Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

Fall Quarter Electronic Activity

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With the arrival of Fall quarter come the usual changes on campus – quiet campus walkways turn into bustling thoroughfares, parking spaces once plentiful are full by 9 AM, large crowds are found at eating establishments at mid-day. Similar changes occur in the mostly-invisible world of electronic communication.

Over 4,000 new students have initiated their UCI network access (“activated their UCInetIDs”) since the beginning of the summer. “Activation” is the process by which students learn what UCInetID they have been assigned, agree to follow UCI’s computer use policy, select private passwords for use with personal UCInetIDs, and receive EA (Educational Access) computing/e-mail accounts. UCI students are very well connected – 95% of UCI undergraduates have active UCInetIDs. In fact, only 40 of the sophomore class of 3,000 students have not activated their IDs.

In the past, the activation process occurred almost entirely at the beginning of the new school year. The process began in June this year, as new students attending summer programs were given the opportunity to activate early. As a result, over half of UCI’s new students activated their IDs before Orientation Week. This is an indication of the growing importance of network services among UCI students.

There are other signs of fall quarter activity – over 175,000 e-mail messages were processed on the student EA systems during the first week of class. Over 300 courses had active EEE Course Mailing Lists, and 1,212 messages had been delivered to subsets of 14,198 student subscribers of those lists.

The EEE (Electronic Educational Environment) Web server had links for 155 course web pages as of October 4th, an all-time high for UCI (establishing a UCI class Web page is at the sole discretion of UCI faculty, unlike other campuses recently in the news). The EEE server fielded 94,343 requests during the first week of class.

There are more visible signs of electronic activity as well, as NACS, Information and Computer Science, Biological Science, Library, E-Link, and other computer labs become very popular places on campus. As electronic activity continues to increase, NACS and campus computing supporters strive to keep up with it. This takes time, money, and patience, all of which are particularly precious commodities as the new school year begins.

Staffing News

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SHELLY TOOLE has joined NACS as a new electronic communications customer service assistant. Shelly will be supervising the campus telephone switchboard operators and providing billing services. Shelly, who replaces Dottie Baker, comes to NACS from Athletics.

DAREK WERNER is a new member of NACS’ business office staff, filling a vacancy created when Cathy McFarlane left NACS in January. Darek will provide a variety of accounting and bookkeeping functions, and will be assisting in NACS’ Workstation Acquisition Service. Darek joins NACS from the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering.

TYLER TURLEY is a new ECS Communications Technician. Tyler, formerly employed by Standard Tel (a telecommunications system integrator), brings 12 years of telecommunications experience to UCI. Tyler replaces Robbie Robinson, who left NACS in June.

UCI Network Plans

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In previous issues of this newsletter we presented an overview of UCInet and discussed performance considerations (see http://www.nacs.uci.edu/news/97.9.html and 97.10.html). Continuing in the UCInet series, we examine current network plans below. These plans take into account the many conversations NACS has had with UCI faculty, outside networking professionals, and network managers from UC campuses and other universities.

NETWORK EDGES – Departmental Local Area Networks (LANs):
Departmental LANs are UCI’s highest network priority over the next two years. In addition to the shared 10 Mbps (Megabits per second) Ethernet already in widespread use on campus, switched 10 Mbps and shared or switched 100 Mbps will be provided as needed. TCP/IP will continue to be the protocol of choice for UCI networks. User requirements, cost and network management issues will be the determining factors in the deployment of various Ethernet technologies. Higher speeds will be provided in special cases.

THE CAMPUS BACKBONE:
OAC believes that modest upgrades to the backbone will suffice for the next two years as the edges of the network continue to be upgraded. A major campus investment in the backbone will then be required, in order to support the deployment of higher speeds in the network edges, increased use of multimedia and WWW applications, and increased collaborative activities between groups of researchers having large data sets. Various alternatives are being considered at this time.

