Equipment failures frustrated users and NACS alike when over the Thanksgiving holiday both the Educational Access (EA) systems serving 15,000 students and the E4E system serving 3,000 staff experienced considerable downtime. The most serious problems occurred with the EA systems resulting in 36 hours of down time and a day of lost e-mail. NACS staff invested 16 person hours over the holiday restoring service. NACS is evaluating the cause of these failures and will be taking steps to reduce the probability of similar failures in the future. We sincerely apologize to our clients for the loss of service, and greatly appreciate the understanding and patience from those affected.
Lighting Every Pillow In UCI Residence Halls
What would you think if someone said they were going to light your pillow? Well, if you live in the New Middle Earth (NME) residence halls you might know that this means you and your roommate will have access to your own high speed network connection to UCInet and the Internet in your room. Network access will be made available to NME residents beginning with the Spring 1997 quarter. A total of 481 rooms and 900 active network connections will be provided.
NACS has partnered with UCI Housing in a commitment to “light every pillow” at UCI by providing ethernet network connections to the residents of UCI Housing. The entire NME complex was recently re-cabled with high speed data grade category 5 cable and new network equipment is currently being installed. The new connections will be 10MB ethernet which is several hundred times faster than the 28.8K modems NME residents are currently using. The higher speed is practically a requirement for residents to fully participate in UCI’s Educational Electronic Environment and utilize services available on the World Wide Web.
Currently network access is available in the Arroyo Vista complex and should be available in the Palo Verde complex before Christmas. Future plans are to “Light Every Pillow” in all the residential housing complexes — planning is currently underway to bring data connections to Lower Middle Earth, Mesa Court, and Campus Village. It is hoped that significant progress can be made in these complexes by Fall of `97.
If you have any questions about the Light Every Pillow project, contact Brian Buckler, NACS ECS Operations Manager, by e-mail at bbuckler@uci.edu, or Rob Ameele, Associate Director of Housing, at rameele@uci.edu.
NACS STAFFING NEWS
Duncan Phillips
Duncan Phillips has joined NACS Departmental and Distributed Computing Support (DDCS) as a system administrator, responsible for support of Electrical and Computer Engineering as well as some Civil Engineering and Physics clients. Duncan worked for NACS as he was completing his undergraduate degree here at UCI, and has demonstrated a rare combination of technical skill, quickness at learning, and warm interpersonal skills. We are happy to welcome him to the group.
Duncan replaces Sinclair Fleming, who has left NACS for a job in the communications industry.
Rick Colman
Rick Colman comes to us as part of a special arrangement with Dave Schetter and University/Industry Research and Technology (UIRT). Rick has been employed for several years as a highly skilled designer and engineer of commercial World Wide Web sites, and will be plying his skills on behalf of the UC-ACCESS project. UC-ACCESS is a UCOP-sponsored effort at UCI to communicate information about UC faculty research and UC programs which could be of use to California business and industry as part of UCOP’s technology transfer program.
Kim Carpenter
Kim Carpenter has joined the NACS’ Business Office as an Administrative Assistant. Kim is no stranger to the UC system, having worked at UC San Diego for 5 years and most recently at UC Riverside. She also worked for the Navy Purchasing department for several years. Kim brings lots of good administrative expertise with her, and we are glad to have her on board.
Alternatives for Modem Users
ALTERNATIVES FOR MODEM USERS
As a member of the UCI community, you have unlimited use of NACS'”free” modem pool. However, for many people, sharing 300 modems that serve a community of approximately 20,000 faculty, staff, and students is inconvenient and, at times, frustrating. The free modem pool is designed as a default service to ensure that everyone at UCI has at least some remote access. There are alternatives to this basic service.
Dedicated Modem Service
NACS offers “Dedicated Dial-up Modem Services” to faculty, work-groups, and departments. These services provide dedicated modems and unlimited connection time to UCInet and the Internet. The cost is $45 a month plus a one-time, $90 set-up charge (waived now through June 1997 – see below).
$45 a month is relatively expensive for a single user, but if shared by several individuals, the cost becomes comparable to the least expensive Internet Service Providers. For example, a department or group with 45 people might share a bank of 10 modems — the resulting monthly cost is only $10 per person. A small group of 4 people can share one modem at a cost of $11.25 per individual per month.
