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UofM Network Overview

Network Size

The UofM Network is fairly large:
  • Five class B networks + CIDR block
  • "A" records in the umn.edu DNS:
    • July 1997: 44,000
    • Sept 1998: 54,000
    • Over 200 subdomains
  • In the Twin Cities alone:
    • 42 Fore & Cisco ATM Switches
    • 19 CAT-5 ESwitches with ATM & RSM
    • 5 CAT-5 ESwitches with ATM but no RSM
    • 36 Fore ES-38xx ESwitches; ATM LANE
    • 100 Cisco Routers
    • 700 Cisco 1900s
    • 1400 HP Hubs
    • 1200 Router Interfaces
    • 1600 line modem pool (going to 2000)
There are over 55,000 names (A records plus CNAME records). Of these, roughly 3,500 (15.7%) are duplicates:
 379 www
  69 ftp
  60 mail
  33 gopher
  13 www2
  10 mac1
  10 admin
   9 pc1
   8 thor
   8 ruby
   8 eagle
   :
   :


This slide provides some idea of the scale of the UofMn network. The information was gathered in September of 1998.

Things change rapidly. The hubs, for example, are being replaced by etherswitches, and there are plans to increase the size of the modem pool to 2000 modems.