Five Colleges, Incorporated: Dark Fiber Ring

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View construction photos, posted in the news area of this site:
Trenching Under I-91 (from 11/05)
Directional Bore on Cemetary Road in Hadley, MA (from 12/05)
New Poles at the Notch (from 12/05)
Pulling Cable in Springfield (from 2/06)
Placing Strand in Amherst (from 2/06)

Like many other colleges and universities in recent years, the Five Colleges (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst) are struggling with increasing demand and rising costs for network bandwidth. Inadequate local infrastructure in our rural area has contributed to the burgeoning cost of leased circuits to connect to the nearest significant points of access for Internet and Internet 2. Simultaneously, demand for Internet bandwidth has steadily grown as advances in computing speed and increasingly innovative software applications encourage teachers, researchers, and students to utilize online environments in their work. Projecting these two trends over the next decade demonstrates that the schools’ current arrangement for obtaining network bandwidth is not sustainable in the near future.

Responding to these issues, the Five College Board of Directors commissioned a study and report on the networking needs of the five schools and ways of addressing those needs collaboratively. The study results, ensuing discussions and an RFB issued in 2002 culminated in a decision to design and build a fiber optic network connecting the schools to each other and to a carrier-neutral facility in Springfield, Massachusetts. While many higher education institutions today are moving towards long-term fiber leases, responses to the Five College RFB proved it would be economically more favorable for the colleges to design and build a new facility. Five Colleges Incorporated created Five College Net, LLC to manage the new network, and in March of 2004 the LLC signed a contract for construction.

From it’s inception through the foreseeable future, the new facility will provide the bandwidth that is needed to support the research and higher education missions of the schools. When the project is completed in 2006, the schools will be able to connect to carrier services, Internet backbones, and other regional fiber networks from Springfield. The network will enable high-speed communications between the five campuses, the research and education community via the Abilene Network and Internet 2, the local communities via future fiber connections and the world via the commodity Internet. It will create exciting new opportunities for collaboration, research, and the instituting of best practices in computing and networking, all, while keeping costs to the schools steady.

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