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→Network Topology
In Blacksburg, CNS has redundant fiber uplinks to Ashburn, Virginia and Atlanta, Georgia. The [[Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation]] provides the OC-192 (10 Gigabit) connection to Ashburn from the [[Andrews Information Services Building]], and the OC-192 (10 Gigabit) connection to Atlanta from [[Hillcrest Hall]]. In summer 2015, the OC-192 connection to Ashburn will be upgraded to OC-768 (100 Gigabit).<ref>[https://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2015/04/042115-it-gigabits.html]</ref>
For cost-savings reasons, the university's connectivity is primarily provided through an aggregation network shared by several other universities in Virginia, the [[Mid-Atlantic Research and Education Exchange]] (MREX). MREX is operated by Virginia Tech and provides connectivity for the [[Mid-Atlantic Research Infrastructure Alliance]](MARIA), an alliance of the universities that receive connectivity through MREX.<ref>[http://www.marialliance.net/about-us]</ref>
MREX operates two regional hubs: MREX-ATL at Telx Atlanta and MREX-DC at Equinix Ashburn. MREX-DC was formerly the only regional hub, and was previously part of the predecessor to MARIA, the [[Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership]] (MATP). At each hub, MREX operates a Cisco ASR9000 series aggregation router.