Benefits of the ICCN

How does the ICCN benefit the University of Illinois?

The benefits of the Intercampus Communications Network (ICCN) are numerous, and the ICCN plays a significant role in furthering the academic and research missions of the university.

Benefits of the ICCN include:

  • The ability to connect all three University campuses in a high-availability, redundant, and cost-efficient manner.

  • Much lower levels of latency, a critical factor for the bandwidth-intensive applications prevalent in academia.

  • Better network reliability for videoconferencing systems.

  • An added layer of protection and redundancy against equipment failure.

  • Increased network capacity for the academic and research needs of scholars and researchers, including access to innovative programs (e.g., digital libraries, indices, and databases) and web-based services for bandwidth-intensive applications such as streaming media for online learning applications.

  • Greater flexibility, scalability, and reliability for configuring future telecommunications needs, allowing the University to make decisions based on need rather than cost.

  • Major per-unit cost savings for bandwidth.

With the ICCN, the University has access to 500 times as much bandwidth for just three to four times the cost of commercial circuits. The University also manages the ICCN, which ultimately allows for greater flexibility and adaptability.

A University-owned and managed fiber network allows academic, research, and administrative units access to:

  • High reliability and performance telecommunications among the campuses.

  • University sites in the Chicago area.

  • Peer and partner universities.

  • Research laboratories and centers.

  • Agencies and companies located on the commercial Internet.

  • The academic Internet2 network, and the next generation National LambdaRail.

Success Stories

Increased reliability through the ICCN helps VideoWorks@WILL-TV

Even though it's only been active since late 2007, the ICCN has already been helping VideoWorks@WILL-TV, the for-hire video production unit of the public broadcasting service of the University of Illinois, stay glitch-free with its live studio video and audio feeds.

According to Jeff Cunningham, videographer-editor for VideoWorks, anytime UIUCnet traffic spiked, the video and audio quality would degrade significantly.

"We would see glitches in the audio and video feed and we used to get complaints about the video or audio freezing or dropping out entirely from our broadcasting partners", he said.

For example, before the ICCN activation, when UI men's basketball coach Bruce Weber needed to be uplinked for live telecasts on ESPN or FoxSportsNet, the feed from Campbell Hall would periodically experience problems, especially during times when other units on campus were also sending large chunks of data (such as administrative data between the Urbana and Chicago campuses) over the network.

But not anymore. Thanks to the ICCN's vastly-increased ability to transmit crystal-clear video and audio through its fiber-optic cable at speeds far faster than before, VideoWorks is now able to feed a sharp, reliable signal to its broadcasting partners, who in turn transmit the signal to the news media outlet requesting it.

Since the ICCN implementation, VideoWorks' video feed has been virtually glitch-free.

"I don't think we've had one actual problem", Cunningham said. "It's been much more reliable because we can have dedicated bandwidth on the ICCN — it doesn't go up and down according to traffic, and we don't have to worry sharing it with other units. We have our bandwidth and nobody is interfering with it."