Computing Facilities
Princeton University's Department of Computer Science has hundreds of PC/workstations running a variety of operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, and Solaris. (A total of 1800 IP addresses.) Every room in the CS building is wired with multiple Category 5/5e UTP ports, single-mode fiber, multimode fiber, and RG6 coaxial cable. Networking is supported by a high-speed core switch with an aggregate switching bandwidth of 480 Gb/sec. Typically, servers are connected via gigabit Ethernet and user PC/workstations are connected via switched 100 Mb/sec Ethernet.
The department supports remote users via the Internet and ADSL. The entire building and some outlying areas are covered by the department's 802.11a/b/g wireless network. The department infrastructure and users are protected by firewalls, e-mail virus/spam scanners, and an IDS system. The public computing facilities provide access to Sun Solaris (Sparc) and Linux (x86) architectures. Public printers are available on each floor. The department has approximately 800 users that share 35 terabytes of disk space on multiple fileservers.
Faculty, staff, and graduate student computer accounts in the Computer Science Department are not limited to a single machine. A user's files are available to all these machines through the use of NFS (Network File System) software, so it is unnecessary to move files from one computer to another to access them.
Graphics / Multimedia Lab
The graphics / multimedia lab, in room 418, serves as a resource for faculty and graduate students. Undergraduates who are working on a project with a member of the graphics/multimedia group may also use the lab. Problems studied are related to scientific visualization, rendering techniques, and interaction methods.
Beowulf Cluster
The department also maintains a Beowulf Cluster consisting of 1 head node and 20 compute nodes. Each node has two, dual-core 2.2GHz AMD Opteron 275 processors and 8GB of memory. The nodes are interconnected by a 1Gb Ethernet switch.
Undergraduate Lab
The undergraduate lab is located in the basement of the Friend Center in room 010.
Use of this space changes from semester to semester. Unless you are taking a course that uses these systems or have made prior arrangements with CS faculty or staff these machines are not for general use. Also, please note, that when classes are not in session these systems may not be available for use. Please make arrangements with CS staff well in advance if you have a need to use these machines.
In addition to these resources there are several Sun Ray terminals located in common areas on the second, third, and fourth floors that undergraduates may use.
Except for the aforementioned machines located in common areas, undergraduates are not permitted to sit at the consoles of other machines in the CS building without express permission from the primary user of a given machine (generally, a CS faculty member or graduate student). Of course, public machines are available for remote login.
