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Network Engineering Group
Who are we?The Network Engineering Group (NEG) is responsible for providing university-wide data networking services (infrastructure networking). The group achieves this objective by working in close cooperation with many other members of the university community and with vendors of communication products and services.
NEG provides high quality technical support for all aspects of infrastructure networking in the Concordia environment. Members of the group specify and manage the work required to provide cost effective, reliable and functional network solutions addressing the requirements of the Concordia community. Often the group must work closely with other groups in the community to ensure that complete and integral solutions are developed in response to specific networking requirements. A major function of the group is to manage long term growth and development of all interbuilding services. The group also acts as liaison with our external network providers. On a day to day basis you can find someone planning, operating, and maintaining public-access services and LANs serving the major University computer systems.
In general this includes:
Concordia's physical location presents a number of challenges. The University manages over 70 buildings; each building has its own characteristic problems. The age and condition of each building makes it very difficult to provide a uniform class of service to everyone. The situation has been aggravated by limited and variable funding, a lack of standards in the industry, a distinct lack of space for new infrastructure services and frequent moves of departments. In this environment we have tried to establish future oriented standards and have used every opportunity to move towards them. Concordia operates in the Canadian context; by law inter-building communication services are currently provided by Bell. On the downtown campus, Concordia's buildings are served by several Bell Central Offices (COs). This has created technical problems and liaison problems.
The current services must continually be upgraded in terms of both quantity and flexibility to meet changing needs. There are growing demands for additional facilities, as more and more students, researchers and staff continue work from home. Also, new services are continually being requested.