Pacific Bell Wireless, in cooperation with NACS’ Electronic Communications Services group, Campus Asset Management, and Facilities Management, has installed a digital cellular telephone cell site on the roof of Engineering Tower at UCI. The installation was completed during December. The new site affects users of Personal Communication Services (PCS) digital telephone service provided by Pacific Bell Wireless. With the new cell site, Pacific Bell PCS service is significantly improved on campus and in the surrounding service area. If you would like to sign up for Pacific Bell Wireless, you may contact Shelly Toole of NACS-ECS at x4311. We are also in touch with other cellular service vendors about possible additional cell sites on campus.
Voice and Data Services
Long Distance Rate Reduction
Because long distance telephone costs continue to drop, NACS has implemented another rate reduction to campus telephone system users. Interstate and international long distance rates were reduced by another fifteen percent effective December 1, 1999.
An initial fifteen percent reduction went into effect on March 1, 1999 and an additional ten percent became effective July 1, 1999. Interstate and international long distance telephone call rates have been reduced by a total of forty percent as of December 1, 1999.
In addition, all monthly recurring charges for Ethernet services have been discontinued effective October 1, 1999 as part of the Network Service rate reduction plan.
Departmental bookkeepers were notified of the most recent price change in the December NACS-ECS telephone billing statement.
Backbone Upgrade
NACS completed the implementation of a new campus network backbone in September when the last UCI buildings were switched to it from the old backbone. The new, Gigabit, fault-tolerant backbone core connects UCI’s approximately 350 Local Area Networks (LANs), and provides the underpinnings required for further improvement of performance on these LANs. The most immediate effect of the backbone upgrade is an improvement in building-to-building communication and centralized server performance. Campus services such as DCSlib, EEE, E4E and the campus Web server are now on “fat pipes” to the new backbone.
At a cost of slightly under $1.5 million, the project — completed within budget and on time — brings the campus network:
- at least a ten-fold improvement in backbone bandwidth with the capacity to support growing campus network demands;
- a more robust and maintainable backbone;
- the flexibility to upgrade building-to-building communications to gigabit speeds;
- additional fiber around the campus to support new growth;
- the ability to run newer versions of network software;
- Y2K compliance.
NACS continues to make progress on “network edge upgrades” for departmental networks, which are facilitated by the new backbone. The design and planning stage of the School of Engineering network upgrade is now complete, and we will soon be starting to plan the upgrade in the school of Biological Sciences.
New UCInet Backbone
The implementation of UCI’s new network backbone began in January and is proceeding on schedule. The Gigabit Ethernet, fault-tolerant, backbone “core” has been tested and placed into production. The implementation team is in the process of connecting buildings to the new core that had been on an interim Fast Ethernet backbone. The team is also configuring and testing the building switches that comprise the rest of the backbone.
The plan is to move the bulk of campus subnets to the new backbone over the summer. Moving departmental subnets will require a few hours of network downtime in each building. Each outage will be scheduled in advance and announced on the UCInet-OPS@UCI.EDU LISTSERV mailing list. In addition, the full schedule will be maintained on the Web:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/backbone-schedule.html
The new backbone will address rapidly growing communication needs, provide a foundation for ongoing departmental network improvement projects, and ensure continued, reliable operation of the critical campus data communication infrastructure. For more information, please see:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/plans/backbone-plan-1998.html
Questions about the project may be addressed to Garrett Hildebrand, whose e-mail address is GDH@UCI.EDU.
New UCI LifeLine Modem Service
At the end of January 1999, NACS will be replacing the current 824-9000 and 824-8960 modem pools with a new, higher-quality, limited-access, modem service. The new service is the result of campus input and the recommendations of the Academic Senate Computer Policy Committee. It will utilize current-technology, V.90 56 Kbps equipment and support about 280 simultaneous connections.
The new “LifeLine Remote Access Service” has a goal of providing basic, limited, modem service to everyone at UCI who needs it. The new modem pool does not represent a complete Internet Service Provider (ISP) service; people with more than modest remote access needs should still use ISPs.
Each UCI faculty, staff and student will be limited to 7 hours of connect time during peak “Prime-time” usage periods each week. The 7 hour limit will be reduced as necessary to ensure equitable access with a minimum of busy signals. Each individual modem session will be limited to 1 hour in length during Prime-time, and 4 hours in length at other times.
For complete information on the new Lifeline modem service, please see:http://www.nacs.uci.edu/network/lifeline-modem-policy.html. NACS is also working with a local ISP who will be providing a service tailored to UCI’s needs; watch NACS-News for future announcements