NACS and Residential Networking (http://resnet.uci.edu) are working together to provide students with a high-performance network, while at the same time preserving sufficient network capacity for use by faculty and staff, encouraging students to use the network only for legitimate educational purposes, and managing security in a situation where users and machines may come and go at any time.
A previous article (http://www.nacs.uci.edu/news/2002.3.html#2) introduced the Packeteer traffic-shaping device which regulates the fraction of UCI’s connection to the Internet which is available to the residential communities. In addition, NACS and ResNet have installed a custom-designed DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server which enhances the security of UCInet by requiring computers on ResNet to be registered and authorized.
Authorization (access to UCInet) is only granted to registered systems, and registration requires a valid UCInetID and password. Unregistered systems are automatically directed to the registration process. The requirement for registration limits access to UCInet to systems owned by legitimate users, and allows record-keeping so that inappropriate use can be traced back to its source, as required by law.
ResNet has published a set of guidelines which instruct students in appropriate network use, and how to go through the registration process to gain access to UCInet (http://resnet.uci.edu/connection_policy.html). ResNet currently supports over 7000 users.