Soda Hall Networking Infrastructure

The new home of the Computer Science Division at the University of California, Berkeley-Soda Hall-provides an ideal environment for investigating in-building wireless overlay networks as well as integrating network management and application processing within the context of a building-sized distributed system. The network is based on highly scalable ATM technology, with physical fiber/twisted pair distribution systems designed to be well-integrated with the building's physical layout. Almost any point in the building is near to network connectivity, giving enormous flexibility in the placement of wireless basestations. The DBS satellite dish can easily be installed on the roof of the building. Further, all of the 500+ workstations within the building, as well as specialized computation and storage servers in basement machine rooms, are within a very small number of network hops from any point on the network. High bandwidth and low latency connectivity give us an extraordinary opportunity to exploit this unique experimental resource to develop distributed processing approaches for mobile network management and application support.

Randy H. Katz, randy@cs.Berkeley.edu, last updated 30 April 95