Researchers based at academic institutions in the Keystone State and beyond now have access to a faster Internet connection than they did before.
Drexel University in Philadelphia and the Three Rivers Optical Exchange in Pittsburgh recently joined up to quintuple the bandwidth available through their high-speed Internet hubs. The partnership resulted in faster access to Internet2, a high-speed network available to researchers and educators at colleges, laboratories and government agencies. Drexel and Three Rivers had one-gigabit connections to Internet2 before but now have five-gigabit connections.
Kenneth Blackney, Drexel’s associate VP for core technology infrastructure, says the university and Three Rivers wanted to increase their Internet2 bandwidth, but increasing it to 10 gigabits at each place was too expensive. For that reason they split the 10 gigabits between them. He would not say how much the bandwidth increase cost.
And the partnership benefits researchers beyond Philly and Pittsburgh. Between them the two hubs provide Internet2 access to Penn State, Pennsylvania’s 14 state-owned universities, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and West Virginia University.
“Suddenly, a lot of people have a lot faster Internet,” Blackney says.
John Bielec, chief information officer at Drexel, says researchers can now process large quantities of data more easily and collaborate with those in faraway locations.
Sources: John Bielec and Kenneth Blackney, Drexel University
Writer: Rebecca VanderMeulen