Faculty
Advisory Committee: NACS Service/Issue Summary
March 30, 2001
Summary: A summary of the services NACS provides
to the campus and the status as of March 30, 2001.
Telecommunication
NACS Services
- Campus telephone system: currently 7,743 campus phones connected via 12
distributed phone switch (LIM) sites campus-wide.
- Campus network "to the wall-plate" (units supply local network
servers and end-user support) – approximately 14,000 IP#s in use.
- Network services (Domain Name Service, directory services, e-mail delivery,
mailing lists, etc. Averaging 760k messages/day through @UCI.EDU Mail Transport
Agent (MTA) servers, 604k/day SPAM messages rejected.)
- Network security services and coordination.
- LifeLine Modem Service: 280 modems to ensure everyone has base-line remote
network access.
- 800mhz radio system (631 campus radios in Facilities Management, the UCI
Police department, and other units).
Telephone and Radio Issues and Initiatives
- Ericsson telephone switch installed in 1984, but has been well maintained
and upgraded over the years. It well meets current needs – what about
the future?
- Voice over IP (the campus data-network): this may be how phone service
is provided in the future, but at present it’s a costly proposition
for something that won’t work as well as the current system.
- Current and future Ericsson software supports a variety of new features
that should be considered. Better support for cell-phones should be investigated
- what else is needed?
- 800mhz radio system is important to UCI police operations and disaster
preparedness. It receives less attention than the network or telephone system – we
need to ensure its in excellent shape for disaster communications (and power
failures).
- Links (data AND voice) to University Tower and North Campus need to be
upgraded. We are working with PacBell to gain access to their conduit for
our fiber, also looking at laser-based solution as an alternative.
Network
- Backbone: is in excellent shape from $1.5 million upgrade two years ago
(to a switched gigabit redundant core architecture). Need to upgrade some
building connections – are there any other issues?
- Building infrastructure: NACS continues incremental "edge" enhancements
(currently Biological Sciences, planning College of Medicine, previous upgrades
in Physical Sciences, ICS, and Engineering). Staff time has been an issue
in determining the speed at which upgrades are implemented. What areas of
the campus should receive priority attention after the College of Medicine
upgrade?
- Building wiring standards: Category-5, 10mbit/second switched. How important
is 100mb switched? Is the decision to not pull fiber to all desktops still
valid?
- Outlying buildings: NACS is currently reviewing all spaces that are not
wired for network access. Are there areas that should receive priority attention?
- Internet 2 funding: NACS received $1.645 million from the state to improve
network infrastructure. This is currently earmarked for a new border router
and related infrastructure ($230k), CoM edge upgrade ($700-900k), additional
bandwidth in PS ($30k) and elsewhere, bringing more faculty to 100mb, and
upgrading building to backbone connections. Are there other network infrastructure
priorities?
- Network growth/maintenance funding: the current $1.2 million annual FTE-based
recharge will need to be increased to manage network growth (the state Internet-2
funds postpone this). Can this funding be done "off the top"?
- Off-campus connectivity: Is excellent via our participation in CalREN-2
and Abilene – UCI is connected via 155mbps (OC-3) pipe.
- Off-campus traffic: peaks of 60Mbit/second IN and 40Mbit/second OUT; recent
campus total average of 87Mbit/second, 52Mbit of which was from Housing.
Housing currently contributes $50k toward off-campus connection costs.
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Enterprise/General-Use Computing
NACS Services
- E-mail accounts for all UCI students ("EA" – 17,264 active
accounts)
- E-mail accounts for all faculty and staff at UCI whose departments do not
supply local services ("E4E" – 2,719 active accounts)
- CorporateTime enterprise-wide electronic calendaring (over 800 current
users in Humanities, Biological Sciences, Engineering, the administration,
and other units)
- 24 hour a day machine room, trouble-desk (and limited user assistance).
- 8-5 networking/computing help-desk, plus student help-desks in NACS computing
labs.
- Indirect Support Team (IST): coordinating the activities of support staff
UCI-wide, solving common problems, doing/assisting web development, technical
training coordination, central technical expertise.
- The NACS IST brings each of the following groups together approximately
every other month:
- SCCs: School Computing Coordinators are the lead computing staff
in each school or unit.
- CSCs: Computing Support Coordinators are the departmental staff
that provide computing support (they often report to the SCC).
- CLCs: Computing Lab Coordinators are the departmental staff that
manage and maintain instructional computing Labs.
- Distributed Computing Support: contract system administration services
(see below under "Research").
- Software bulk/software license coordination.
