Case Studies

Ohio Christian University in Circleville, Ohio, may be small, but its networking is now mighty thanks to some recent upgrades and optimization on the OARnet network. OCU enrolls approximately 3,600 students— roughly 80% of which are remote. OARnet’s newest pricing structure, as well as the redundancy the network can provide, gives peace of mind to students and OCU Chief Information Officer John Bocook.

In a buzzing classroom of wood-top tables, groups of engineering students huddle around the instruments they’ve created. They adjust knobs, trim wires and even paint a spectrum of colors across 3D-printed fretboards and sound boxes. They need to win the bid for their clients – music students in another class. This collaboration is possible because of Otterbein University’s Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) Innovation Center – housed at a new high-tech facility called The Point.

Ninety percent of the people who live in Fostoria, Ohio, live and work in or near the same small city. Unfortunately, to receive the training necessary for jobs, most people have to travel at least 30 minutes outside the rural northwestern Ohio town to access community colleges or training centers. That changed with the opening of the Fostoria Learning Center this past fall. With connectivity from OARnet, the learning center in the heart of Fostoria hosts training and education classes, including an injection of technology the area sorely needed.

The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is expanding its global reach while enjoying safe and secure storage of its digitized materials through an innovative data storage solution. The OARnet network provides redundancy by transporting CMA’s digital repository art collection from Blue Bridge Networks in Cleveland to the museum’s secondary connection at Cologix data center in Columbus. OARnet’s 100-Gbps sophisticated backbone provides instantaneous redundancy in the event of an outage so the collection can be recovered and transported without interruption for all viewers.

Eduroam — “edu” for education, “roam” for roaming or traveling — is a secure, worldwide roaming access service that allows students, faculty and staff from participating institutions to connect to the internet anywhere through their home campus. Eduroam is available in nearly 80 countries and at thousands of institutions, including many throughout Ohio. 

Zane State brings the same level of personalized dedication to its students as it does to its technology plan. As a college that serves high school, traditional and non-traditional students at two locations, both in-person and online, Zane State has a lot of needs to consider – and with the help of OARnet’s services, they seem to have met them all. The college was one of the first community colleges to connect to OARnet’s backbone in 1995 when it was known as the Muskingum Area Technical College, using a fractional T1 line. A little over 10 years later, as bandwidth requirements increased, they were having trouble bringing connectivity to the Cambridge campus 30 miles away.

The University of Cincinnati knows a good opportunity for shared IT services when they see it. The year 2015 was a banner year: UC implemented an innovative IT business continuity strategy and launched a dedicated research network, both thanks to its connection to OARnet's 100 Gbps network. 

OARnet helped UD set up a disaster recovery site (DRS) in Westerville, 80 miles from the university’s primary data centers. The IntraOhio connection on OARnet’s 100 Gbps backbone allows the university to replicate all its critical data to the backup site in real time, including core administrative systems, student data and a learning management system. Skill said the 80-mile separation is a “sweet spot” for UD, as it is an easy drive to Westerville from Dayton via several routes.

As if it isn’t amazing enough that the researchers at The Ohio State University's Center for Electron Microscopy and AnalysiS (CEMAS) can peer into the atomic-level workings of structural materials and biological systems, they are now operating their electron microscopes from the next room. Soon, they can use OARnet connectivity to do the same work from the next university or, eventually, the next continent.

In 2010, BGSU was using 400-600 Mbps of commodity Internet connection. Today, they are up to 2.0 Gbps of commodity Internet traffic from OARnet, with over 30 applications operating in the cloud, a far cry from the 10 they once had. BGSU will begin eliminating its sub-Tier-1 data center on campus and move to a Tier-3 data center in Toledo, which currently serves as BGSU’s node to OARnet. This capability would not have been possible without OARnet’s 100 Gbps network and its extremely competitive pricing.

With one of the largest regional campus systems in the nation, Kent State delivers an academic experience equivalent to their main campus counterparts to more than 12,000 regional campus students, but closer to home. The regional campus experience includes the same virtual learning and Internet environment, thanks to network cloud adoption.

Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio is a poster child for adult degree programs, with online enrollment comprising approximately 80 percent of its credit hours. Throw in 16 co-locations and branch campuses around the state, and it’s clear why strong network connections are essential to its operations. This is why high-speed broadband connectivity through OARnet’s 100 Gbps network is so critical to the university’s operations.

At Otterbein University, approximately 3,000 students pursue study in areas ranging from the Arts to athletics to community service. It would be no surprise, that in chasing these lofty goals, very few of those students likely grasp a full understanding of the technology infrastructure required for them to achieve success. The job of making sure that infrastructure is running at “four nines,” or 99.99 percent uptime, belongs to Dave Bender, executive director of information and technology services, and he regularly turns to OARnet to help make that happen.

Thanks to opportunities provided through the Ohio Broadcast Educational Media Commission (BEMC), school districts across Ohio can offer distance learning classes with live instruction at a low cost. The seamless real-time video conferencing is made possible through OARnet’s high-speed statewide network.

When OARnet’s Middle Mile Consortium began in 2010, it boosted the Ohio Public Library Network’s (OPLIN) ability to provide broadband internet connections and related information services to Ohio's public libraries far and wide. In fact, having access to OARnet’s powerful high-speed broadband network is crucial to making sure connections run smoothly at the state's public libraries. To find out more about how OARnet bolster's OPLIN's services, read our newest case study.

The Ohio Department of Transportation recently switched over the majority of its sites to the OARnet backbone, connecting over 120 department garages and offices to the 100-gigabit-per-second network. As one of the pioneer state departments to connect to OARnet, ODOT is providing improved service to citizens and its employees thanks to a high-speed, reliable broadband network that will be saving the department over $425,000 annually once all sites have been switched over.

When Morgan County, Ohio began hunting for a new 911 system, they found that NG911 was the way to go to improve operations and save lives. The switch meant a change from analog to digital, meaning the county would need to incorporate fiber optic connections. After several meetings, Bailey found that they could use the OARnet backbone to connect not just one, but two diverse paths for 911 necessities. 

The Ohio Mid-Eastern Regional Education Service Agency, better known as OME-RESA, serves districts in Appalachian Ohio, providing high quality, cost-effective technology and cooperative purchasing services. OME-RESA originally connected to the OARnet backbone on a 1-Gigabit-per-second circuit around 2006 after the completion of the Ohio K-12 Network. Since that time, K-12 content has experienced explosive growth brought on by distance learning and virtual, rich media content.