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LifeLine Modem Policy

Summary: NACS offers a basic modem service to faculty, staff and students. The service is limited and intended for those with modest access needs.

Goals

The new modem service is considered a "LifeLine Remote Access Service", with a goal of providing basic, limited, modem service to everyone at UCI who needs it.  The service is not a complete ISP-style service; people with more than modest remote access needs should still utilize ISPs.

People expected to use the service include:

• Students who have difficulty affording a commercial  Internet Service Provider (ISP).
• Students, faculty and staff that require only modest amounts of remote network access  --  a few hours a week, not enough to warrant subscribing to an ISP.

People not expected to use the service:

• Those who require more than a few hours of connect time each week
• Those who require "local dialing" from locations distant from UCI.
• Those who require access for non-University business and/or family members.

UCI "LifeLine" Modem Policy

The following usage policy will be in force on the new modem service. The policy is based on the recommendations of the Academic Senate Computer Policy Committee:

1. Weekly Prime-time Connect Time Limit:  Modem usage per person (UCInetID) during "Prime-time" will be limited to a fixed number of hours during each consecutive 7 day period.  It is now 10 hours per week.  Total usage outside of Prime-time will not be limited (except by the usage demands of others).
2. Session limits:  Currently, each individual modem session will be limited to 2 hours in length. This will be modified to 1 hour in length during Prime-time, and 4 hours in length at other times, when technically feasible.
3. Prime-time: Prime-time hours are currently defined as 6:00 PM until 1:00 AM, Sunday through Thursday. Friday and Saturday do not have any Prime-time hours.  This may be periodically adjusted to reflect actual UCI modem peak usage periods.
4. Limits Not Cast in Stone:  Modem usage limits will be periodically examined and changed to further the goal of ensuring modest amounts of access to everyone who needs it, while minimizing busy signals. The weekly connect time limit will be reduced if necessary to facilitate access by the intended subset of the community.
5. One Connection at a Time:  Only one connection to the modem pool is allowed per UCInetID at any given time.
6. University Business Only:  Only official UCI educational, research and administrative use is allowed on UCI's modem pool.  Use is restricted to UCI faculty, staff, students and other individuals authorized by the campus.  Use by family members of UCI students and employees is not allowed.
7. Single Modem Pool:  All modems will be placed in a single pool on a single phone number, with consistent parameters and limits.

Background

The on-campus modem service has been an issue for many years, with NACS taking various steps to deal with busy signals and other issues. In 1995 the campus modem pool was "frozen" at 300 14.4 Kbps modems, and this pool was still in place as of December, 1998. The intent was for people needing remote access to obtain it from commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs).  See NACS' 1995 Dialup Remote Access Plan.

In 1998, NACS outlined the current modem situation (see March 1998 Modem Status and Request for Input) and discussed options with the CPC, School computing staff, the Academic Senior Managers,and others. The CPC subsequently recommended that funds be allocated to NACS to replace the current modem pool with a higher quality, although still limited capacity, service. Excerpts from the May 1998 CPC letter to the EVC include:

"The third element (of the campus network) is the modem pool.  We strongly support it."
"It serves a valuable purpose for the faculty, staff, and students because it assures them access from home to the rich educational and research resources available via the campus network."
"We feel that upgrading the current modem pool to modern high speed modems and maintaining strict limits on the usage levels will allow the current system to function satisfactorily for another three years.  In our view this will allow faculty, staff, and students to access the UCI network from home for brief periods of time without forcing everyone who needs occasional access to the campus network to incur the expense of subscribing to a network service provider."

May 1998 UCI Modem Pool Usage

In the summer of 1998, NACS studied usage patterns for the 14.4 Kbps modem service, and this data was reviewed over the summer by NACS and representatives from the CPC.  The usage patterns reflected by the data was one factor used in determining the new modem policy. The data covered the time period of May 23 through June 13, 1998, which were weeks 8, 9, and 10 for Spring Quarter, 1998.  Highlights included:

• There were a total of 9,498 different modem users -- 15% Faculty and staff, 28% student employees, and 56% other students.
• The average session length of all sessions was 23 minutes, and 77% of all sessions were less than 30 minutes in length.
• Only 20% of the modem users had ever used the express modem pool (the smaller 824-8960 pool, which was limited to sessions 20 minutes or less in length).
• The 10% of  sessions greater than 1 hour in length accounted for 51% of the total modem connect time.
• Only 7% of modem users used more than 30 hours of total connect time over the three week period; however, this group accounted for  46% of all connect time used.

Conclusions drawn from this data include:

• The majority of current UCI modem users require only short modem sessions and a small amount of weekly connect time.
• The non-cummulative session time limits in force on the 14.4 Kbps service are an imperfect way to ration modem access; heavy users receive a disproportionate share of modem access.
• Use of a second modem pool is inconvenient and/or many people are unaware of it.

The complete summary of May 23 - June 13 modem data can be found at the following location:

http://www.nacs.uci.edu/communication/modem-stats-98.html

Links Referenced In This Document

Prepared by Dana Roode, DRoode@UCI.EDU

Updated: February 20, 2007

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