the People of I-Light

For more than 20 years, David Jent has worked at Indiana University in all aspects of network design, installation, project management, and strategic direction setting. His strong network background provides a stable foundation for leading senior technical staff and managing complex network engineering design issues, and for managing critical relationships with the National Research and Education Network community. His current portfolio includes managing the Global Research Network Operations Center Engineering team, which operates ten-plus state, national, and international R&E networks including the New Internet2 Network and National Lambda Rail.

Jent is also the managing director of operations for the Indiana GigaPop, which spans two diverse, co-located facilities in Indianapolis and Chicago. The Indiana GigaPop provides commodity internet and R&E network connectivity to major state/regional institutions, and is active in the Quilt organization and in projects in the state of Indiana to further the deployment of high speed networking. In addition, Jent’s division supports I-Light, the optical network that connects Indiana schools of higher education.

In the recent past Jent served as project manager for the Next Generation Abilene Router (NGAR) deployment project. He was also the project manager for the installation of dark fiber between Bloomington, Indianapolis, and West Lafayette. This network was the first university-owned dark fiber infrastructure of its size in the nation. Jent has a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering Technology from Purdue University, awarded at IUPUI.

Marianne has more than 30 years of experience supporting members of the Indiana higher education community. Her group is responsible for daily operations and upgrades pertaining to the I-Light network.

In addition to Marianne’s role with I-Light she also serves as director of operations for the Indiana University Global Research Network Operations Center (GlobalNOC).

Caroline is responsible for supporting the I-Light members with their initial connectivity, upgrades to their current connections, and services the members wish to use on the network. She also works with the network planning engineer on the network design and future growth. Caroline earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Indiana University, awarded at IUPUI.

Caroline enjoys working with the I-Light members to reach their institutional goals by personally helping solve the problems that arise. She is very excited when a member has network or application goals that are achieved by the I-Light network. The success of the I-Light members reflects the success of I-Light as a regional network as a whole.

Lesley’s primary role is customer support and provisioning. She has been provisioning circuits for higher education members since 2001. She started working with I-Light provisioning in 2006. Lesley graduated from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Arts in 2000. She started at IHETS provisioning TDM circuits for colleges and universities as well as the State of Indiana, K12s, and libraries. In 2007, she joined the I-Light team and aided in transitioning Indiana higher education institutions from T1s and DS3s to the optical fiber based I-Light Network.

What Lesley enjoys the most about R&E networking is the constant change and new opportunities for learning and growth throughout the state. Lesley has been assisting the networking needs of the higher education community for over 10 years.

Jason is responsible for the network architecture and design of the I-Light network. His job includes the installation and configuration of network devices, documentation, maintenance of code, and hardware modifications as required. Jason has years of experience with carrier-class networking equipment like Cisco, Juniper, Ciena, and Brocade devices. Jason earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology from Central Michigan University.

What excites Jason the most about working on I-Light is the growing synergy and collaboration between Indiana Colleges and Universities and the resulting research it fosters.