In 2001, San Francisco voters approved $195 million in general obligation bonds to support facility expansion and infrastructure improvements at City College of San Francisco (CCSF), which provided more than 4,700 courses per semester to more than 106,000 students last year. In 2005, an additional $246.3 million in bonds were approved for further CCSF expansion and improvements.

With funding in hand, CCSF Chancellor Philip R. Day Jr. then outlined a strategic vision for the college: Prioritize improvements in the college’s communications technology infrastructure as strategic assets in order to advance the institution’s abilities to efficiently deliver educational value to the community. At the time, however, the college was experiencing reductions in educational funding, resulting in pressure to reduce operating costs.

Day recognized while some basic infrastructure upgrades were significant and necessary to move forward, other initiatives were needed in order to complete the long-term vision of fully preparing the college for a converged communications environment, while also reducing operational costs.

Day’s vision encompassed three moves–upgrading campus wiring, deploying a voice-over-IP (VoIP) communications solution and partnering with the city to build a fiber-optic ring connecting major campuses. His goal was to create a converged communications technology infrastructure capable of supporting and expanding the college’s voice, video and data needs for the foreseeable future. CCSF then would leverage those accomplishments to secure a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish an advanced network and IT training institute.

The challenge of implementing Day’s vision was placed squarely in the hands of the information technology services (ITS) department and ITS Director Doug Re and Network Manager Tim Ryan.

The first stage involved installing within each of the major campuses an intra-campus communications infrastructure with Category 5 copper and multimode fiber cabling.

Next came the convergence of voice and data networks. Data services between the main campus and eight major neighborhood campuses were provided by pairs of 3-Mbps T-1s and could not be easily expanded in desired increments. Internet access was provided by the California Community College system, but it was delivered via multiple T-1s and limited to 4.5 Mbps for the entire college.

Existing voice services were being provided by a legacy Centrex solution that contained a recurring monthly charge for each phone line, calling feature and voice mail box, in addition to usage charges for all calls–even those made to other CCSF phones.

voip network installed
In a competitive bidding process, CCSF selected Alcatel-Lucent’s OmniPCX Enterprise VoIP communications platform. Using the voter-approved bond funds, the VoIP network was implemented over a nine-month period. Approximately 2,000 VoIP handsets were deployed throughout the college to provide standardized feature sets and facilitate improved communications. An additional 1,000 virtual voice mailboxes were established for part-time faculty members in order to provide them with direct communication to their students and colleagues.

Telephone calls within a campus, which previously went via the Centrex solution through the public switched telephone network (PSTN), are now carried across campus LANs as IP traffic. Telephone calls between campuses are carried across the CCSF internal data network, also as IP traffic. Those calls no longer have to pass through telco networks and incur usage charges.

The college was able to cancel most of its Centrex services, resulting in operational cost savings of more than $400,000 annually and greater flexibility and control over moves, adds and changes. A complicated Centrex bill audit process was also reduced.

“Implementing the Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX solution allowed us to dramatically reduce our telecommunications operating expenses at a time when we were experiencing reductions in state funding,” says Ryan. “The new VoIP technology has enabled us to see measurable monthly cost savings, deliver enhanced communication services to our staff and faculty, and help position our school for a grant that has helped to further advance technology studies in our academic programs.”

While the voice modernization was under way, City College built a partnership with the city and county of San Francisco to install and monitor a fiber-optic network connecting its main campus with six initial neighborhood campuses and a communications collocation facility. CCSF paid the city’s department of telecommunications and information services (DTIS) to install 12 strands of singlemode fiber in a 35-mile ring, with exclusive usage and ownership for a 20-year period. This gave CCSF the ability to interconnect its campuses and offer enhanced communications services to each.

Additionally, the fiber ring connects to the city’s 911 emergency services center, where DTIS monitors the network 24/7. DTIS notifies CCSF staff of network problems and repairs any problems with the fiber plant. Two other major CCSF campuses will be added to the fiber ring when construction of those campuses is completed, one this year and the other in 2009. The city retains use of a portion of the fiber plant, which it can use to expand its public service network (to reach fire and police stations, libraries, other schools and public service buildings).

bandwidth increased
City College initially implemented Gigabit Ethernet (1 Gbps) service on one pair of the DTIS fibers using metro optical equipment from HP. This increased intercampus transport bandwidth from the 3 Mbps previously available and reduced the operating budget by about $40,000 per year for the T-1 services. That initial bandwidth is used to transport converged voice, data and video services between campuses and serves as the foundation and backbone for the school’s metro area network.

