SMC takes the first step towards having the fastest internet speed in Tasmania

As some of you may be aware from a previous article in the school magazine the College decided earlier this year to take advanatage of its central location in Hobart City to connect directly into the Australian Academic Research network used by the likes of the Univesity of Tasmania and the Antartic Survey.

AARNet Pty Ltd (APL)is the not-for-profit company that operates this network and it's shareholders are 38 Australian Universities and the CSIRO.

AARNet's role is to advance Australian Research and Education by continuing to operate and develop world class networks, applications and services.

The fibre link's route [shown in red on the photograph] proceeds under the College grounds then right along Brisbane Street, then left along Harrington Street before turning right again into Bathurst Street.

There is considerable drilling and boring under the footpaths and roads of Hobart and St Mary's College and AARNet are very grateful for Hobart City Council's cooperation in this significant project for the College community.

In our case, AARNet will be providing St Mary's College with a 1Gb [1000MB down/1000MB up] unlimited download fibre optic link into their data network. To put this into perspective it is 10 times faster than the proposed National Broadband Network [NBN] and significantly faster than the average home on an ADSL 2+ [20MB/1MB]

This strategic project by the College will faciltate access to huge online resources such as virtual tours of science, history and art museums, streaming video events from around the world, access to interactive tutorials as well as support for real time video communication. The new Resource Centre is already set up with large touch screen computers with video cameras built in to facilitate Skype and other modes of video conference in support of language student's and cultural exchanges. The College will also be taking advantage of the huge bandwidth to upgrade it's very old PABX telephone system to go to a completely web based VOIP [Voice Over IP] which besides lowering costs will also significantly increase the functionality of the system. The bandwidth is also critical to the greater expansion and use of the Scholaris Learning Management System by staff and student's.

Some of the local contractors working for AARNet were on the College grounds over the weekend to start laying the conduit for the first section of the 900 metre fibre optic cable that will connect us to the AARNet network. They are scheduled to complete the fibre optic link by the end of July with August being set aside for testing and configuration For more information about AARNet click on the this link

You may also find this recent article from news.com.au about AARNet very interesting.