December 10th, 2004 by Dana Roode
NACS has implemented a number of new features and services related to the public PC and Macintosh computer labs NACS supports, including some labs managed in cooperation with other UCI departments.
The ArtsTEC Mac Lab in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts has been upgraded with 23 new dual-CPU Apple G5s with 1GB of memory and 160GB disk drives running OS X. Video Art students will once again have access to high-speed external (portable) Western Digital hard drives for spring quarter.
The MSTB Lab A (MSTB 210) 46-workstation lab has been upgraded to all-in-one computers with integrated 19″ LCD displays, 3 GHz Pentium-4 CPUs, 1GB of memory, and 160GB disk drives. Both MST Labs (A and B) are available for any UCI courses or for drop-in use when not scheduled for classes. 21 computers in the NACS Engineering Gateway Lab B were upgraded to Compaq 1.7 GHz Pentium-4 systems.
The Instructional Technology Center (ITC) Lab A and Lab B have been upgraded with all-in-one computers with 1Ghz Pentium-3 systems. The Library – Gateway Study Center 25-workstation Lab has been expanded to 50 workstations.
25 more SmartClassrooms have been installed, bringing the total to around 60. In addition to the SmartClassroom media equipment, the newest rooms feature new Dell GX270 2.8GHz Pentium-4 systems with 512MB of memory and 17-inch LCD monitors. Smartclassroom systems are configured according to campus lab standards.
For a list of SmartClassroom installations, see:
http://www.irc.uci.edu/ClassroomSupportMain.html
For a description of SmartClassroom software, see:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/smartclass/
For more info on NACS-supported labs, please see:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/labs/
December 10th, 2004 by Dana Roode
Did you know that NACS has a wide variety of telephone sets and related features available to the campus? We are here to serve your individual department’s needs. We are happy to make a site visit to your department to review your service needs and to help you select the features that can make your job easier. If you have the services you need, but are unsure of how to use the telephone and voice mail systems to the fullest extent, we offer training free of charge. Please contact NACS Telephone Customer Service at (949) 82-5123 to request a consultation or to sign up for training.
Departments using 800Mhz radios as part of their daily communications can benefit greatly from a consultation with our 800Mhz radio system specialist. He will meet with you to review the current programming in your radios, and he will ask questions to determine what programming changes would enhance the functionality of your radios specific to your department needs. In addition, we offer training from the basic daily use of the radio system, including handy system features, as well as specialized training for radio use in an emergency. Please contact Brian Chrisman at (949) 82-5123 for more information.
December 10th, 2004 by Dana Roode
Faculty sometimes ask “When will I get access to Internet2?” or “How can I use Internet2?”
UCI has been benefiting from connection to Internet2 since last spring when UCI connected to CENIC’s new backbone network. You access Internet2 automatically, whenever it makes sense.
UCI’s Internet Service Provider, CENIC, manages the California Research and Education Network, CalREN. CalREN now comprises several networks to allow the right combination of reliability and performance, depending on the application. You can review CalREN’s tiered network services at http://www.cenic.com/calren/index.htm
CalREN DC is the basic, robust network. Through CalREN DC, UCI reaches California educational institutions, as well as the commercial Internet. (From UCI, there are separate pipelines to these two destinations, so that research traffic to Stanford doesn’t compete with, say, staff purchasing office supplies from staples.com).
CalREN HPR is a parallel, high-performance network which is, in a sense, a sub-component of the Internet2 network. This is because all traffic destined to or coming from Internet2 sites will traverse HPR to get to UCI and other UC campuses. CalREN uses HPR to prove new network services and protocols which, once they have become commodities, migrate to CalREN DC. For example, QOS (quality of service), a protocol for guaranteed sustained bandwidth, is being deployed and tested on the Internet2 network and on CalREN HPR.
UCI’s border router is responsible for distributing network traffic among the possible networks: the two pipes to CalREN DC, the one to CalREN HPR, as well as duplicates of those three channels to a backup network node in the event our primary connection fails. When a network application requires or will benefit from routing to Internet2, it just happens!
NACS is presently involved in a backbone upgrade project which will improve the primary campus pathways to CalREN HPR and thus to Internet2. (refer to the Fall 2004 NACS newsletter, online at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/moreinfo/ ) This upgrade will also benefit routine network activities for most users on the campus.