The campus LAN is Ethernet-based, supporting a range of network protocols such as TCP/IP, IPX/SPX and AppleTalk.

Fibre optics forms the main core of the backbone cabling infrastructure, linking together various buildings and large departments. Within departments, twisted-pair (also known as 10BaseT or UTP) and co-axial (also known as 10Base2, BNC or thin ethernet) cabling provides network connectivity to end users. Most departments should now be using UTP connections, with BNC having been replaced with refurbishment work

The campus network is expanding all the time. Many departments are installing additional network cabling, or upgrading their existing ones, and more network switches are to be installed. There are also plans to wire up individual student rooms in Halls of Residence.

All recently installed and upgraded departmental cabling would be of Category 5 twisted-pair type, capable of transmitting packets at 100 MBits per second (Mbps). To achieve this performance, equipment at both ends of the cabling must be capable of running at such speed. Typically, newer servers and network equipment such as ethernet switches scattered across departments are running at 100 Mbps. Twisted-pair cabling of lower categories and co-axial cabling are running at 10 Mbps. At the moment, the majority of end-user computers regardless of the type of cabling used are running at 10 MBits per second.

The campus LAN offers a range of standard services to end users, including access to electronic mail(email), USENET news and World Wide Web(WWW). A number of Sun SPARC servers running Solaris 2.6 provide the background foundation of these services.

New users may find doucuments such as The Email Abuse FAQ, Network Etiquette by Emily Postnews]] and World Wide Web FAQ useful as part of their introductory reading. Microsoft Exchange and Pegasus Mail are the main email agents used within the campus network; whereas Novell Netware is used for file- and printer-sharing.

Caching is becoming commonplace on the World Wide Web. Copies of web pages and related objects are stored for repeated references, instead of having to fetch them each time they are referred to. The advantage is to conserve network bandwidth and to improve response time.

With charging on transatlantic traffic introduced recently, caching is being seen as one way of managing WWW traffic. Caching can be done locally on end user computers, across campuses or nationally within JANET. Popular WWW browsers, such as Netscape and Internet Explorer, have caching facility built-in, which is easily configurable by users.

The University has a WWW cache server available to all users on campus (wwwcache.swan.ac.uk). There is also a backup server running which should automatically switch over if the main server fails. Both of the UWS servers are linked to two national cache servers within JANET, one is operated by the University of Manchester and the other by the Loughborough University.

SuperJANET is a project within the Joint Academic Network (JANET) to replace the backbone network with a high quality and high speed network, which will take the UK academic and research community into the next millennium.

The final phase of the SuperJANET project (SuperJANET III) has recently been completed. A 34 Mbps ATM circuit is connecting the South Wales MAN to JANET and two 45 Mbps circuits connecting JANET to North America.

Charging on transatlanic network traffic has just been introduced to fund this extra bandwidth to North America.

The South Wales MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) is one of the many regional networks within JANET and the first broadband network in Wales. It is operated by the South Wales MAN consortium whose members include:

• University of Wales Swansea
• University of Wales Cardiff
• University of Wales College of Newport
• University of Wales College of Medicine
• University of Wales Institute Cardiff
• University of Glamorgan
• Swansea Institute of Higher Education

Member institutions communicate with each other via a 155 Mbps ATM circuit.

RSC Wales is a support service supporting the Further Education sector, and some smaller Higher Education Institutions, in Wales in the use of Information and Learning Technology (ILT) for teaching and learning. This support might include the use of technology in the classroom or the platform by means learning is delivered or the technical infrastructure on which the institution depends.

This is copy of a document originally provided by the Library and Information Service at Swansea University which used to be located on an old version of the LIS web site. I have copied it here to ensure that it is preserved for posterity.

Modification Date:02 June 2006 ©UWS Library and Information Services | LIS Web Team