Building a campus-wide Ethernet network

The University of Saskatchewan is building one of the largest campuswide Ethernet networks in North America. A brief review of the history, progress to date, and lessons learned from this project is given. Issues such as performance in a large local area network (LAN) are addressed, including some measurements of actual performance in a multisegment network spanning the campus. Many of the real problems have to do with retrofitting old buildings with modern cable technology. Solutions are described that provide future flexibility at reasonable cost. Some examples of computer applications that are facilitated by such a network are included