Over the past year, MDREN engineers have upgraded the router layer of all 23 member colleges and universities and increased their potential bandwidth to 100GB. Previously, most campuses had 10GB connections or multiple 10GB connections. “MDREN supports 23 Maryland colleges/universities across the state. Now all members have much greater bandwidth and are only limited by their campus network infrastructure,” said Jerry Waldron, Interim Executive Director, MDREN. MDREN is moving to phase 2 of the project and will upgrade the DWDM network core between Baltimore and College Park, the eastern shore, and western Maryland to 400 GB. The western Maryland span will be completed over the next year, followed by the eastern shore span, and finally the central Maryland span in 2026 and 2027, respectively. No outages are planned, and the phased approach will ensure that high-speed service is maintained throughout the project. The upgrades will position all member campuses to take advantage of the highest speed connectivity for research and teaching.