UEN Comes Through for UVU in a Hurry

When Utah Valley University needed more internet capacity, UEN was able to meet that need in a ten-day window, increasing the university’s capacity by a factor of five.

Kurtis Olsen of Utah Valley University (UVU) had a problem. As the UVU Director of Enterprise Infrastructure, Mr. Olsen is responsible for making sure the university’s internet can support the fast-growing university of nearly 47,000 students.

“Because of [network] upgrades and growth at UVU, we have experienced high internet traffic,” Olsen said. The university had maxed out the capacity on its existing connection and had to throttle internet traffic to keep it from overrunning. That meant it was in dire need of more internet capacity, and quickly. Fortunately, Olsen knew who to call.

The Utah Education Network (UEN) manages the network that connects educational institutions around the state to the internet. It’s tasked by the state to maintain and improve these networks so that K-12 and higher education institutions can carry out their missions. Olsen’s request kicked off a chain reaction to build a team to handle the request quickly. Within a few days, Engineer Dan Mills and Project Manager Kevin Buchan met with Olsen to assess the university’s needs and plan the upgrade. By March 18, only ten days after Olsen’s initial contact with UEN, Field Engineer Jerry Beck was onsite late at night to install the necessary equipment.

“UEN engineers and project managers were very helpful in working out details needed for this project,” Olsen said. “The night of the migration went smoothly because of the pre-work we did with them.”

The upgrade increased UVU’s internet capacity by a factor of five, giving the university the infrastructure to meet the needs of its students, faculty and staff. “The upgrade … has already seen an improvement in our network performance,” Olsen said.

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