Undergraduate field trip to the IU DataCenter and GlobalNoc
Media School associate professor Julien Mailland took the MSCH-M322 internet ecosystems class on a field trip in late April to the IU DataCenter and GlobalNoc to see what “the heart of the internet” looks like. The class teaches how computer networks function, from the computer science, economic, historic, legal, and policy angles.
IU hosts some world-class computing facilities, from the supercomputer Big Red 3 to enterprise servers, and is a crucial node in multiple regional, national, and international research networks such as Internet 2, NEA3R, and TransPAC, many of which are monitored right from campus.
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- Big Red 3 is a Cray XC40 supercomputer dedicated to researchers, scholars, and artists with large-scale, compute-intensive applications that can take advantage of the system’s extreme processing capability and high-bandwidth network topology. (Courtesy photo)
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- Big Red 3’s cooling system (Courtesy photo)
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- Students toured several hidden parts of IU’s computer network including the multi-million dollar diesel engines designed to power the machines during power outages. (Courtesy photo)
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- The class went on the tour on April 19, 2023. (Courtesy photo)