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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Breaking News -
Networking:
Foundry To Provide Infrastructure
For UIUC Research Center
Foundry Networks Inc, a performance and total solutions leader for
end-to-end
switching and routing, announced it was selected to provide network
infrastructure for a new, state-of the art technology education and research
facility at the University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Opening in
April 2004, the 225,000-square-foot Thomas M. Siebel Center for Computer
Science will use Foundry's FastIron Layer 2/3 modular switches and Foundry's
industry-leading ServerIron Layer 4-7 switches to provide network switching
and network load balancing throughout the building. The Siebel Center network
will support advanced research applications and "ubiquitous networking" in
which students and researchers have reliable, "anytime-anywhere" access to
information. The new facility will house 1,800 students, educators and
researchers and accommodate the current expansion of UI's Computer Science
Department, which is renowned for the contributions its students and alumni
have made in advancing technology, from providing the inspiration for HAL in
"2001: A Space Odyssey" via the ILLIAC IV, to the invention of groundbreaking
computing applications such as the first Internet graphics browser.
"We designed the Siebel Center to be most technologically advanced,
collaborative computer science research facility at any University in the
world-it will be a living laboratory for prototyping systems and technologies
that will shape the future. To achieve these ambitious goals we needed an
extremely flexible, scalable and reliable network infrastructure," said Chuck
Thompson, manager of systems services for Computer Science. "UIUC is home to
some of the world's brightest and best computing minds. To support their
advanced research, we demanded a high performance network with sophisticated
management capabilities. Foundry offered the most attractive price/performance
and the best solution to fulfill our requirements."
The Siebel Center will support a seamless network of thousands of
multimedia
appliances and provide Gigabit to the desktop connections for hundreds of
network nodes. It will feature advanced network security and manageability
functions, including Foundry's hardware-based network monitoring feature,
sFlow, which provides wire-speed, 24-7 network management and monitoring
without adding latency. All classrooms at the Siebel Center will be fully
automated and equipped with digital audio/video capture, wireless networking,
and future HDTV displays. Information technology infrastructure in the Center
was designed in from the beginning, with embedded computers outside of offices
and laboratories, streaming multimedia and tracking, all connected by wireless
and high-speed wired networks for distributed collaboration and
adaptation.
The Siebel Center network will use Foundry's FastIron 1500 Layer 2/3
network
switches from the wiring closet to the data center core to provide high speed
switching capability and Foundry's ServerIron 800 Layer 4-7 switches to
provide sophisticated network load balancing and security functions. The
Siebel Center network designers particularly valued the Foundry solution for
its wire-speed, non-blocking core switching capability, and Foundry's 802.1X
port authentication features.
"UIUC is the birthplace of some of the computing and networking industry's
most innovative and disruptive ideas, and we are pleased to provide a
high-performance Foundry network to support a new generation of researchers,"
said Ken Cheng, vice president of marketing at Foundry. "UIUC is exemplary of
the world-class higher education organizations around the world that rely on
Foundry networking infrastructure to support their teaching, research and
communication applications."
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