Issues and Initiatives
- NACS is continuing to enhance and fortify central e-mail services to encourage
more units to make use of them, saving departmental efforts for end-user
support (have made file-systems more fault-tolerant, added IMAP location-independent
service, Web-based e-mail access, etc.). What is the future of e-mail services – will
everyone have off-campus accounts? Is it important to encourage more departments
to buy into a central strategy?
- Corporate Time scheduling was added last year; it can greatly simplify
putting people together. How important is this? Can/should NACS do more to
facilitate its acceptance and use?
- NACS has a goal to make central file-store available from multiple operating
systems to campus-wide instructional labs and desktops. This would create
a campus-wide vehicle for true file sharing, and create a new, highly-reliable
place to store files accessible from anywhere on campus. It would also facilitate
student data and configuration information being available from multiple
campus locations, and from home. How important is this?
- Excluding Educational Web support, NACS provides a limited amount of Web
development and hosting services. Should this be expanded? Should UCI rely
on off-campus Web developers?
- NACS has a single person charged with facilitating access to technical
training at UCI. What are the priority areas for training activities?
- In contrast of days of old when central cycle-based services were predominant,
NACS coordination activities have been an increasingly critical component
of its service to the campus.
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Education
NACS Services
- About 250 seats of instructional computing labs located in Engineering
Gateway, Multipurpose Science and Technology, Gateway Study Center, and Humanities
Instructional Building
- "Payprint" pay-for-print services in many locations (ICS, Social
Sciences, Humanities, Biological Sciences, Engineering, etc.)
- NACS Instructional Web Technologies group: a key participant in the campus
Electronic Educational Environment (EEE) collaboration.
- EEE Web site, course web site directory, course web assistance, course
web tools (424 course web pages Winter 2001, 88 housed on the EEE server).
- Course-based electronic mailing list system (1,365 active during Winter
2001).
Issues and Initiatives
- Coordinating campus-wide instructional lab activities. NACS approach is
to "gently" pursue standards and common support efforts campus-wide.
Is UCI’s approach to computing labs too distributed? (4 central entities,
and all schools, run their own computing labs). There is a need for campus-wide
instructional lab capacity planning. Is it important to have the same software
versions, same desktop/menu layout, etc., in campus computing labs?
- EEE is a collaboration of NACS, the Division of Undergraduate Education,
UCI Libraries, and the Registrar. There is a separate EEE Faculty Advisory
Committee, and EEE staff from each department meet monthly.
- Instructional Technology faculty outreach. Issues: some faculty are reluctant
to use IT: imperfect technology, learning curves, insufficient "return
on investment" of faculty time – should NACS/EEE/the-campus do
more about this, or is it an issue? What are the relative merits of the common "empower
faculty" approach vs. a "full-service" approach where staff
do the bulk of the instructional technology preparation based on faculty
materials? Should more attention be paid to leading-edge instructional technology
applications?
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Research
NACS Services
- Assistant Director for Academic Outreach (Steve Franklin): staying in touch
with academic activities and goals, planning, connecting faculty with common
interests/needs, high-level issues, vendor relationships. (Instruction as
much as Research)
- Research computing specialist (Tony Soeller) to facilitate access to computing
resources (San Diego Supercomputer Center, Physical Sciences SGI Origin 2000,
academic software, etc.) and assist with software use and other research
computing issues.
- Distributed Computing Services: contract UNIX and other support services
for researchers (and some instruction and administrative clients). Currently
supports 600 systems; Engineering, Physical Sciences, and the Medical School
are the biggest clients.
- Research network facilitation and assistance; maintaining contacts with
Internet-2, CalREN-2, and other organizations/networks important to UCI research.
Issues and Initiatives
- High performance computing: how much does UCI need?
- NACS staff dedicated to research computing application support has dwindled
from 5-7 in 1990 to 1 now: has this central expertise been adequately addressed
by local staffing? NACS has proposed to add a second Research Computing Specialist – what
areas should that position focus on?
- Distributed Computing Support: need to move toward "support the informal
supporter" approach? How does DCS support integrate with local school
support organizations? How important is it to provide Windows DCS SysAdmin
support?
- How else might NACS facilitate the use of computing and networking in UCI
research?
General Issues
- Outreach to the academic community is critical to NACS. How should NACS
facilitate faculty awareness of services? How should NACS solicit input about
current and future services? What is the best way for NACS to stay in step
with campus goals and priorities? This NACS Advisory group is a part of this.
- Long-range planning: NACS had tended to focus on the here and now, with
a wealth of immediate issues to deal with at any given time. NACS needs to
look to the future and develop 2-N year plans. Any immediate input on how
NACS should go about this?
- Staff retention has not been a major problem to NACS due to the attention
paid to the issue (good working environment, reasonable salaries, etc.).
It has been an issue in several units – is there anything NACS can do
to help?
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