The University of Montana CyberInfrastructure Plan (2009-2014)
The University of Montana (UM) provides network service to all resident and affiliate campus
constituents to support both education and research needs. The service is high speed, resilient, and highly
availability in its connections to national research and education networks (NRENs). Over the last several
years, UM has been a leader in the development of the Northern Tier Network (NTN), which serves as the
core of UM’s external connectivity. However, full utilization of UM’s twin 10GB, geographically diverse
paths from campus users to external entities has not been realized due to limited throughput at the campus
edge and limited connectivity from campus buildings to the campus core. The next major step in the
University’s cyberinfrastructure plan must be to extend the requisite bandwidth across the campus edge
all the way to campus buildings, in order to facilitate complete end-to-end pathways for on-campus, highvolume data users.
UM is currently “well connected” externally. UM’s share of the NTN provides 10GB capacity within
Montana, as well as separate 10GB links east and west to NREN connection points in Seattle and
Minneapolis. An additional redundant path is provided to Salt Lake City, and a true disaster/recovery
capability is implemented for commodity access through a local vendor. Peering relationships with
contiguous states have been put in place through the Northern Wave and connections to the Utah
Educational Network.
The UM border network is an aggregation of redundant routers and servers supporting multiple 10GB
connections between the campus core and the NTN. An affiliate campus network (AFN) provides
connectivity to geographically non-contiguous UMT units. Individual connections currently range from
adequate to totally inadequate with differences largely due to site-specific bandwidth challenges. In
particular, UM seeks to remedy lack of connectivity to the Missoula College west campus and the
Lubrecht Experimental Forest to better facilitate education and research at those sites.
UM has been allocating funds annually for a number of years to upgrade internal and external
connectivity, and progress has been made, but connectivity needs continue to grow as fast as upgrades can
be implemented. FY13 funding was largely allocated to upgrade the campus firewall to 16GB throughput
and to extending the resiliency and efficiency of the border network. FY14 funding will be used to
upgrade to “redundant, paired” routers at each of the two core sites and to implement an urgently needed,
new central data center. But while progress will continue on many fronts, an ongoing issue is limited
connectivity across the campus edge and at the building level. Depending on the building, a user may
connect at 100MB or 1GB, but may then share from 100MB to 1GB total connectivity from all building
users to the core. The target for the next round of upgrades is 1GB to the desktop for all users, all
buildings, with dual 10GB links connecting each building to the core.
UM has a sustainable operational model for equipment maintenance. A central account, IT Utilities, is
used to collect and fund campus-wide ongoing expenses, facilitating service continuity.
IPV6: Work began on an IPv6 implementation in 2010 but firewall limitations delayed full deployment of
the system. A 2013 purchase of a higher-throughput firewall will allow the IPv6 project to be completed,
with full campus availability, by summer, 2013.
PerfSONAR: In cooperation with Dr. Ray Ford’s research group in Computer Science, UM network
personnel and researchers have several PerfSONAR stations deployed and in use for preliminary
experimentation. As yet no such station is deployed as a general campus facility (i.e. as a source of local
connection “speed tests”) but such a system is scheduled for deployment during summer, 2013.
InCommon: UM currently uses several InCommon services and is engaged in a process of upgrading its
local identity management so it can participate more fully in InCommon’s cross-organizational
authorization and authentication services, with an implementation target of the end of FY14.
The University of Montana CyberInfrastructure Plan (2009-2014)
The University of Montana CyberInfrastructure Plan (2009-2014)
The University of Montana CyberInfrastructure Plan (2009-2014)
The University of Montana CyberInfrastructure Plan (2009-2014)