Success Stories

Harding Band Building

"We’ve leapfrogged from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century at the flip of the switch."

—Scott W. Schwartz, associate professor of library administration and archivist for the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music

Being able to download and share music and historical music documents faster is usually a good way to get in trouble with the CITES Security team.

But for the faculty and staff at the University’s School of Music and the University Library’s Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, researching, downloading and sharing music, past and present, is all in a day’s work.

At the A. A. Harding Band Building, Scott W. Schwartz, associate professor of library administration and archivist for the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music, and Dr. Kenneth R. Steinsultz, assistant to the director of bands, use UIUCnet extensively to research new and old music and share music with colleagues, both on- and off-campus.

Now that they can research, download and share at speeds that are orders of magnitude faster thanks to the Campus Network Upgrade Project, they’re dreaming up innovative new ways to approach music scholarship, research, and archiving.

Although it’s not the kind of music that you could typically find on iTunes, the files are just as large (if not larger) than most commercial music files and take just as much time to download (if not longer). Especially if you’re using the equivalent of a 10 kilobits per second (kbps) modem connection, which was what they were using at Harding until last spring.

“Before the upgrade, it seemed like we had two tin cans and a string,” Schwartz said. “The length of time we’d typically have to wait to download or send anything was interminable. I would start downloading a file from the Library’s server from across the street in the evening and I was lucky if I might have it on my desktop the next morning.”

As an archivist, Schwartz found the limitations of the existing network frustrating, and not conducive to the preservation work and scholarship the Center performs on a daily basis.

“It used to be that for any big uncompressed file – WAVs and TIFFs, which are the profession’s standard formats for original preservation files – it would be more time-efficient for me to walk to the library and copy it rather than clog the network,” he said. “From a preservation point-of-view, those were serious challenges for us.”

Now, thanks to the upgraded network, Schwartz says “we’ve leapfrogged from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century at the flip of the switch.” All desktop computers at Harding are operating at speeds of up to 100 Mbps, with 1 Gbps connections for select researchers who churn out large chunks of data.

“If I want to download a WAV file,” Steinsultz said, “I don’t have to wait all day or all night for the file to transfer. It’s on my desktop in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.”

With the increased bandwidth and connectivity, new and innovative uses of the Sousa Archives collections and new University Bands sound recordings and programming are being developed, as well as new avenues for research and collaboration are beginning to be explored.

“The staff of the Sousa Archives and University Archives have been jointly developing a new open-source collections management software program over the past three years that’s gaining national and international recognition in the archives profession,” Schwartz said. “The improved network in the Harding building has greatly improved our ability to work with our colleagues in the Main Library across the street.”

With the increased speed and bandwidth available from the upgrade, Schwartz hopes to bring greater automated interactivity to the Center’s museum exhibits, something that hasn’t been done on campus yet.

“In the museum space, now that we have wireless,” he said, “we’ll be able to automate certain exhibitions. Providing some form of automated interactivity for our exhibits may help our visitors to become actively engaged with our historical collections. This is something that we haven’t tapped into yet, but it’s an important goal for us.”

With increased UIUCnet wireless coverage, teaching in a large classroom setting has become easier for Steinsultz.

“Now that we have wireless throughout the building, our students are able to do presentations and research in real-time,” he said. “It also allows me to go online while I’m teaching and show them things with my laptop.”

Both Schwartz and Steinsultz have nothing but praise for all the workers involved with Harding’s upgrade.

“All the work was done very well – very timely, very professionally,” Steinsultz said. “If they were going to do particularly noisy work, they would check with us ahead of schedule to make sure it was okay. They were efficient, friendly, and professional.”

“The guys worked around rehearsal schedules, and the noise was kept to a minimum when it was important to do so,” Schwartz said. “They were very unobtrusive. Everyone worked as a team to make the construction go as smoothly as possible. It was flawless, as far as I can tell.”

The only thing Schwartz wants to know now is: “When are we going to terabit?”

Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations

"Before...there was no way to back up our data with the 10 Mbps feed in our building. Once our building was upgraded, we were able to back up our data with no problems."

—Mark Johnson, ILIR

For Mark Johnson, manager of system services with the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations (ILIR), the Campus Network Upgrade Project has helped ILIR’s networking needs in numerous ways, but none more so than with basic file backup.

“Before, we were limited in that there was no way to back up our data with the 10 Mbps feed in our building,” he said. “Once our building was upgraded, we were able to back up all of our data with no problems.”

Previously, no one at ILIR moved data to a shared server because “it was too slow,” he said. “Now, if a computer goes down, it’s not the end of the world because their data is backed up on the shared server.”

Another advantage to having an upgraded building is the ease of sharing data with peer universities and institutions.

“We can share data with our colleagues at Cornell University a lot easier than before the upgrade. Previously, we had to mail them a disc of files. Now, we can just share it with them over our high-speed connection.”

Department of Crop Sciences

“It used to take eight to twelve hours to image the computers in our teaching lab....Now, I can do it in under 25 minutes....We can simply do a lot more now than we could before the upgrade.”

—Charlie Smyth, Dept. of Crop Sciences

Charlie Smyth, manager of system services for the Department of Crop Sciences, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES), said the network upgrade to Turner Hall represents a huge saving in terms of time and reliability.

“It used to take eight to 12 hours to image the computers in our teaching lab, and I would constantly have to worry about crashing our network,” he said. “We had three different sets of network hardware plus software that didn’t play well together and could bring down the network if used incorrectly.”

Now, with uniform hardware and software along with better switches and wiring through the Campus Network Upgrade Project, Smyth can do it in under 25 minutes and doesn’t have to worry about crashing the network. Smyth also noted that the increased connectivity brought about by the upgrade has also led to greater ease in moving and sharing data to other parts of campus.

“Now, we have servers in three buildings plus a server at the South Farms that can all work together seamlessly,” he said. “We can simply do a lot more now than we could before the upgrade.”

Campus Network Upgrade Project