Networking & Wireless

Hudson Valley Community College Deploys Fiber-Based Internet

• By Leila Meyer
• 05/05/15

Hudson Valley Community College in New York state has implemented fiber-based Internet to its main campus and a dedicated point-to-point Ethernet connection between the main campus and satellite campuses.

The college needed to upgrade its Internet service to meet increasing demands. In 2013, the college worked with FirstLight Fiber to install a dedicated fiber link between the college and the State University of New York at Albany, so the schools could share data center services. Since FirstLight offered the redundant Internet solution they needed, the college chose to go with the same service provider again this time.

FirstLight's fiber-based Internet service uses redundant equipment, connections and power supplies and is designed to provide maximum uptime. According to information on the company's site, "The IP network is deployed regionally in a ring architecture with each region capable of operating independently," and "Internet traffic is redundantly routed over the company’s fiber network with the ultimate survivability of two separate meshed core networks, allowing for no single point of failure within that core."

"The infrastructure, the quality and the speed we are observing now is vastly improved in comparison to our previous connection," said Sarah Garrand, interim chief information officer for Hudson Valley Community College, in a prepared statement.

FiberLight's Ethernet Private Line (EPL) service connects two of the college's satellite campuses and two Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC) campuses to the main campus. According to the company, the service is designed to support bandwidth-intensive applications and is a "cost-effective alternative to traditional TDM private line services and provides symmetrical, full-duplex, guaranteed bandwidth."

Hudson Valley Community College is a two-year public college located in Troy, NY. It serves 12,000 students and employs more than 650 faculty members.