It likely means that student expectations of what is available in the Web campus will continue to increase. Students will likely expect to be able to access not only communication technologies and teaching and learning resources, but also all their administration and financial transactions anywhere and anytime. This means that we want to plan for a 24 by 7 support infrastructure. The second component to the campus Web infrastructure is the network. A network of networks serves the campus LANs and provides links to the off-campus, regional, national, and global networks.
Networks have many layers of physical hardware, software applications, middleware, and licensing.
Networks require cabling, routers, switches, management and security software, agreements, and license fees. Local area networks, wide-area networks, and national and global networks link the personal communication tools together and provide the anywhere, anytime access for flexible and convenient learning. Probably the most common bandwidth speed on our campuses is shared 10 megabit Ethernet, and not surprisingly, pressure is on to upgrade to higher bandwidth, such as a switched 10 megabit Ethernet to accommodate MPEG1 video applications as part of the Internet2 architecture. The Web campus needs to planfor advanced high-bandwidth services, but applications for online learning may be constrained by the network speed that most students and faculty use in their homes currently 56Kb. The third category, dedicated servers and software applications, is very comprehensive and includes dedicated servers and the software applications on those servers that manage campus services, such as e-mail, Web sites and applications, campus directories, program and course management systems, and administrative services.