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Network Services Team (NST)

Meeting Minutes - 1/10/96

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1. Status Reports:

• Any Network Services projects pending/waiting?
  • wiring the President's house for data
    - Still pending
    
    
  • Duplicating move to Merritt 131
    - Duplicating is now in the process of moving. Jerry Beaulieu has contacted Garnet about anothe phone/data line. We will wait on this until we finish Schuette and have a helper.
    
    
  • Sen. Sears - moving to ISD offices
    - No news on this. Garnet will contact Physical Plant about our concern for the wires that are in the wall they intend to cut an opening for a door.
    
    
• Shiva LANRover status
  • How have the dial-in servers been doing? Clipboard being used when servers are reset?
    - The clipboard is being used, though there haven't been any outages in quite some time (weeks!)
    - We will buy Cardinal 28.8 modems for the LanRovers if they are supported by Shiva.
    
    
• Wiring the "dorms" project. (Bob)
  • Vendor feedback? (Westelcom, Anixter, 3Com, Cabletron)
    - TelData Com out of Rochester has called about our wiring project. They are the 2nd vendor on the state contract. - no word from Claude (3Com); Cabletron demo units have been "ordered".
    - we will schedule a wiring team meeting in 3 weeks to discuss our physical network design for electronics (i.e., the electronics, load-balancing, segmenting, etc)
    
    
• Kellas Hall Server (SE/30)
  • Moved? (Justin)
    - Yes. Justin is in the process of consolidating all student servers into one central server.
    
    
• Switching hub (Carm/Justin)
  • Skyline status (see 11/8 minutes)
    - OK, OK, no progress here, but Bob promises to move on this RSN (real soon now)
    
    
  • Have we established a baseline of traffic/errors on our net?
    - must get Skyline going first (see above)
    
    
  • Switching hub backup
    - Carm pointed out that we do not have a plan for backing up our switched hub if it fails. After some discussion, it was agreed that we could revert to our thinnet (DEMPR) configuration in the event of the a hub failure. We need to be sure we have all of the transceivers/adpaters (for the Unix/Mac servers) in one location so this could be done in a timely fashion. Garnet will consolidate all of this equipment.
    
    
• Network Control Room
  • 2Gb drive for Unix servers. (Dave) - being returned to the company.
    
    
  • Security (Justin) - discuussed security for the network control room. Norm Jones, from Public Safety wants us to consult with them on our security concerns. Bob will contact Tim Ashley to arrange this. To do:
    • change the door locks for all doors leading into the Control Room so that they lock automatically when closed. Garnet will identify all doors
    • Contact Public Safety for consultation (Bob)
    • Dave will contact Erik and tell him to contct Public Safety when he arrives and when he leaves Kellas so they know who is in the building after hours
      
      
• Network bridge "programming"
  • Done? (Carm)
    - Not done yet. We won't review this item again until this summer.
    
    
• Can we provide downstream access now that we are using a NYSERNet gateway? Did we get confirmation from SUNYNet? (Justin)
  - Justin feels certain we can do this. Bob will contact Tom Neiss or Ted Phelps on this.
  
  
• Have we established an audio feed from the campus radio station (WAIH) as our InfoChannel background sound? (Carm/Brenda)
  - Yes. Carm will WAIH on the InfoChannel as soon as it returns to the airwaves.
  

2. New items:

• Review of network problems and our response to them:
  • Monday (1/8) - bridge failures:
    We agreed that we nee to coodinate our HELPDESK assistance so that we call Central Computing when users complain about VAX access problems. We should ask Central to call us too if they hear of problems. We should ask our users to make the call since there may be a network problem that our team is not aware of. We should ask our users to let us (HELPDESK) know whenever they experience problems connecting to services (printing, servers, Internet, etc.) That may be the very first time we find out about potential network problems.
    
    
  • Tuesday (1/9) - TCP/IP subnet mask changes; routing tables
    When we plan to make network changes, we should bring all players (including Erik) into the planning process so that everyone understands all aspects of the implementation strategy and know what their role is and can anticipate probems.
    
    
• Review of our work-related setups...are they still useful? necessary?
  (we will review this agenda item as the next meeting 1/24/96)
  • x4000 (logging network activity, installs, etc.)
    • are we logging the new computers and our recent network problems?
    • log reports - if we use this, what reports do we want and how often?
  • x2884 (Network HOTLINE) [BTW -change tel # workaround message]
  • Network services work-order process
    
    
• Our Backup strategy for responding to network problems (see Brenda's telephone # sheet)
  
  
• Workshops ("Remote Access"; "Managing Switched Internetworking")
  
  
• Around the table:
  Dave- need to enhance our Unix servers in anticipation of the residential networking load. This means:
  - more memory for the mail server/DNS (Sun)
  - more storage space for the mail server/DNS (Sun) 2-4Gb diskpack
  - a service contract on both Sun systems and the tape backup drive (HIGHEST priority)
  - may need to move our DNS server to a separate computer.
  
  Carm - do we supply cables requested by others in the department? Yes
  
  

3. Planning/Development

• Voice services plan. (Bob/Brenda)
• Video/media services plan. (MSST)
• To be investigated/developed over 95-96:
  • IMAP email server * Moving VMS email users to our Unix mail server.
  • 28.8 modems for LanRovers.
• Our roles for network problems and how/when to alert campus of problems with network services:
  • backup role for Justin's role and David's role.
  • Brenda's role as information clearinghouse and her backup.