Status of current CITES projects

Two of the major IT projects and initiatives are listed on this page. More will be added to the list soon.

• Campus Network Upgrade Project
• Intercampus Communications Network (ICCN)

Campus Network Upgrade Project

CITES is currently just over three years into the Campus Network Upgrade Project, an ambitious five-year, $20-million initiative that began in late 2004 to upgrade more than 260 campus buildings with the latest in state-of-the-art data networking technology.

To date, 56 percent of the project’s net-assignable square footage has been completed.  Work continues today so that by 2010 every building on campus will be equipped with a data network orders of magnitude faster, more reliable and secure than pre-2004 campus levels.  This will allow the University to stay competitive with the networking capabilities of peer research universities and plant the seeds for future growth in order to meet the changing needs of the campus and evolving networking technology.

• To find out what’s new with the project, check out the Campus Network Upgrade Project page.
• For a complete run-down of the project’s progress, see the Building Status page, where you can also track an individual building’s progress and review data from the project.
• For the most up-to-date progress, jump to the Detailed Building Status table (updated frequently).
• Read the Campus Network Upgrade Project Report, a snapshot of the progress CITES made at the halfway point of the project. (Published: May 2007)

Responsibility for the planning and implementation of the upgrade is being coordinated by CITES, who along with the Office of the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs is working with administrators from each college and major unit on campus to determine the order in which the over 260 buildings on campus will be completed in the five-year timeframe.

As a vital strategic resource, the campus network (also known as “UIUCnet”) is an essential component of everyday life at Illinois.  UIUCnet is the spinal cord in the central nervous system of our University, a key piece of the campus’s core infrastructure that virtually everyone on campus—students, faculty, staff—has come to depend on for carrying out the University’s mission of education, research, economic development, and public engagement.

Intercampus Communications Network (ICCN)

Implemented in late 2007, the Intercampus Communications Network (ICCN) is a high-speed data network that:

• Acts as the Internet service provider for UIUCnet.
• Connects all three University campuses – Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield – in a high-availability, redundant, and cost-efficient manner.
• Offers the University (and select constituents) access to bandwidth orders of magnitude greater than before for only a marginal cost increase.

Both the ICCN and the Campus Network Upgrade Project provide the framework for inventive and imaginative research possibilities on campus and for collaboration with institutions and researchers around the world. 

By using this bandwidth in concert with the shared Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) infrastructure, the ICCN affords the University the necessary capacity to connect the three campuses to each other and to research networks and peer universities at much higher speeds than was possible before.

The ICCN fiber will also connect to existing fiber rings in Chicago that are co-owned by the CIC, which includes all Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago.  The CIC fiber rings connect with all the major telecommunications carriers and all the major research networks' Points of Presence (POPs).

• To see what’s new with the ICCN, check out the ICCN project page.