“The solution is well positioned for the future and within our control,” Ryan explains, “since almost infinite bandwidth can be deployed over the network by using additional fiber strands or deploying 10 Gigabit Ethernet, course or dense wave division multiplexing, synchronous optical network and storage area network equipment solutions.”

Finally, the fiber network also connects to a major data center and carrier hotel in San Francisco, operated by Digital Realty Trust, where City College can connect to a large number and variety of network and information technology service providers.

As CCSF continued to build out and refine its network to operate more efficiently and at lower costs, it found opportunities to increase bandwidth at no additional cost. Campus Internet connectivity is provided by the Corporation for Educational Network Initiatives in California (CENIC), a nonprofit organization that operates a network serving all K-20 schools in California with Internet connectivity and advanced network services. CCSF now connects to CENIC in the data center with a simple Gigabit Ethernet cross-connect.

The California Community College System agreed to increase the Internet bandwidth it provides to City College to 90 Mbps, based on college size and anticipated need, and the reduction in monthly recurring costs for the previous Internet access circuits. The balance of the gigabit circuit to CENIC is available for connectivity to Internet2, which is a consortium of more than 200 U.S. universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies. Total bandwidth to the Internet and Internet2 was therefore increased by 220 times (from 4.5 Mbps to 1 Gbps) at no additional cost to the school.

Alongside the initial network build out, CCSF looked for ways to leverage the infrastructure for academic benefit, as part of the initial vision. This was accomplished through its computer networking and information technology (CNIT) department, which offers more than 50 courses, 10 academic certificates, 10 industry certificates and an associate of science degree.

technology advances academics
In late 2005, CNIT was awarded a three-year, $750,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) advanced technology education grant to establish the Institute for Optical and Networking Systems (ICONS). ICONS is designed to improve the productivity of American workers by improving educator knowledge, skills and support systems, developing educational facilities and programs, and improving technician knowledge, instruction and training in the area of information and communications technology.

“The NSF grant enables us to use our technology infrastructure for academic purposes, ultimately expanding job-training opportunities in the emerging digital media and communications convergence industries,” says Ryan. “We are able to leverage our investments in the new phone system and the metro area network for the benefit of our students.”

One of CCSF’s metro ring fiber pairs is set aside for student instruction. Students in CNIT’s new, ICONS-developed fiber-optics course are able to get real-world, hands-on experience with a 35-mile optical fiber ring (e.g., measuring the network with optical time division reflectometers). Students in CNIT’s VoIP course are able to get hands-on, real-world exposure to a system with more than 2,000 phones deployed across nine campuses, in addition to experience with Cisco equipment in the Cisco Networking Academy lab.

ICONS works to assure that its efforts are optimally relevant to industry and community through an advisory panel, which consists of telecommunications service providers (including AT&T, Comcast, IPNetworks, Broadwing and Telekenex), equipment providers (including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Juniper and HP), government, public and private enterprises, nonprofits, standards bodies and other educational institutions.

“CCSF is fortunate to have the support of many private and corporate organizations in an ongoing partnership as part of an advisory panel to make that happen and develop new curriculum related to communications convergence,” comments Ryan.

Building on its technical momentum, City College is currently in beta tests with strategic partners and ICONS advisory panel members Alcatel-Lucent and Telekenex to reduce legacy connections to the PSTN, replacing them with session initiation protocol (SIP) trunks. With its own fiber network and IP telephone system, CCSF can transport its telephone calls as IP traffic to its main data center and hand that traffic via a standard Ethernet cross-connect to Telekenex, rather than pay for separate connections to the telephone network at each campus, further reducing operating expenses. The Cisco Networking Academy labs will also be connected to the SIP trunk solution to teach students how to work with this emerging technology.

“We recognize communication as an underlying key to human productivity and advancement,” Ryan offers. “With the full support of the community, the college has embraced modern communications technology and put it to efficient use in our administrative and academic environments.”

James B. Jones is a consultant who assisted City College of San Francisco in forming its partnership with the city and county of San Francisco, and in building CCSF’s optical network.

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