Ohio State and Florida battle for basketball and network supremacy

As the defending NCAA men's basketball champion Florida Gators prepare for another Final Four, the University of Florida IT department in Gainesville is busy overseeing the operations of a statewide optical network that links the 11 state universities and will connect the UF physics department to data from Switzerland's Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator opening later this year.

IT executives at Ohio State University, which lost to Florida in January’s national football title game but may have a chance for revenge in the Final Four, are themselves busy building a Wi-Fi network on the Columbus campus that within five years could have as many as 10,000 access points and support 100,000 users simultaneously.

With the sports world preparing for another Ohio State-Florida national championship game (that is, if both teams win on Saturday), Network World decided to examine the schools’ respective IT departments. Georgetown and UCLA declined to participate, but here are Q&As we conducted via e-mail with Bob Corbin, director of telecommunications and networking for the Office of Information Technology at The Ohio State University, and Marc Hoit, interim CIO and professor of civil and coastal engineering at the University of Florida.

First up, Bob Corbin:

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What is the coolest network project you have underway right now?

We are actively building out a Wi-Fi network on the Columbus campus that will reach over 300 buildings, 25 million square feet, and 1,700 acres. The network could scale to 10,000 access points and support 100,000 simultaneous users within five years. Currently we have over 2,500 Aruba access points installed, with 100% of our residence halls covered with wireless. The network is being designed to support 802.11a/b/g and voice services.

We are also working on upgrading our Nortel SL100 voice switch to support VoIP. We have an active search ongoing for a viable fixed mobile convergence solution. And the Office of the CIO is leading the design and installation of a new Student Information System.