Internet Connectivity

Demand for Internet bandwidth at Carnegie Mellon continues to increase. Computing Services constantly monitors our external connection and profiles traffic to ensure reasonable connectivity. Currently we are averaging approximately 120Mbps incoming traffic from the commodity Internet, and 100Mbps outgoing.

Network Bandwidth

Our campus Internet connection comes to us through the Three Rivers Optical Exchange (3ROX), a consortium of Carnegie Mellon, Penn State, University of Pittsburgh, and other participants. It's operated by the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center.

Currently the participants share the following bandwidth:

Commodity Internet

Demand is highest for so-called commodity traffic. This is traffic destined for Internet sites that cannot use a better path (below). 3ROX currently purchases 1Gbps of commodity bandwidth from Sprint and Global Crossing.  Carnegie Mellon can consume 200Mbps of this bandwidth.

Internet2 (Abilene)

Abilene is the Internet2 high-speed research network linking Carnegie Mellon with other Universities in North America as well as overseas. We continue to encourage users to use Abilene bandwidth whenever possible. For example, when downloading a file from one of several mirrors, choosing a mirror at another University will likely be much faster, as it will travel the Internet2 network. 3ROX is connected via a 1Gbps link to the Abilene core node in Washington, DC.  In addition, 3ROX peers with another research connectivity network, National Lambda Rail (NLR), at 10Gbps.  Carnegie Mellon uses both Internet2 and NLR to reach select networks at speeds up to 1Gbps.

Infrastructure Redundancy

Carnegie Mellon has two physically diverse 1Gbps links to 3ROX.  In the case of a power outage or other failure, the links back each other up.  In the case of a total 3ROX outage, Carnegie Mellon has provisioned a 45Mbps disaster recovery connection to eXpedient.  This link will provide business critical connectivity to the other Carnegie Mellon campuses around the world.