More information about Dedicated Modems can be found at: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/dedicated.dial-up.html
To order this service, please call NACS Electronic Communication Services at extension 5123 or send an e-mail message to NACS@UCI.EDU with “Request for Dedicated Modem Service” in the subject line. To help departments ease current modem access issues, NACS will waive the $90 setup fee now through June 1997 for dedicated modem commitments of at least 6 months.
Internet Service Providers
A second remote access alternative is using an Internet Service Provider (ISP), such as Netcom, Pacific Bell or a variety of others. Information concerning ISPs can be found at: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/support/antaccess/isp.html
A disadvantage of using ISPs is that certain services (such as Britannica On-Line) are not available due to access being restricted to users from the uci.edu network domain.
NACS welcomes your comments and suggestions concerning remote access to UCInet; you may direct them to ourNACS@UCI.EDU address or to any NACS manager.
NACS Computing Lab Changes and Expansions – Fall 1996
University of California, Irvine
Network & Academic Computing Services
NACS@UCI.EDU
http://www.nacs.uci.edu
Since before the first PCs and Macintoshes came out of garages in the Silicon Valley, NACS has been providing computing access points for general campus use. With the advent of ever more powerful PCs, we have continually increased the number and usability of computing systems in our computing labs. Concurrently, powerful UNIX servers (EA, E4E, Orion, etc.) have been available for electronic communications through both simple terminals and application software (Netscape, Eudora, etc.) on all our PC systems.
This fall we made significant changes to our computing labs. There are now 130 computer access points in Engineering Gateway (EG, building 321) available 24 hours a day. There are an additional 80 computers in the Engineering and Computing Trailer (ECT – building 317) available 7AM until Midnight, Monday through Friday, and 8AM until 8PM on weekends. Together, these labs constitute the largest ensemble of computer access points on campus.
CHANGES AND ADDITIONS MADE THIS FALL
- 25 new PowerPC model 7500 Macintoshes have been installed in the large schedulable Mac lab, ECT 120. Each system has 32Mb of RAM and 1 GB of local disk.
- 25 new Dell Pentium 133MHz PCs have been installed in the large schedulable PC lab, ECT 123. Each system has 32Mb of RAM and 2 GB of local disk.
- A new schedulable/drop-in lab has been opened in ECT 121 with 15 PowerPC model 7100 Macintoshes
- A new schedulable/drop-in lab has been opened in ECT 122 with 15 Dell Pentium 90 Mhz PCs.
- All ECT machines have software mounted locally, facilitating use of the large, complex software packages currently in demand (Netscape 3, Word 6, etc.). This results in rapid software start-up even when all classroom users are doing so simultaneously.
- All NACS PCs are now running the Microsoft Windows NT operating system both on student stations and on the lab server. This will result in reduced downtime due to viruses and local system setup changes, greater flexibility in system management, and will allow the installation of the Windows95 Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Winter quarter.
- The computing systems in our Engineering Gateway labs have been improved with the addition of more capable PCs and Macs formerly located in ECT.
- Newer, higher performance laser printers are being installed in several locations. This is a prelude to a newer, easier to use, printing system to be deployed in the next few months in all labs.
- A new, more rugged electronic tie-down system is being deployed to replace the existing system. Coupled with security cameras and other devices, this system allows us to provide access during extended hours.
- Local lab networking has been improved with the deployment of switching hubs in the ECT labs (also planned to be added to the EG labs during quarter break). These hubs improve reliability, provide much greater network security for user passwords and the like, and improve network throughput.
- Lastly, we are installing a greatly improved computer-to-screen projection system in both large, schedulable labs. These state-of-the-art systems are both significantly brighter and of higher resolution than our previous, aging, LCD-panel systems.
During the rest of the school year we will be making further, albeit smaller, improvements in all labs – software upgrades for applications and operating systems, more security tie-down installations, additional ‘seats’ when possible.
IMPROVED COMMUNICATIONS WITH INSTRUCTORS
To develop better communications with UCI faculty and others teaching in NACS’ instructional computing labs, we have created an e-mail listserv list, NACS-Labs-Info@UCI.EDU. We will use this list to communicate lab announcements, updates, requests for comment, surveys of current use, surveys for requested changes (e.g., what new software is needed?), and the like.
If you have scheduled any NACS labs in the last three years your name has been added to the list and you should have already received a message welcoming you. If you know of others interested in joining the list, please suggest they send mail to nacs@uci.edu with their name, e-mail address, and departmental affiliation.