The University of Texas at San Antonio was awarded a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation through its cyberinfrastructure program to increase the internet speed for laboratories on its main campus to have up to 10 percent faster internet data transfer speed.  

The goal is to add 10-gigabit-per-second switches across its campus connected to its research network so students and faculty can have more immediate access to large datasets and eliminate the current "bottleneck."  

UTSA already has a 10-gigabit backbone that supports its email, remote access and overall network, according to its website. The switches inside the colleges, though, are only about 1 gigabit for most of its classrooms and laboratories.

The university has an on-site data center that spans about 3,000 square feet used in the college for administrative functions, operations and research.  

UTSA runs the Open Cloud Institute on campus, which has recently funded several research projects that span from cybersecurity threat analytics to digital twin modeling for aircrafts or satellites used to predict maintenance. UTSA was also recently awarded $5 million to create The Center for Security and Privacy Enhanced Cloud Computing, which brings together professors from various colleges to collaborate.  

The new network would support the cloud computing facility and enable high-speed data storage and its visualization laboratory.