Network Connectivity

This page summarises the network connectivity used between Informatics sites, to the rest of the University, and to the rest of the Internet.

Informatics operates a unified network across four sites: the Forum, Bayes Building, Appleton Tower and JCMB.

Within Informatics

The Forum and Appleton Tower are connected together over our own private fibre, which was run through ducts under Crichton Street when the Forum was built. There are currently two separate links between the Forum and AT core switches, for resilience, one running at 40Gbps and the other at 10Gbps.

Informatics floors of the Bayes Building is run as 'virtual floors' of the Forum. They connect back to our Forum core.

Our JCMB presence connects to the rest of Informatics using private VLANs over EdLAN (see below), and is therefore dependent on EdLAN functionality as well as our own network switches.

The Rest of the University

IS run the EdLAN network, which connects the various parts of the University together. Informatics attaches to EdLAN in three places:

1. We have two connections from our Appleton Tower core switches to the EdLAN AT distribution router, both running at 20Gbps. One carries phones, wireless and other bridged traffic. The other carries routed traffic.

2. The arrangement for the Forum is the same: there are two connections to the local distribution router, both running at 20Gbps.

3. Our JCMB presence has one 10Gbps bridged link to the stacked pair of IS switches in the JCMB server room; that stacked pair then has redundant links back to EdLAN-KB router. In addition to all external traffic, this link also carries our private VLANs between JCMB and AT. We have two additional routed links from our own routers to the stacked pair of IS switches.
   

Wireless

Wireless networking within the Informatics buildings is actually part of the IS-run University-wide service, providing the "eduroam" and "central" SSIDs. There is a separate page which describes this and how to use it.

World-wide

Connectivity from the University to the rest of the world is provided by the Janet UK-wide academic network. Janet itself then connects to the rest of the world at several UK Internet Exchanges.

Informatics Network Technical Documentation

Our technical documentation on the Informatics network, including diagrams, is here. It's primarily intended for the Computing staff and the Technicians, but you're welcome to browse it and ask questions in the usual way.