The security and availability of Carleton’s internet service is key to the success of our thriving university, and its students, faculty, and staff members. Much like your broadband internet connection at home, Carleton has a series of physical connections that makes its on-campus networks possible.
The university’s reliance on its internet link has increased since the start of the pandemic, and so ITS has taken steps to enhance the capacity, security, and availability of this vital service.
Since March 2020, ITS has worked to increase our internet bandwidth from 12 GB of bandwidth to 20GB. That’s an increase of 40 per cent.
At the same time, a second geographically separate internet link was installed to ensure some level of service should one of the physical links be unavailable.
Protection Against DDoS Attacks
One major factor to consider when thinking about physical internet links and bandwidth is Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. You’ve probably seen them in the news – a malicious actor sends a staggering number of requests to a website with the aim of overwhelming it and causing disruption. You may not know it, but the physical internet connections discussed above, and the Internet Service Providers (ISP) that supplies the internet service through them, play a major role in preventing DDoS attacks. We’ve worked with our ISP to build rigorous DDoS protection into our physical connections since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“All of this preparation is building toward an eventual return to campus for students, faculty and staff, during which we expect an even greater demand for internet services,” says Bruce Clemmer, Director of Operations and Infrastructure.“Preparations are underway to expand and protect our network infrastructure to an even greater degree before this return.”
Meeting Network Needs, On- and Off-Campus
As the university expands its physical presence and research collaborations, there is a requirement to expand network services to meet this demand. ITS is working to extend Carleton’s network to the following remote sites: CU@Kanata in Kanata North; the Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre (CDCC); the uOttawa ORION point-of-presence (POP); and Invest Ottawa – 5G Core Connection.
This story is a part of ITS’s Year in Review for 2021/22. Read more at our Year in Review homepage, or follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #ITSYearinReview. Thanks for reading!