HERSHEY, PA – June 28, 2016 – Comcast Business today announced it is providing a 100 Gigabits-per-second (Gbps) Ethernet connection between the recently opened University Technology Center on the campus of the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and the university’s primary data center at University Park. It is the largest network operated by Comcast Business in the Eastern United States and the third 100 Gbps Ethernet network the company has constructed across the country.
“The new data center will help make personalized medicine more of a reality for patients and their providers,” said Jim Broach, director of the Penn State Institute for Personalized Medicine and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. “Data that used to take days, weeks or even months to analyze now may soon be processed in a matter of minutes or hours.”
The dedicated, high-performance Ethernet Private Line service will enable patient, research and educational data to bypass the public Internet and be transmitted reliably over a private connection that is ideal for mission-critical and sensitive data applications. The 46,000-square-foot University Technology Center, dedicated in May, will utilize big data to enhance patient care through disease modeling and predictors for disease by more efficiently processing and analyzing clinical information.
As the backup location for Penn State’s primary data center, the University Technology Center in Hershey will also serve an integral role in the university’s disaster recovery plan. The 100 Gbps Ethernet Private Line will help Penn State ensure access to critical data even in the event of an outage.
“Offering Ethernet services that can scale to 100 Gbps of network capacity is a growing trend as businesses of all sizes rely on data to run their business more effectively,” said Paul Merritt, vice president of Comcast Business in the Keystone Region. “Our Ethernet services complement the healthcare industry’s fast-paced working environment, and our 24/7/365 network monitoring and support through our Network Operations Center helps ensure that we are delivering the high-speed, reliable services that our customers expect from us every day.”
This is the second example of an educational institution recognizing the benefits of a fast, dedicated connection in a matter of months. In December, the K-20 Education Network in Washington State began using a 100 Gbps Ethernet Virtual Private Line from Comcast Business to support more than 100 higher education institutions, K-12 school districts and libraries across the region. In California, two 100 Gbps Ethernet Dedicated Internet lines from Comcast Business will help power the Golden 1 Center, home of the Sacramento Kings.
