District Network Support Services

Network Services is responsible for the Wide Area Network (WAN) support of all applications using the WAN. We strive to keep current with the most advanced technologies in order to provide state-of-the-art Information Technology Services to all of our campuses, students, faculty and staff. These services include Data Communications, Voice Communications (PBX & IP), and Video Conference Network (VCN).

The Maricopa Community College District previously used a digital microwave transmission to link thousands of computers and telephones at the 10 major colleges, numerous Learning and Skill Centers, and the District Support Service Center with each other, and the Internet. With the rapid growth of our communities and the need for higher education, our enrollment, institutions and technological advancements have increased greatly since the implementation of the microwave network in 1988. The microwave network had served it's purpose but with such drastic growth, it was time to move forward.

In 1997, the District Network Support Services team migrated the network in the DSSC building from a 10Mbs thickwire Ethernet Backbone with Cabletron Hubs to a 155Mbps Fiber optic ATM backbone with Cisco switches.

In 1998 the District Network Services team along with the network groups from the campuses implemented a new ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) Wide Area Network. This new ATM WAN is supported by Cisco Lightstream ATM switches residing on a Qwest fiber-optic backbone, giving us the flexibility of selectively increasing or decreasing the bandwidth for data, voice and video at any of the given sites on the ATM WAN. We also support all of the remote sites going over point-to-point T1, Frame-Relay, and ISDN.

Map of the current WAN configuration.

DNSS also provides support for Local Area Networks, Wireless LANs, network security, Domain Name Services (DNS), fileservers, Web servers, and Usenet news within the District Office.

To see the networks we support throughout the MCCD, go to our network maps page here... network maps.