Johns Hopkins Internet Connections

Most higher education institutions (i.e. universities) have connections to both the commodity Internet and the Internet2 research networks. I was browsing around the JHU IT website when I happened upon this IT newsletter from 2004. It seems that during the summer of 2004, Hopkins upgraded its Internet2 link from 45 Mbps (which is what TJHSST still has today; few high schools have a connection to I2 at all) to 1000 Mbps. That's quite a jump there! The regular internet connection was also bumped 20% to 110 Mbps.

Today (well, as of last winter), Hopkins has a 1.1 Gbps commodity internet connection. The primary I2 link remains at 1 Gbps, but there is an additional 10 Gbps link for Physics and Astronomy, probably because Hopkins houses ground control for the Hubble Space Telescope.

For those not familiar with Mbps and Gbps, let me put it this way: a home DSL connection in the Northern Virginia area is typically 3 Mbps, cable internet is 10 Mbps, and fiber optics (FiOS) is 15 Mbps. And those are download speeds; upload speeds at home tend to be slower than download speeds, whereas enterprise internet connections (like those used at corporations and educational institutions) run the same speed in both directions.