The connection is fast. Getting there wasn’t.
Auburn Montgomery was the first university on board two years ago when it joined the city’s downtown internet exchange, known as MGMix. Chancellor Carl Stockton at the time said it would bring AUM a future of lightning fast internet at one-third of the current cost.
Two years and a lot of infrastructure later, that future is a reality.
Troy Cable recently finished an expansion of its fiber network across east Montgomery and AUM’s campus. The school flipped the switch earlier this month on 10-gigabyte service from the new provider.
Since joining the exchange, its monthly cost for internet service has dropped from $6,600 to $2,400. Meanwhile, they’ve upgraded the devices around campus that deliver WiFi and internet service. “It’s nice that I have a 10-gig pipe over there, but I need to bring it to our end user,” AUM Chief Information Officer Tobias Mense said.
“I anticipate that we’ll be able to push more internet connectivity to our buildings, and our WiFi for our students that are on campus every day. I anticipate increased performance on research.”
That research environment is growing. Alabama State University joined MGMix last year, and Stockton said the momentum builds as more universities come aboard.
The exchange opened in January 2016 and quickly became the second-busiest exchange in the Southeast. Its members range from Facebook, to Akamai, to service providers like WOW and Spectrum, and it offers 100-gigabyte capacity.
There was another incentive for AUM, which recently joined NCAA Division II. Its athletic fields are covered by the upgraded service.
“A lot of the events now are being streamed through the internet, so you need that bandwidth, whether you’re showing a baseball game, a soccer game, a softball game, whatever,” Stockton said. “… Now that we’re a full member of NCAA Division II, we’re eligible for postseason play. And we’re eligible to host Gulf South Conference postseason play here on our facilities.”
They’re trying to maximize the investment. More smart devices are connected around campus, allowing them to remotely control everything from HVAC systems to security cameras. There’s a possibility now to add a new phone service that could save the school significantly more money.
Mense was worried about something else.
“Before, we had all of our lines coming down Taylor Road, somewhere above ground. We were always one car accident away from (losing service),” he said.
Troy Cable’s fiber connection made its way up Bell Road. That created a second path and redundancy for a campus that’s also serviced by Hurricane Electric and Alabama Supercomputer Authority.
“It allows for automatic failover,” Mense said. “We will not experience any outages when one of the vendors goes down.”
Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Brad Harper at bharper1@gannett.com.
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December 30, 2019 at 07:00PM
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AUM upgrades on-campus internet to 10GB - Montgomery Advertiser
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