On Jun 12, 2005, at 6:59 PM, Pacer wrote:
My Fellow PowerBook-philes and 'david',
This is interesting to me. Firstly, I am curious as to how the
"network" at your University is run. At my alma mater they had a
network which consisted of multiple layers and multiple input/
outputs to and from the WAN.
Ka-snippo.
You've pretty much described the University of Arizona network to a
tee, except we never experimented with the cable modems at Resnet;
the dorms have been wired, mostly, since the late 90's.
Our campus e-mail has 30-40 thousand accounts, is run on a cluster of
IBM servers running AIX, using IMAP and other OSS software, like
Horde and Spam Assasin.
The campus network evolved as a whole bunch of independent networks,
we've still got the Netmanagers group, an anarchic bunch of sysadmins
on campus who run different parts, some on a college level, like us,
some on a department level. It grew this way because network use was
adopted by different departments at a much different rate.
(how anarchic? The Netmanagers has always been an unofficial group;
on the order of an ad hoc users group, though we're probably one of
the most respected voices for IT on campus, the Administration and
Faculty do listen to us.
The last president of the group (not coincidentally a big MS
oriented, Central Control freak type) tried to get us recognized as
official, with a budget, official representation on campus the works
(or as I joked in one of the MANY e-mails debating the issue on the
official mailing list) 'shiny lame uniforms, a snazzy decoder ring
and a secret handshake, too' . Well no question on which side I was
on ;-)
We all met and by a large margin voted *against* giving ourselves
more power on Campus.
THAT'S anarchy in action!)
The main campus Systems folks provide the central backbone, and
campus-wide services, and support to the jack for most places. We're
one of the few bits of the campus that still control our own networks
in the phone closets, mostly out of inertia than anything else. In
our new building CCIT is taking that over. Hooray, no more time spent
in a stale phone closet trying to track one wire through a rats nest
to a half-dozen switches.
It a system that works, it's raucous sometimes, inefficient at
others, but it's an extraordinarily resilient and stable network.
Arizona State in Phoenix runs their network much differently.
(Old joke: "Q: How do you get the ASU grad off your porch? A: Pay for
the pizza." ;-)
They've got a far more rigid campus wide-LAN, all Microsoft-Centric,
full Exchange server, the works. It's a mighty fortress.
They've also been crushed to the ground by all the big nasties to
come around over the last few years; we survived Melissa, Code Red,
Nimda, etc the Great Virus Wars of '02 reasonably unscathed, since
our network design allows for the central computing folks who only
have to really control the routers, to quickly disconnect problematic
hosts form the network.
I'm a firm believer in the decentralized network model.
It also means we have a significant Mac presence on campus.
The whole laptop for everyone thing is another interesting idea to
me. Honestly, I don't think laptops add much to a class if they
add anything at all. I mean, sure they could be nice, but honestly
it is more likely the student is playing solitaire while bored than
trying to pay attention.
Oh, please, that's what universal WiFi is for; surfing the web is far
more fun than solitaire. ;-)
My take is that the 'every student must have a laptop' is a solution
without a problem, and a damned lucrative one, too, for whoever snags
the contract to supply them.
When they become coercive: "No system other than ours is allowed on
Campus" it's bad.
--
Bruce Johnson
"no matter where you go, there you are", B. Banzai
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