EUGENE– A $100,000 donation from 3Com, a national computing firm, will finance a tenfold boost in the core speed of the campus computer network and make it possible for the University of Oregon to join a national visionary effort to push the bounds of high-performance computing.

The UO Computing Center will use 3Com’s gift to upgrade the campus network from fast ethernet speeds (100 megabits per second) to gigabit ethernet speeds (1,000 megabits per second). A gigabit ethernet is roughly 18,000 times the speed of a home desktop (56K) modem that connects personal computers to the Internet.

"This generous gift will take our campus core network to the next level," says Joanne Hugi, director of campus computing. "It will allow us to scale up to handle the ever-growing traffic on our network."

While Hugi considers the upgrade to the core campus network both necessary and important, she says the UO also will use the equipment for an even more visionary application.

"The equipment will help connect computers on the UO campus to the Abilene Network," she explains. "Abilene is a nationwide fiber-optic network that researchers are using both to push the bounds of high performance computing on the Internet and to develop the next generation of Internet applications."

The UO is one of about 150 universities participating in the Abilene Network and the associated Internet2 program. 3Com is a corporate partner in the Internet2 program.

"We are delighted with this gift," Hugi says. "3Com’s selection of the University for this highly competitive award reaffirms the direction the University is taking in high performance networking, and gives us an important opportunity to work with state-of-the-art hardware from the industry leader in local area network hardware."

UO participation in the Abilene Network is partially funded by grants from the National Science Foundation with additional funding from Oregon Joint Graduate Schools of Engineering (OJGSE) and Cisco Systems, Inc.

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