Internet
Connection Upgrade
This summer, Computing and Network Services will be upgrading
Drew's Internet connection, as well as moving from our current Internet
provider to NJEdge. We will be upgrading
from our current 9 megabits per second service to 20 megabits per second
service.
This is a singificant change to our network connectivity and requires
changes to our network infrastructure and network numbering. Significantly,
all client PCs on the network will have to be renumbered. They will be
numbered with a private addressing scheme, which will improve client
security as well as relieve problems of running out of Internet addresses.
For most clients, this will happen automatically when the computer receives
its address on bootup, and will not require you to make any other changes.
Faculty and staff who have been using their Internet Protocol (IP) address
to talk to their computer either on or off-campus will need to contact
us
at
cns@drew.edu so that we can plan for the migration and preserve services,
or work with you to develop alternate methods of access.
We also will be upgrading the equipment that connects us to the Internet.
We will be installing a new firewall which will allow us to have VPN
capabilities into the Drew network for users connecting with broadband,
and will also allow us to more dynamically change our filtering rules
to respond to security issues and improve end-user functionality. We
will discuss these changes more over the coming weeks.
Our current schedule is as follows:
| Late May-early June |
Finish configuration of new equipment
|
| June 21st |
Connect NJEDge connection, test connectivity to NJEdge. Once connection
is verified, move student subnets (which were reconfigured for private
addresses earlier this year) to use new connections. |
| June 21st-July 13th |
Reconfigure faculty/staff areas to use new dynamic addresses and
new Internet connection. Reconfigure network printers to point to
new addresses. Work with faculty and staff who are using services
dependent on known internal IP addresses to migrate to new infrastructure |
| July 13th-July 20th |
Check for traffic on old Internet connection, isolate and identify
computers not communicating over new connection and configure properly.
|
| July 20th |
Shut down connection to old Internet provider. All connections
will be through new Internet service. |
During the transition, all servers and services will remain available
from on and off-campus. Since we have about 1 month of overlap where
both connections are active, we will be able to smoothly migrate to
the new connection as our new connection information propagates over
the Internet.
We hope that the increase in available Internet bandwidth will resolve
issues we had last fall, and that our Internet connection will be more
functional for academic and institutional work. Work that will be disruptive
will be completed on nights and weekends. We will announce at least 24
hours in advance which buildings will be changed over so that customers
can shut down machines or make other arrangements. There will be no
other downtime or configuration for most users.
If you have any questions about our Internet service upgrade, please
email cns@drew.edu.
|
