Since the beginning of January, Educational Technology Services has been performing numerous upgrades to the college's network infrastructure. These upgrades will provide the next generation backbone for data and voice communications at the college. During this transitional period, network outages have been required to make these improvements to our systems.
Most recently, the firewall was replaced with a new Cisco firewall. This firewall is a central system which controls the filtering and flow of data across the network. The previous firewall, although only four years old, was not sophisticated enough to manage the complexity of our data transmissions, powerful enough to support our upcoming voice communication systems upgrade nor intelligent enough to provide a secure network.
The transition to the new Cisco firewall platform required a totally new network design. The Communications and Network Services Team have converted all connections "to and from" the college to flow through the new firewall. Their efforts have resulted in the largest network upgrade the college has ever experienced, and will facilitate data and voice communications for years to come. They have made every effort to minimize network downtime and outages. We appreciate your patience as we work towards providing a more stable and efficient communications system for the college community.
Benefits of the New System
*The Cisco Firewall is capable of filtering data traffic up to five times faster than the previous firewall.
*Digital information will be more secure than with the previous solution.
*The new Cisco firewall will be more stable, with less downtime as it connects directly to the core network.
*Upgrading to the new Cisco firewall provides uniformity between a single network vendor and firewall solution.
*Troubleshooting firewall-related problems has become easier and more efficient than with the previous firewall.
Dr. Jeff Bartkovich
Educational Technology Services
01/23/2006 |