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Home > INNOVATOR 2005: Case Western Reserve University
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INNOVATOR 2005: Case Western Reserve University
7/28/2005
| INNOVATION: | INNOVATOR: |
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| OneCleveland: A Model for Community Networking | Case Western Reserve University/ CWRU CIO Lev Gonick |
Challenge
In January 2003,
Case Western Reserve University’s (OH) then-new
President, Edward M. Hundert, challenged university leadership to engage with
the community, and help Case become the best university neighbor any city ever
had. Lev Gonick, Case’s CIO and VP/IT Services, clarifies Hundert’s vision that
Case should be a major contributor to the vitality of the inner city, and also
serve as a catalytic agent for overcoming the digital divide: “OneCleveland has
been informed by a mission to be a big, bold, 21st century, community-oriented
project that delivers advanced information technology capabilities to achieve
community priorities for economic development, learning, job training, research
support, preeminence, and distinction.”
Technology Choice/Project Design
OneCleveland began as an extension of the Case gigabit IP network. Gonick offers
the technical details: The Layer 3 (L3) network, designed with the assistance
of Cisco Systems (
www.cisco.com)
and now managed by Case partners at IBM (
www.ibm.com),
is built on an all-fiber-optic infrastructure capable of handling growth. Today,
OneCleveland and its subscribers move gigabit-speed routing between the nearly
100 institutional subscribers and their respective multi-building facilities,
accounting for more than 300 Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series switches. The network
architecture consists of multiple 10 Gbps core and distribution L3 switches with
multiple 1 Gbps uplinks to the address. OneCleveland’s network interconnects with
Case as metropolitan area networks (MANs) building an L3 core, which will utilize
Dense Wavelength- Division Multiplexing (DWDM) with 1-Gbps connections at the
edge where subscribers join. Dual paths throughout make the network highly resilient
and reliable. Gonick is watching the growing number of institutions within the
OneCleveland community that are now making free public wireless services available
as an additional layer of mobile connectivity at various museums and city, county,
health care, and education facilities. Partnerships with OARnet, Platform Labs,
Internet2, NLR, and the emerging OH1 provide OneCleveland’s subscribers either
direct or aggregated access to these key regional and national transportation
systems. Commodity Internet-bound traffic today approximates 500 Mb/sec and is
scalable.
Key Players
Initially conceived and driven by Gonick, the design and rollout of the OneCleveland
gigabit network effectively delivers nearly unlimited bandwidth to community partners
(subscribers), helping to create a network and platform for innovation and provocative
application development. Gonick offers a brief history and profile of OneCleveland:
The initial OneCleveland Board includes partners from higher education—Case Western
Reserve University,
