The Brandeis network will soon be connected to Internet2, the second generation high-speed network used by universities and government agencies to exchange large quantities of data. Internet2, provided through Northern Crossroads (NoX), will allow labs and researchers to send and receive complete genetic sequences, experiment data, and research results. The 45 Megabit Internet2 connection will also alleviate stress on the Brandeis Internet connection when connecting to other Internet2 partners.Within several weeks, Brandeis will become the most recent university added to a growing list of participants, which already includes other Boston-area institutions, such as Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern and Tufts.

According to the NoX website, the organization aims to "foster high performance networking in New England, share resources and information, capitalize on opportunities for aggregation, foster collaboration among participating institutions and our respective academic communities, consolidate regional representation; represent our interests to the larger community, collaborate with other organizations pursuing high performance networking, (and) investigate advanced network services."

One of the effects of the NoX decision to be felt by students is the addition of Internet2 networking at Brandeis. The Internet2 connection, provided and paid for by a branch of NoX known as the NoX Aggregation Point (NoX-AP), will establish a more advanced, high-speed level of networking on campus.

"Primarily funded to enable collaboration among science faculty, the Internet2 link will also roughly double general-purpose Internet connectivity," Brandeis Network Administrator Richard Graves said.

In addition, Brandeis' new affiliation with NoX will provide it greater access to important and helpful information and research and allow for cooperation among fellow NoX institutions, as well as a body in which shared concerns about networking issues can be advanced.

Brandeis' affiliation with NoX may not have a noticeable impact on Brandeis students according to Graves. Recently, however, there were causes for concern in Brandeis networking, including the recent frequency of campus-wide network outages and the computer error that affected the execution of Union Senate elections on Sept. 19.

During the election for quad senators, some students were unable to immediately vote for students running for positions in their quads. This problem was resolved later that day.

Graves said that the election mistake was "not a big deal."

"(It was an) indirect consequence of housing information being hidden from the directory this year. Because the system wasn't properly authorized to see where you lived, it was thought almost everyone was supposed to vote for the Off-Campus Senator. This was fixed 30 minutes into the election, but it was decided that under the Union constitution it was necessary to cancel (the election) and re-run," he said

As for the network outages, individual actions by students can provide protection from such outages among students at large. In response to Sept. 27 queries raised about the network outages on the technical support discussion forum website, for example, Graves recommended for students to stay informed about current anti-virus software and operating systems, as well as avoidance of continuous running of file-sharing software such as Morpheus on students' computers.

Nonetheless, such inevitable periodic network outages can create a reasonable obstacle to students needing to use the network.

"I had some research I was trying to do, and since (the network) was down, it wasn't a huge problem, but it was a problem. It was also just a general annoyance," Julianna Barrer '05 said.

-- Daniel Silverman contributed to this article.