Information Technology and Services

Progress is steady with an aggressive summer schedule ahead

Winter and Spring saw the completion of Network Master Plan (NMP) upgrades of Steele Hall in February, and Crouse College in April. These buildings are each more than a century old (Steele Hall was built in 1898, Crouse College in 1889) and their classic construction offered many challenges.

ITS’s Network and Wiring Services (NWS) group is putting finishing touches on cutting the Women's Building over to its newly installed infrastructure. That effort has taken quite some time and is expected to be complete by the end of June. The contract for NMP construction work in the Hawkins Warehouse was recently awarded, with construction starting in 804 University Ave. and 111 Waverly Ave. by July.

NMP construction began in Huntington Hall in mid-March, with completion anticipated by the start of the Fall semester. Huntington will be a busy place for the NMP effort as Campus Planning, Design, and Construction (CPDC) ramps up its renovation project there. Huntington will be getting a dramatic, fully accessible entrance on Marshall Street, designed by Jonathan Lott, Assistant Professor at SU’s School of Architecture, as well as a first-floor commons area for public and student gatherings, and a conference hall. Built in 1915, it’s another example of the challenges of classic construction.

In addition to the inside wiring effort, there’s an aggressive schedule for outside construction this summer. The underground conduit system build-out will be the largest ITS has funded in over 20 years. This system will facilitate placement of fiber optic cabling to buildings that have not been served by the University network and have instead relied on leased facilities for their service. This includes Washington Arms, the Chancellor’s Residence and Lyons Hall. In addition, underground conduit infrastructure is being installed to serve locations that will need video surveillance in the future.

The final redesign phase for the underground fiber optic network was started last winter, in the wake of the installation of a great deal of fiber optic cable last summer to connect Machinery Hall and the Center for Science and Technology to the “core” campus buildings. This phase required a deep analysis of how the existing system was distributed and a complete rethinking of how buildings should be served with a more logical, more planned distribution approach. This planning resulted in a complete redesign of the campus’s underground fiber distribution system, and this summer's fiber effort will extend more than 75,000 feet of fiber from the core buildings to each building on Main Campus. Both academic and residential buildings will be served with this effort. The project goal is to get to every building before the end of the construction season this year, understanding that there are likely to be a few stragglers that will be reached next year.

The completion of the underground fiber rebuild next year will see the overlay of redundant fiber to all buildings on Main Campus, at which point the entire Main Campus underground distribution system will have been completely overhauled to provide redundancy and survivability that's never been possible before. Quite a feat!

Stay tuned to IT Connections for future updates and, as always, if you have questions, visit the NMP website or contact Dennis Punch at dtpunch@syr.edu or x3245.