[50] in Resnet-Forum
RE: Video networking
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Singleton)
Thu Nov 11 16:29:20 1993
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1993 11:07:13 -0500 (EST)
From: Bill Singleton <SINGLETON@MINNIE.HOLLINS.EDU>
To: resnet-forum@MIT.EDU
Cc: SINGLETON@MINNIE.HOLLINS.EDU
Mark Berman of Williams writes:
>In the various dorm networking sessions at EDUCOM it seemed that several
>schools are including video in the package. People were talking about providing
>local video service including a number of channels including both educational
>and entertainment programming. With some folks, selling this service figured
>into their funding model for data network services.
>I am interested in finding out more about what people are doing with video.
>Here at Williams we have a 75ohm coax TV network with four channels of foreign
>language programming, but it's only available in the foreign language center
>and a few other buildings on campus. I'm interested in putting this, and
>potentially more, into the dormitories, but I need to work it in such a way
>that entertainment TV is not lost. (and also so we can afford it).
At Hollins (a small, private, liberal arts college) we utilized our local Cable
TV company (a Cox Cable subsidiary) to assist us in networking the campus.
Our agreement with them required them to connect all campus buildings to a CATV
backbone, dig trenches wide enough for our conduit as well as their cable and
refill and landscape the trenches. We paid the same contractor to install
conduit for the college.
In each residence hall, Cox Cable contracted to have coax pulled to every room.
We used the same contractor to pull 10baseT to each room and placed the jacks
in a common recepticle. Cox paid their normal per-room wiring costs and we
paid the difference and bought our own jacks. We installed slightly more than
one ethernet port per pillow, but have not attached all of them to the backbone.
Cox Cable provides their extended basic service plus HBO to all residence hall
rooms, and we eoll the cost for this into the room fee. We also have blocked 1
channel for locally-originated programming and have the rights to two
additional channels for either braodcast or data. I beleive we could request
that other channels be blocked for our use without too much problem.
We are in the second year of offering network services to students in the
residence halls. Last year was a pilot and we only connected a few. This
year, we hve about 1/6 of our Freshamn class and I expect increasing
participation in future classes. We offer services for both PCs and MACs and
provide basic software suites, file services and print services to the
students. We also have Internet access, althogh not directly to the desktop.
We charge a fee for network access (average $75/year) and require the students
purchase a network card/box from us. We install the network hardware and
software and provide a basic intro to the network for each student.
By involving the local CATV supplier, we reduced our per jack connection costs
by half and our outside cabling costs be an even greater amount. I think this
has prooven to be a win-win situation. Our CATV compnay has a constant income
from the campus (we also have several classrooms and other areas connected -
without HBO) and we didn't pay most of the set costs involved in wiring the
campus.
Bill Singleton
Director of Computer Services
Hollins College
