Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

Printing in Labs

by

For the last few years, NACS has managed a pay-for-printing service in its instructional computing labs in an effort to balance printing needs with the inevitable costs of providing that capability. This service has been so successful (we estimate more than half a million pages will be printed this year) that departments which manage other labs have asked for NACS’ assistance in setting up similar services.

Today, “PayPrint” is available in labs managed by NACS, Information and Computer Science (ICS), Social Sciences, Humanities and the Division of Undergraduate Education’s Instructional Technology Center. There are a total of 20 stations to which users can direct printouts, and the cards needed to pay for and authorize printouts in the system are for sale from vending machines in NACS’ labs in Engineering Gateway and the Humanities Instructional Building, as well as in ICS, Social Sciences, and Humanities.

There is more good news for users of PayPrint! A recent analysis of anticipated costs for the coming year has enabled NACS to reduce the price to $0.10 per page. This will make printing more affordable to students.

Backbone Upgrade

by

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.

NACS Staffing Update

by

NACS is currently undergoing some staff turnover, which is common in the opportunity-rich computing industry. We are in the process of recruiting to replace each staff member who has departured.

Jim Surlow
Jim Surlow, who managed NACS’ DCS contract support group, left in September to fulfill a longtime goal of moving out of state. He has joined Kenan Systems in Denver. Dan Stromberg (strombrg@uci.edu) is acting as Interim Manager of DCS, with the support of NACS Associate Director Dana Roode (DRoode@uci.edu).

Don Frederick
Don Frederick, NACS’ research and scientific computing consultant, has left NACS to join the San Diego Supercomputer Center, SDSC. Until we hire a replacement, Allen Schiano (schiano@uci.edu) is fielding requests normally sent to Don, and redistributing them to other NACS Staff as appropriate.

Jan Vescera
Jan Vescera, NACS’ campus-wide computing support coordinator, has left NACS to seek employment closer to her Los Angeles home. Andrew Laurence (atlauren@uci.edu) and Bob Hudack (rjhudack@uci.edu) of NACS’ Indirect Support Team will be taking over Jan’s responsibilities, with help from a technical staffer being recruited.

Finally, we are pleased to welcome Carol Sison, who joins NACS’ Electronic Communication Services unit as Telecommunications Specialist. Carol comes to NACS/ECS from GE Capital Mortgage Services, where she spent 10 years as Telecommunications and Facilities Manager. Carol will be helping to administer UCI’s telephone system and wiring plant.

SPAM: Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

by

As anyone who uses e-mail knows, “SPAM” is more than affordable protein and the subject of a Monty Python comic sketch. SPAM (or “Unsolicited Commercial E-mail”, UCE) is the electronic equivalent of paper junk mail, although some find it even more objectionable. To an individual, SPAM can be a petty annoyance or a plague, depending on how e-mail is accessed (via a fast network connection, or a slow modem). SPAM is a growing problem on today’s Internet, because its costs are borne by network providers and users rather than those generating it.

SPAMmers are always looking for well-connected systems that will accept their advertisements and relay them to points all over the Internet. This is done to conceal the identity of a SPAMmer, or to allow access to mail servers that have blocked transmissions from the SPAMmer’s own network. Several servers at UCI have been abused in this manner, causing throughput problems and downtime.

Through no fault of its users or operators, abuse by SPAMers can cause a mail host to be placed on an e-mail “blacklist.” Hosts that allow “e-mail relaying” (see the next article) are also blacklisted. E-mail from a blacklisted host is refused by some servers, which can prevent the exchange of important e-mail between Internet users.

SPAM is a tough problem for which there is no complete technical solution. Fortunately, there are several efforts underway to thwart SPAM on the Internet. If you would like more information, please see one of the Web references below:

Off-Site to Off-Site E-Mail Relay Disabled

by

Due to the increased abuse of campus systems as SPAM relays by off-campus SPAMers, NACS has recently disabled “e-mail relaying” on EA, E4E, and Orion. This same change was previously made to the campus Mail Transport Agent (MTA) servers and most DCS-supported UNIX systems.

“E-mail relaying” is accepting e-mail from non-UCI hosts and retransmitting it to other non-UCI hosts. For example, a user at MIT sending mail to someone at the University of Texas using mail servers at UCI. This would happen if the MIT user’s mail software is configured to use UCI systems as its “SMTP” server, instead of using a MIT mail server for this function. The SMTP server is the one that distributes e-mail on your behalf, as contrasted with your POP server, which collects e-mail sent to you and makes it available for your access.

Turning off relay will not impact UCI e-mail users, as long as their software is configured to use the correct SMTP server. Problems sometime arise when people are off-campus and use a commercial ISP to access UCI e-mail. In this case, the ISP’s SMTP server should be used, not one at UCI, even if a UCI E-mail account is being used for receiving and processing mail. A UCI POP account can be utilized from an ISP in conjunction with the ISP’s SMTP server.