Network Services Team

Meeting Minutes

2/21/95

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Attending: Bob, Brenda, Carm, Dave, Garnet, Justin

1. Old Business:

- Shiva LANRover problems/update. Spoke to a new technician (Al Walker) who suggested that the size of our network (# of nodes) may require more memory than our LANRover has (1Mb). 512K additional memory (special-ordered) is $200. We've order two (2) 512K memory modules for both LANRovers. Justin will also be pin-resetting the LANRovers to update them to the latest system software.
- Skyline update. Still unable to read data collected more than 12 hours ago. Justin is working with the ag group to test their "fixes" to the software.
(NOTE: Bob installed an extra ethernet card in Paula's Mac and loaded the Satellite software on it as well. Once Skyline is working correctly, Paula's Mac will be one of 3 Macs that will constantly collect information about the campus network that can be analyzed at a later date.)
- Library CD-ROM server. No change in status.
- Key systems (telephones). Manola has collected all of the Key Systems with the exception of Crane and MTN.
- 2400 baud modems. Still experiencing problems with the Pratical Peripherals and Black Box modems.
(NOTE: Carm has worked with Brenda to remove both of the faulty modems from the 2400 baud pool. They changed the 2400/9600 modem pool so that those calling the 2400 baud hunt-group will automatically go to the 9600 baud hunt-group when the 2400 modems are busy. The 9600 baud modems will automatically autobaud down to 2400. This strategy allows us to eliminate the faulty modems and give better overall service to the 2400 baud modem users. Since this is for VAX access, high-speed baud rates are not as critical as they are for TCP/IP and AppleTalk access . The 9600 baud modem users will still use the same hunt-group telephone #, *but* they will be competing with "overflow" 2400 baud users. So-- keep an eye out for contention problems here so we can determine how to balance our modem pool.)

- TV "banner" for the InfoChannel. No update.

2. New Business:

- The SUNYNet gateway to the Internet will be down again this Sunday 2/25. (Anybody hear about any problems from users from the 2 outages?)
- Campus Activities Hotline (x4444) will be updated by Paula when we are informed of campus closings or activity cancellations.
- NEWS feed to Plattsburgh. LISTPROC from CREN. (Neither of these issues were discussed Tabled until next meeting.)
- Justin mentioned that we had a copy of GraceLAN Manager that will allow us to monitor the traffic loads on our AppleShare server(s?).
- Brenda raised her concerns over the treatment of our phones by summer program students. Brenda will consider possible strategies for handling this problem.

3. What's Important to accomplish by next week?

- Fix the LANRovers. (Bob/Justin)
- Fix the 2400 baud modems. (Carm/Brenda)
- Check on progress being made to install the backup generator for the switch. (Bob)
- Everyone was asked to list what should be accomplished this summer and how much student assistance will be needed so we can plan how much Temp Service will be needed. (Everyone!)

4. Continuation of discussion on alerting campus of problems with network services:

- NOTE: We need to put our work here in a form that others in the department can refer to when there are network problems. Ideas anyone??
- Turned our discussion away from Carm and Garent's report so we could get a report from Dave on the problems with NS (our mail-server). This also gave us an opportunity to discuss our strategy for dealing with problems with our TCP/IP-based services such as our mail-server.
NS was "hung" today (2/21) because the 2Gb hard drive is faulty. Dave will send it out for replacement. NS is now up and running.
Discussion centered on what constituted an outage that required notification of users. This led to a discussion of how we would know when an outage occurred. We began to outline this as well as the goals to be met:
Remote access - if there is a problem, we will try to have it back up *before* 8am, Mon - Fri; within ?? hours on Sat/Sun.
On-campus access - ??
Dave and Justin will work on this and the team will review it at the next meeting.

6. Next meeting (Tues, 3/1 @ 8:00am) --> Please arrive a few minutes early so we can start promptly @ 8:00am.