Major savings realized in network upgrades
Network Installation shaved $750,000 off the initial estimate for upgrading the 20-year-old network cables at BYU's Harold B. Lee Library.
Now they are bringing their pioneering method to other CES schools.
"We knew it was going to take a lot of time and money to be ready for the next bandwidth standard," said Michael Ralls, a manager in the CES Network Center. "So we looked at cost saving strategies and ultimately settled on two. First, transition as much as possible to wireless. And second, move away from traditional industry standards and create a build-to-need university standard.".
Background
The last campus network cabling upgrade happened in the early 2000's around the time OIT introduced IP phones to campus. Recently the CES Network Center (CNC) began an effort to replace the old Cat5 cables with Cat6a cables, which support speeds of 10 gigabits per second.
The plans call for upgrading more than 72,000 network jacks on BYU's campus over a period of 10 years. The library alone had more than 5,200 of those jacks and cables. Directly replacing the old with the new at the HBLL was projected to cost over $1.5 million.
Research on usage
Given the large scale of the project, the CNC spent extra time analyzing the needs in greater detail. This included some qualitative observations of the library patrons and employees and their continued shift to wi-fi connections.
The CNC also did a quantitative review of every jack, cable and service in the HBLL and found a just-right-build that improved the overall access to the network for HBLL customers while drastically reducing the wired footprint and overall cost to the campus.
Solutions
Armed with relevant and accurate data, the CNC worked with the library staff and leadership to establish usage thresholds to guide the plans for each individual jack and cable. Together they agreed to test this approach in 2019 for a section of the building.
Those early results prompted them to lower the overall cost projections to $1 million. The CNC proceeded with the rest of the building through 2020 and completed the project this semester. Ultimately, nearly half (47% - over 2400 jacks) of the jacks fell below the threshold to replace. This overall reduction in jacks also resulted in more than 500 wired services being disconnected, which reduced the amount of switching needed. The final costs came in almost 25% less than the revised estimate.
"We work with some very large systems that are in place for a very long time," said Todd Berrett, senior director of network services. "We only get one shot to replace them every couple decades. I'm so impressed at the careful tenacity that the team has demonstrated as they have carefully calculated how to maximize the return on the sacred dollars that are buried in the walls of this institution."
Repeating the success
In two current projects at the Eyring Science Center and Jesse Knight Building, the CNC is seeing similar levels of reduction and savings using the approach developed in partnership with the library. And like they say in infomercials, "But wait! There's more." Because the network team is structured to serve other CES schools, the savings and efficiency will extend to BYU-Idaho and BYU-Hawaii.