX, while it may not be glamorous the faculty will enjoy the ability to use a phone from a lab or lecture hall rather from only in their offices.
Well I hope that is at least helpful, if someone wants to point out errors on my part or suggestions feel free. Just don't flame.

My 2 cents

[scotpurl]

Fiber to every floor. (to a distribution center)
Redundant fiber between buildings.
Conduit everywhere, and leave pull strings inside. (go slightly bigger conduit than they recommend)
CAT 5e or 6 from distribution center (on floor) to outlets.
If you want wireless, do it per big room. Share wireless is sloooow, but very handy. If the room supports theater-style seating, or fixed desks, build RJ-45 jacks and power outlets into at least every other desk.

Re:Gone fishin'

[Graymalkin]

Thanks for the tip, I'll have to remember that one myself.

Re:Lightning!!!

[ideut]

Yep, that's a very good point. You should also take into consideration the fact that certain NIC/hub combinations will break all databases on the network. Therefore, if you plan on running a database within the college, you must check the electrical properties of your networking gear extrememly carefully. More information on this is given here, [slashdot.org] here [slashdot.org] and here [goatse.cx].

Pull Lots of Copper

[InitZero]

In 1995, the company I was working for built a new building. Having used the other one for half a century, we had grand ideas about what we were going to do right this time.

We pulled two four-pair CAT5 cables to every single desk or place where we tought there might possibly be a desk. One cable was for voice and the other data. With that, we could have four analog phone lines at every desk and two network connections (we were running 10mbps to the desktop so splitting a four-pair for two connections was within spec). At the time, that's more than we ever thought we would ever need. We also pulled multiple CAT5 drops to each and every conference and storage room.

Each end of each of the flour floors had a wireing closet at the end. Planning on expansion, we ran 12(!) strands of fiber to each closet.

Before the building was even finished, we doubled the amount of fiber in each closet and put interduct (conduit) everywhere we thought we might possibly want more later.

By 1998, most desktops were upgraded to 100mbps and most all of our expansion capacity was gone. We had survived this long using splitters to run two drops down the same physical cable. When we went 100mbps, that was no longer technically allowed. (Though, for short drops, it caused no errors according to our fancy test equipment.)

Now, just five years after moving into the building, I understand they are working on a plan to move some of the design desktops to gigabit (the company is a newspaper, by the way) ethernet. This will require much rewiring.

So, here's the lesson. Whatever you do, no matter how well you plan, it's only going to last a few years before you have to do it over again. My advice to you is simple. By the best you can afford of *today's* technology. Don't think you can out-guess technology.

Wireless is cool. However, it will be another couple years before it's ready for prime time. Don't waste your money on it now. By the time it's good, the stuff you've bought today will not be work with the new standard. In the meantime, you've spent a lot of money on something that doesn't work well.

Fiber... You don't want it to the desktop. You do want it for your backbone. The company I currently work for decided to run a pair of fiber to every desktop in the technology division back in 1997. Fiber was ultra-hot and there was a major remodeling project going on. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Here it is the end of 2000 and not a single one of the 120 rops has ever had light shined through it. The reason is simple... Fiber to the desktop is too darn expensive. It was cheaper to upgrade to 100mbps over copper than it was to put fiber NICs in all the machines. Not even our servers use fiber. Copper is just too cheap.

I won't say fiber will never make it to the desktop but that's the way I'd bet over the next five to seven years.

Buy the best copper you can afford. Make sure all your network drops terminate in a large wiring closet with plenty of cool air. Don't buy cheap networking hardware. Make sure you document everything. Plan on repeating this process in three to five years.

Good luck. Networking is cool.

InitZero

Re:Conduit!

[lizrd]

Good comments. In addition to having lots of laptop jacks in the classrooms and study areas, run cat 5 and 120v to the ceilings in these rooms. This will make things much easier for you when wireless really does take off. If you already have the cables and power in place it's just a matter of plugging in your access point to add wireless to your network.
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Re:Stay away from wireless

[Bryan Andersen]

Wireless has it's place in a university. It's for wearable and laptop conectivity, nothing else. Do all the rest with cat5 and fiber. Fiber between the network wireing closets, within and between buildings. Cat5 every where else. Any stationary computing device should be hooked up via cat5. Mobile devices like laptops can use wireless to remain connected. I'd have the hole campus covered by wireless for the laptops, but would not do any of the campus backbone in wireless if at all possible. Wireless can also be used to an extent for hard to wire buildings, but student labor is cheep.