ITPG Meeting Minutes October 30, 1998

Present: Debbie Anglin, Art Battson, Glenn Davis (co-chair), Bill Doering, Phil Handley, Tom Lawton, Ed Mehlschau, Elise Meyer (co-chair), Alan Moses, Joan Murdoch, Larry Murdock, Kevin Schmidt, Vince Sefcik, Sean Souther, Bob Sugar, John Vasi

Not Present: Kevin Barron, Ken Bowers, George Gregg, Sonia Johnston, Bill Koseluk, Pam Lombardo, Tom Marazita, Bill McTague, Jamie Sonsini, Pamela Webb

Elise opened the meeting by noting that we had a quorum. Glenn then provided a brief overview of the ITPG presentation to CNC. The handout that was provided to CNC listing our ten urgent issues along with the url for the ITPG web page was circulated.

Elise asked if anyone wanted to revisit the issues on which we achieved consensus during the meeting of October 20. No one did, so we considered the issues to be ratified by a quorum and moved ahead.

Bob Sugar indicated that he is ready to appoint the two subcommittees recommended by ITPG (Security and Directory/Authentication) and would like to receive names of interested persons. Bob also reported on a recent meeting with EVC Nagel in which he emphasized the needs for additional long-term IT planning and a resolution to the NOC issue.

On the topic of dial-up access, Bob reported favorable feedback on the proposal to merge the 42 modems in the non-IC modem pool with the 8 PPP modems in the UCSB-restricted modem pool and give all 50 modems PPP capability and access to all UCSB hosts. Further, everyone agreed that imposing a hard time limit was appropriate, although two people thought that 1 hour might be better than 1/2 hour. Vince indicated that an upgrade to the terminal server might be required and said that Communications Services would check.

The group then turned to Student Access and began by listing the following assumptions:

1. Instructors will eventually require students to access electronic resources.
2. We should begin by focusing on "access" rather than "content providers."

Discussion centered on the viability of assumption #2. Several people suggested that we could not say much about access without first defining what was to be accessed.; For example, the requirements for disk storage and removeable media might vary for workstations to be used for personal productivity tools in addition to email and web browsing. Moreover, the amount of time a person might need to have access to a workstation varies greatly between those reading email and those writing papers or watching video presentations. Requirements for discipline-specific software and ADA compliance were also noted.

Searching for dimensions to the problem, the chairs proposed organizing first by Off Campus/On Campus and within these categories listing what might be provided by UCSB versus what could be the responsibility of the students.

Off Campus Access

ISDN, Cable TV modems, wireless and ADSL were also mentioned as possible access services, each having their own equipment ratios. Also, off-campus computer labs were mentioned. These currently exist in the Residence Halls and in FT, but they could also be located in downtown Santa Barbara or other strategic locations.

On Campus Access

It was noted again that the targets would not be meaningful without deciding what was to be accessed because the time requirements for access vary greatly with the possible services.  Further, the hours of operation of the facilities would influence the number of seats required.  Consequently, the discussion evolved into producing a list of services and then splitting the list into three categories based on the capacity of the workstation required to access them. Here is a summary, sorted by category:

• Tier 1:  Email, web browsing of text and graphics pages and Pegasus
• Tier 2:  Email w/ attachments, audio, video broadcast, client-side Java, personal productivity tools, printing, removable storage media
• Tier 3:  Video-on-demand, video conferencing, scanning, media conversion, CD writing, X-server, ftp service, distance learning

The group noted the difficulty of hitting a moving technology target.

Nevertheless, having some kind of infrastructure access plan would allow system designers to target the evolving workstation plans in preparation of class materials. It is very important to tell the faculty what is and is not available.

It was noted that the time requirements of the three tiers of service might be different and, thus, estimating the number of devices required would be more difficult.

It was suggested that we might want to prohibit some uses such as chat or voice/IP.

In attempting to answer the question "Where are we now?", the group listed the known facilities and then reviewed the November 4, 1997, paper by Dorothy Chun and Michael Young that was prepared in response to EVC Crawford's questions regarding open access. This paper includes an inventory of locations and equipment, which, with a few updates, defines the situation today.

Vince noted that the cable plant now includes 2700 "ports per pillow"; in the Residence Halls, with currently 1800 ports in use, plus Westgate, El Dorado, and Tropicana. Francisco Torres (FT) has labs, but the wiring is outdated. FT and Fontainbleu are the last likely candidates for connection to the campus cable plant, although the owners of the fraternity and sorority buildings have made inquiries.

In a recent presentation Stuart Lynn suggested that 75% of the students arriving at UC bring their own personal computers. How current the technology might be was a topic of discussion with varied opinions expressed. The notion of doing a survey was floated (but sank under the weight of discussing what we might want to ask).

John Vasi noted that the Library now has 75 open-access PCs and will be adding another 75 at the end of the year. John further noted that imposing limits on the services that can be accessed from these workstations has proven to be very difficult – everything is reachable some way. Staffing requirements necessary to police usage would be dramatic.

The group then listed a set of support services that would be required to make student access to electronic services viable, including:

• Network infrastructure
• Directory services
• Security software
• File server
• Network applications
• Space, furniture, physical security devices
• Technical support staff

The group agreed to meet again from 10:00 a.m. until noon on Friday, November 20, in North Hall 1131.

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