Present: Arlene Allen, Debbie Anglin, Art Battson, Glenn
Davis, George Gregg, Laurice Kennel, Kelly Lamar, Tom Lawton, Patrick McNulty,
Elise Meyer, Alan Moses, Joan Murdoch, Larry Murdock, Glenn Schiferl, Deborah
Scott, Stan Nicholson, Jason Poley, Vince Sefcik, Jamie Sonsini, Paul Valenzuela
Laurice Kennel led a discussion on the renewal
of the Symantec Norton anti-virus software license which is due to expire
in July. She wondered if the group would like to evaluate other products
or expand the terms of the license. Presently, our license covers
all campus machines and residence hall student machines, plus faculty,
staff and graduate students home machines. Should we consider expanding
the license to include all students?
It was noted that there are some minor bugs in
the Symantec software that result in premature expirations. On the
other hand, it would be labor intensive to change the software on approximately
7500 workstations.
The benefit of giving licenses to all students
and thereby reducing the number of viruses that float around was discussed.
However, Housing noted that they give the Norton product to students
who don't seem to use it. Housing also reports going to another product
for their business office because they needed something that would push
the update files to workstations rather than wait for people to request
them. They also needed something stronger than Norton to deal with
the frequent attacks on the Outlook software which they run. Housing
believes the extra cost is justified by the reduced time it takes to fight
viruses that plague their administrative units.
After discussion the group recommended continuing
the Symantec license with the same terms as are currently in place.
DECAF reported continuing investigation of requirements
for a campus "portal". The group has written a report that will be
released in a few weeks. Next steps might be to bring a proposal
through ITPG to the ITB requesting resources and/or campus support for
the idea. DECAF will spawn a technical subgroup to propose an architecture
and estimate costs. Authentication might require Kerberos or PKI
certificates. Other middleware might be necessary to integrate campus
systems. DECAF invites participation from others who might augment
the committee.
DECAF has looked at vendor offerings and at portal
projects on other campuses. They have also reviewed the authentication
mechanisms in place on various campus servers (perm/pin, SSN and id/password
schemes are all currently in use). The group plans to leverage the
work of the Auth/Dir group while adding some other pieces to the puzzle.
Projects in the Grad Division, Financial Aid and the Registrar's Office
plus large academic courses that need to authenticate students before distributing
material protected by copyright could benefit from a common solution.
In discussion it was noted that some instructors
now post grades on the web by perm number. Better authentication
for access to information of this type would be desirable. Housing
and Communications Services noted that their systems currently authenticate
with links to the perm/pin used by RBT. The new version of the Entire
X software required to do this is now distributed free of charge to clients.
This technique, however, suffers from the "4-digit pin" problem (a pin
containing only four numeric digits is vulnerable to brute force computer
attacks). The technique might benefit from better documentation.
On the topic of documentation, it was proposed
that the campus needs an "IT Resource Guide" listing those IT services
available to instructors for use in the classroom. Such a guide might
be used to measure the gap between existing services and faculty needs.
A faculty intake interview might also be used to gain information on unmet
needs. The IT Resource Guide might serve a clearinghouse function
and be linked to the OIT web pages.
The discussion of an IT resource guide led to
a general discussion of who is charged with maintaining data on campus
IT services and who might be funded to do it. Examples of ideas
that had faded because of lack of maintenance support were offered (e.g.,
the list of Internet Service Providers). Nevertheless, some thought
that an index of campus IT service providers was needed and L&S proposed
to provide a draft. The effort will be called, "Information Technology
in Support of Instruction" (ITSI).
The idea of an IT internship was then introduced
with the note that "internship" has a specific definition on campus (i.e.,
release time from a current job to learn another job). L&S plans
to set up an internship which could be used to transition from an administrative
assistant position to a job in the IT support series. Student Affairs
reported that they are using a casual position as an "intern-like" opportunity.
Someone raised the specter of union issues to conclude the discussion.
ResNet has been extended to provide one port per
student in all off-campus housing and family apartment units. This
traffic plus the traffic generated by the port-per-pillow ethernet connections
in the on-campus residence halls is currently funneled through a rate limited
10 MBps connection to the Internet. The increase in the number of
ResNet connections is accompanied by an increase in usage on connections
already in place. Housing has taken several actions to manage the
demand such as using a Packet Shaper to place Napster at low priority and
conducting advertising campaigns regarding appropriate usage.
Because demand continues to increases in spite
of efforts to manage it, Housing requested additional bandwidth.
ResNet Internet traffic does not traverse the campus backbone and currently
uses only 10 MBps on a 622 MBps off-campus connection. Thus, increasing
the ceiling available to ResNet would not likely consume bandwidth needed
by others. Doing so might, however, raise the share of the Internet
Service Provider costs allocated by UCOP to the campus. It is not
known how much of the ResNet traffic goes off campus and how much is destined
for on campus service providers. Consequently, there is a need to
measure the share of the ISP traffic generated by ResNet versus the remainder
of the campus. A product called Netflow could be implemented at the
border router to provide this measure.
Housing proposed raising the limit on their bandwidth
to a total of 50 MBps in stages over the next year. Housing is willing
to pay for the implementation of the Netflow measuring software and to
pay for any increase in ISP costs to the campus that are attributed to
their traffic. In general, Housing is committed to avoiding an increase
in costs to the rest of the campus because of their increasing demand.
Nevertheless, they need to increase the service available to students who
are now reporting that they have faster access to the Internet at
home. Housing proposed an immediate increase to 20 MBps by January
3 combined with ITPG approval to increase to 50 MBps by September.
Some asked whether the issue should be sent through
the BEG but the majority felt that was not necessary (12-4 with one abstention).
A motion for ITPG to approve a ResNet increase to 50 MBps in increments
to be decided by Housing and to implement traffic monitoring at the same
time, so that Housing can pay for any increased ISP charges due to their
traffic, was passed by a vote of 15-0 with one abstention.
The meeting ended with an inquiry regarding whether
UCSB had participated in the annual Most Wired Survey conducted
by Yahoo (we did). It was reported that some students are
wondering why UCSB is not mentioned.
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