There is alot in IT&S that most people never see...wires, cables, switches, servers, etc that make this campus communicate internally as well as to the outside world. It's not magic as some may believe :)
So we thought the campus would enjoy seeing some of the behind the scenes images and work that IT&S does, so that you get a better understanding of what it takes to make things happen.
The first in an ongoing series we will bring to you are photos of the recent Bryan Hall Switch Replacement that networks and systems undertook while everyone was away enjoying Fall Break. Thanks go to Eddie Asad, Merritt Johnson and Brian McCaffrey for their hard work.
The first thing they had to do was unrack all of the old network switches.
Secondly they had to individually test 300 cables (for every connection in the switch rack). Out of the 300 cables that had to be tested, only 1 was bad and replaced, but what people don't realize is even one bad cable would have caused issues for a student. Thank you Bryan residents...your ping pong table came in handy for this.
During the cable testing process, the new switches were being configured and readied for the rack mount.
Finally, the switches are rack mounted, and the cables put back into place. The uplinks between the switches are now full duplex - 1000Mbps (they were half duplex before). What does that mean? Much better throughput connectivity on the network for Bryan residents.