All renovated campus space and the EMCS will be brought online with the
new "4th generation" standards. As the 2003-4 academic year progresses,
existing buildings will be converted to it after prior announcement and
planning for each. The EMCS is already online under these standards.
The 4th generation network includes several important new standards:
1. IP is the only protocol. Industry support for Appletalk and IPX
has been diminishing in recent years and it is not possible to continue
to support them. Everything on the UTC network will need to move to
the Internet (IP) standard protocol as buildings move to the 4th generation
network and off of the "legacy" network. We have been working with
server administrators for some time to make this transition as painless
and transparent as possible, but there will still be some problems we
will address as best we can as they are recognized.
2. New IP numbers. Most of the existing IP addresses in use on campus
do not belong to UTC and there is little rhyme or reason to the existing
addressing structure. Continuing use of the old addresses is impractical.
The new IP scheme will clearly identify buildings and service levels,
improving security, troubleshooting, reliability, and staff productivity.
We will make this transition as painless as possible, but there may be
some impact on printing and department servers that we will address by
working with server administrators on the change.
3. Registration of all devices attached to the network. Just like every
vehicle must have a license and tags and all UT owned equipment must be
inventoried, every computer or other device connected to the network will
have to be registered with a responsible "owner" and department. The
device owner and responsible department are accountable for the use of that
device on the network and for abiding by UTC Acceptable Use Practices.
(Due to network staff workload demands, we will be not be applying the
registration requirement until later, during the Fall.)
Background and some details for those interested:
The 4th generation of UTC networking has begun this summer
with the connection of the EMCS to the campus core network. Plans
for this have been developed over the past couple of years in
consultation with Cisco, CECA and IT staff across the campus.
UTC campus networking has come a long way, looking back over the
generations:
1st: serial connections with Gandalf and HP equipment.
2nd: 10MB LAN over coax and shared media hubs in selected areas
of campus with a hodge podge of equipment.
3rd: Following the wiring of the whole campus, 100MB switched LAN
was deployed across the entire campus following a "collapsed
backbone" (a way of simplifying) network design using Cisco
equipment.
4th: GB uplinks to all buildings and establishment of a routed
distribution layer following good network design principles to
handle the rapidly growing campus network. There will be 4 major
routing points around campus (where fiber cable aggregates in Founders,
Grote, and the EMCS, plus the core in Hunter). The EMCS will also
have routing in every wiring closet (which is a goal to work toward
as other major buildings experience expanded use of networks and
security requirements spiral ever upwards).
With each generation comes change to support the mission of the
University and the evolving information technology challenges and
opportunities. Some examples of recent change:
* The GB link to Oak Ridge and the SimCenter's computing power.
* Approx. 30% (and growing) of UTC received email is blocked spam,
* "High speed" (Cable/DSL/etc) Internet access available from
off campus that make the use of www, OneNet, utconline (Blackboard),
and other campus servers almost like you are on campus.
* New security and legal requirements and challenges that continue to
rapidly accelerate.
* 20% annual growth of the campus network.
Richard
--
Richard L Gambrell, Director of Computing Systems and Networks
Information Technology Division, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
103 Hunter Dept 4454, 615 McCallie Ave, Chattanooga, TN 37403-2598
Fax: 423-425-4150 Support Help-Desk: 423-425-4000
Direct phone: 423-425-5316 IT Business Office: 423-425-1755
Urgent/cell: 423-432-5122 Main UTC phone: 423-425-4111
Email: [log in to unmask]
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