NCES InfoBrief

Academic research institutions have experienced a significant increase in cyberinfrastructure resources since 2005, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation. In fiscal year 2011, 59 percent of academic institutions reported bandwidth of at least 1 Gbps, up from 21 percent in fiscal year 2005, the report says. The percentage with network connections of 10 Gbps or greater rose to 25 percent from 2 percent. Doctorate-granting institutions accounted for 43 percent of institutions with bandwidth of at least 2.5 Gbps in 2011, versus 4 percent of non-doctorate-granting institutions. Forty-seven percent of institutions had dark fiber to an external network in 2011, up from 29 percent in 2005, and the percentage with dark fiber between their own buildings rose to 90 percent from 86 percent. In addition, 192 of the 539 surveyed institutions owned centrally administered high-performance computing (HPC) resources of 1 teraflop or faster in 2011. To read further, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf13329/.