IOL students Craig Rogers '01, Matt Blake '01 and Brett Schellenberg '02. Photo by Michael Warren '83

Neophytes Welcome

When it started hiring students with the money companies were paying for compatibility testing, the lab began to find its true purpose. "What happened was, a lot of students suddenly got a real look at the work they'd be doing after graduation," Reinhold says. Classroom learning is largely theoretical, he observes. "But when they're actually solving problems, when they get so involved with industry, suddenly they realize what the job is like; suddenly their work is important; suddenly they're interacting with the engineers who are developing products. They start to understand a lot more about what the work in the industry is like."

In the past 12 years, the lab has grown to such an extent that it now supports about 120 students, employs 16 full-time staff members and occupies three different sites on university grounds. About 190 companies pay from $7,000 to $38,000 a year to belong to one or more of 16 different "consortiums," including key technologies that utilize fiber optics, cable, traditional copper wires (like your phone line) and wireless computer communications. (Just four years ago, there were only five IOL consortiums.) All told, the IOL takes in about $4 million a year from the consortium members.

Consortium members agree to keep their products in the lab, upgraded with the latest versions of their software. That way, all the vendors have an up-to-date reference environment for their compatibility tests, and the students who work at the IOL have some of the best-equipped computer rooms in the world.

The IOL site on the second floor of the Jere A. Chase Ocean Engineering Building is typical of the lab's three sites: rack after rack of computer equipment, cables strung out along overhead racks, the drone of cooling fans filling the room. Students are clustered in spaces reserved for each consortium's technology, grouped around computer terminals or operating test equipment. It is a place where the details are understood, where those who keep our wired world aglow spend their days and nights.

Students accepted to work at the IOL can come in with no computer experience beyond the ability to use Windows, says Michael Froning, the IOL's marketing manager and wireless consortium manager. "We have philosophy majors, history majors, business majors. We assume they know absolutely nothing." After learning the basics of computer networking, students are assigned to work on a consortium team. "They develop an expert-level knowledge about that consortium's technology," Froning says. "They have to become experts because they interact with industry professionals. The bugs and issues they find can actually affect the company's bottom line. They have to be able to defend their thoughts and findings."