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'''NI&S''', previously known as '''Communications Network Services ''' ('''CNS'''), and briefly as ''' Advanced Network Infrastructure and Services''' ('''ANIS''') is a division the ISP of [[Virginia Tech]], and part of the Office [[Division of the Vice President for Information TechnologyIT]], which provides ISP providing services including telephone and Internet to the university. Around 2015, they went through a significant rebranding effort, because of the poor reputation earned by CNS as being "unhelpful, tyrannical network overlords", in the words of a former student. Today, they attempt to exist by their ''Brand Promise'', "Let's explore what's possible together", and ''Brand Character'', "Approachable, Plain Spoken, Collaborative", in order to prevent the need for further rebranding. Several NI&S employees have suggested a more accurate motto would read "F*ck you; we turned it off", in reference to several services essential to the jobs of departmental IT, like rdweb, the "temporary" port 22 block, the L2TP VPN, and several other useful services. Unlike most departments, CNS operates as an auxillary service, and therefore recieves funding through cost-recovery rather than university budgets. Individual departments and students must pay a ''per-port'' charge for each IP or phone device attached to the network.

In Blacksburg, CNS has redundant fiber uplinks from the [[Andrews Information Systems Building]] to Ashburn, Virginia , McLean, Virginia, and Atlanta, Georgia. The [[Mid-Atlantic Broadband Communities Corporation]] provides the dual OC-192 (10 Gigabit) connections to Ashburn and either McLean from the [[Andrews Information Systems Building]], and the OC-192 or (10 Gigabit) connection to Atlanta from [[Hillcrest Hall]]. In summer 2015, the OC-192 connection to Ashburn will be upgraded to OC-768 connections to Atlanta(100 Gigabit).<ref>[https://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2015/04/042115-it-gigabits.html]</ref>

CNSFor cost-savings reasons, the university's primary upstream routers are located connectivity is primarily provided through an aggregation network shared by several other universities in Equinix's Virginia, the [[Ashburn, VirginiaMid-Atlantic Research and Education Exchange]] datacenter(MREX). At Equinix, CNS has about 4 Gbps aggregate bandwidth for commodity Internet from CogentMREX, also known as well as, through the [[Mid -Atlantic Terascale Partnership]], connections to (MATP)<ref>[[Network Virginia]], [[National LambdaRail]https://beta.peeringdb.com/net/4326 PeeringDB: Mid-Atlantic Terascale Partnership - MATP]</ref>, is operated by Virginia Tech and [[Internet2]]. They are also a member of provides connectivity for the [[Mid-Atlantic Research Infrastructure Alliance]](MARIA), although it is unclear what role this an alliance provides in providing of the universities that receive connectivitythrough MREX.<ref>[http://www.marialliance.net/about-us About Maria - Mid-Atlantic Research Infrastructure Alliance]</ref>

In 2014MREX operates two regional hubs: MREX-ATL, at Telx Atlanta, and MREX-DC, at Equinix Ashburn. At each hub, MREX operates a Cisco ASR9006 aggregation router. There is another MREX facility at Level3 McLean, CNS added additional upstream routers connected as part of a fiber ring that also includes the [[Arlington Research Center]] and the [[Northern Virginia Center]]. At Equinix in [[Ashburn]], MREX-DC has a 100 Gigabit connection to [[Internet2]], 10 Gigabit connections to [[ESnet]] and the Equinix Internet Exchange, and 30 Gigabits of commodity Internet connectivity through Cogent. Virginia Tech also has a 10 Gigabit connection to [[Mid-Atlantic Crossroads]] and a 1 Gigabit connection to [[NetworkVirginia]] here. At Telx's in Atlanta, MREX-ATL has 10 Gigabit connections to [[AtlantaSouthern Crossroads]], Georgia[[ESnet]] datacenter, the Telia Internet Exchange, and 30 Gigabits of commodity Internet connectivity through Telia.<ref>[http://www.cafm. This additional presence location improves network redundancy vt.edu/busprac/_docs/bpseminar_2014/2014-BusinessPracticeSeminar-Internet.pdf]</ref> MREX-ATL was opened in 2014 and is the first network facility operated by Virginia Tech located outside of Virginia.<ref>[https://www.vtnews.vt.edu/articles/2014/03/032114-it-datanetworkexchange.html]</ref> At Level3 in McLean, MREX's McLean facility, referred to as the National Capital Region (NatCap) Aggregation Facility, has a 10 Gigabit connection to [[Mid-Atlantic Crossroads]] and a connection to [[NetworkVirginia]].<ref>[http://www.cns.vt.edu/docs/NIS_SubcommitteeMinutes07Dec2009.pdf]</ref>

=== IPv6 === CNS is a leader in the transition to IPv6, as their [[w:Autonomous System|ASN]] consistently ranks in the top 5 in terms of percentage of IPv6 traffic, according to [http://www.worldipv6launch.org/measurements/ World IPv6 Launch Measurements]. A dual-stack topology exists for the entirety of campus, but not all systems connected to the network are IPv6-enabled. One system that notably lacks connectivity is the main vt.edu website, which is due to a lack of support from the load balancers currently in use. For legacy reasons, Virginia Tech continues to use its /48 sub-allocation from the [[w:University of Maryland|University of Maryland]]on many subnets, instead of its although newer equipment is being configured with the assigned IPv6 block (2607:b400::/32). It is unknown when the new address space will begin to be used. === Unified Communications ===