BIN Replacement Project

Overview

Information and Technology Services is replacing the Border Interconnect Network (BIN) that serves the Ann Arbor campus including Michigan Medicine. 

The BIN Replacement project will involve changing out two critical border routers, which are mainstays of the institution's network. After the new routers are in place, the university – particularly faculty and researchers – will experience improved response times for data sharing and increased internet and Internet2 connection speeds.

The upgrade effort began in February 2024 with the installation of new hardware and equipment. The upgrade activities are anticipated to continue until August 2024 with no impact on day-to-day operations for the university community. Financially, there will be no cost to schools, colleges, or units beyond the standard internet fees already being contributed.

This investment in the network is expected to meet the university’s needs for the next six to eight years. Nevertheless, ITS remains agile and open to advancing the timeline for replacement should future networking standards or university requirements mandate doing so.

Rationale

The University of Michigan relies on its network infrastructure to complete mission critical tasks and to properly support its faculty, researchers, staff, and students.

The current BIN devices are outdated and limit the amount of data the university community and units can share with the external Internet, which is in turn negatively impacting key institutional groups' ongoing work and limiting the growth potential for the network as a whole.

U-M is upgrading its BIN devices to increase the speed with which the network can communicate with the external internet. 

Goals

  • Decommission old hardware at the Arbor Lakes (AL) Data Center and School of Education Data Center (SEB)
  • Install new equipment in the North Campus Data Center (NCDC) and SEB 
  • Move all needed existing BIN associated equipment (owned by both ITS and Merit) from AL Data Center to NCDC and reinstall to function with new BIN devices, including, but not limited to associated network border system (NBIS) equipment and associated fiber circuits

Team / Group Reps

  • Project Sponsor: Andrew Palms
  • Project Owner: Eric Boyd
  • Project Lead: Dan Eklund
  • Project Manager: Greg Stathes
  • Project Communications: Dana Fair

The BIN upgrade is being supported by a dedicated ITS project team and includes representatives from Health Information Technology and Services and UM-Dearborn Information Technology Services, as well as the Merit Network, which is upgrading its own network hardware in parallel with this project.

Additionally, the project team is keeping groups that will be more directly impacted by this effort aware of the project’s status and includes representatives from Advanced Research Computing, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and Physics.

Timeline

  • Merit Procurement and Hardware Installation: April 15, 2024
  • Go Live: May 26, 2024
  • Services Migrated: September 2024

Questions

Questions should be directed to the project team at [email protected].