WIDE AREA NETWORK (WAN) CONNECTIONS:
To achieve better connectivity to other universities, UCI is participating in the “NSF Connections” program. The “CENIC” consortium has been formed to manage California’s participation in the program. The program will allow the creation of “CalREN-2”, a regional California network that will operate at at least OC12 speeds (622 Mbps). CalREN-2 will in turn be connected to the national “vBNS” OC12 network. This will give UCI high-speed network connectivity to 100 Universities nation-wide, all of the UC system, USC, Cal-Tech and Stanford. UCI initially plans to connect to CalREN-2 via IP routing at least at the speed of the UCInet backbone (100 Mbps).

INTERNET CONNECTION:
Unfortunately, we still have to contend with commercial service to the rest of the Internet. However, universities connected to vBNS or CalREN-2 will be accessible directly, and will no longer be reached via the Internet.

NETWORK SERVICES:
OAC plans to invest in the tools, systems and personnel to manage a more complex network as the changes discussed here are implemented. Additionally, plans are underway for increased reliability of network services such as: DNS (Domain Name System — host name resolution) servers; Mail Transport Agents (MTAs, or mail handling systems); security and authentication.

REMOTE ACCESS (modems):
The long-term future of UCI’s “free” modem pool is uncertain, and vendor hardware support for the terminal servers that run the modem pool will cease as of October 1998. No campus decision has been made to either phase out the modem pool or improve it. However, the preferred remote access option is via commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Work is being done to resolve various issues related to ISP-based remote-access.

CONCLUSION
The network is clearly an essential part of the campus, and rapidly changing technologies and applications have created a climate requiring network issues to be re-evaluated every three to four years. Someday technology will allow voice and data networks to be combined as a single network; a long-term goal is to be prepared for this. We must also ensure universal connectivity, consistent availability, and reliability, while supporting increasing collaboration among UCI faculty. Groups collaborate both on and off campus, and see the network as an important aspect of achieving their goals.

If you have questions or concerns about UCI’s network plans, please contact Garrett Hildebrand, NACS’ lead network planner. Garrett may be reached via e-mail at GDH@UCI.EDU, or via telephone at 824-8913.

UC-Wide Software Licensing

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In order to take advantage of the collective acumen, knowledge, and bargaining power represented by all campuses of the University of California, the Office of the President (UCOP) sponsors a university-wide Advisory Group on “Technical Acquisition Support” (TAS). This group includes representatives of all 9 campuses, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and UCOP. It communicates regularly by a mailing list hosted at UCI, with monthly conference calls. There are also occasional face-to-face meetings, often linked with events such as the annual UC Computing Services Conference (held this past week at UCSD).

The range of computer products and vendors on which the group consults is broad: Apple, Claris, Cisco, Digital, Eudora, Maple,Microsoft, Netscape, Oracle, SAS, Sun, and Sybase, to name a representative sample. There is no special funding for TAS-based acquisitions; rather TAS serves as a forum for determining whether there is adequate interest and funding available on various campuses to make a system-wide agreement feasible for a particular product or with a particular vendor.

News about products currently covered or under consideration for coverage is communicated through the channels most appropriate for the particular product. In many cases, this is via the UCICSCG@UCI.EDU or UCICSCG-INTERNAL@UCI.EDUComputer Support Coordinator mailing lists. Other mailing lists (e.g., UCI-SUN, MS-SELECT, UCI-STAT-SOFTWARE, UCI-SYBASE, etc.) are also used as appropriate. These mailing lists also represent a good way to bring acquisition issues up for discussion at UCI and in the UC TAS process.

Staffing News

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ROBERT MURRAY

Robert Murray joined NACS Electronic Communications Services in May as a network service programmer. Robert previously worked as a software developer for Vysym Corporation in Irvine. He will be supporting and enhancing “PH/QI” (UCI’s online directory system) and other UCI network services. Robert’s e-mail address is RWM@UCI.EDU.

STEVE CHEN

Steve Chen, a recent graduate of UCI, joined NACS in July as a departmental UNIX system administrator. Steve’s arrival will help satisfy current campus demand for additional contract UNIX support.

In addition to Steve’s broad interests in computing technology, he is an active runner, having run the L. A. Marathon this past year.

Steve’s e-mail address is SteveYWC@UCI.EDU.