Minutes of the Computing Advisory Committee Meeting

14 February 2000

 

Those attending: JP Dunn, Dennis Leitner, Jim Duggan, David Blakesley, Larry Schilling, Carolyn Snyder, Bjorn Kråbol, Duke Koch, Michael Wainer, Geoff Nathan (recorder).

Duke Koch reported on the new 58.8 modems, which are now operational and have been announced on the Computing on Campus website (see ‘announcements’). The number is 453-2888. There are 192 of them, and they all have a four-hour time limit. The last 48 are reserved for faculty and staff. The old modems continue to function at the old numbers, although the 14.4’s will be phased out, and the 28.8’s will all migrate to half-hour time limits. Official public announcements await an interview by the Daily Egyptian, but the Customer Service Center has been alerted and is expecting questions. In order to use them, people will have to change their Kerberos password, which can be done over the web.

Carolyn announced that there are now 24 public ethernet jacks to which people can attach laptops. They are located in the Undergraduate Library area, and they will be treated ‘like copy machines’--that is, unmonitored, with users needing to bring their own ethernet cards and cables. It was pointed out that there are now public jacks available in the Student Center, the Library and the Recreation will also have some shortly. Carolyn stated that the Library will set up more if demand warrants.

Discussion turned to the resolution that Geoff presented on SIU membership in EDUCAUSE. Carolyn suggested broadening the characterization of issues that EDUCAUSE deals with to ‘Instructional and Information Technology’, and also pointed out that all of the membership fees had previously been paid by Information Technology. The resolution, as amended was passed unanimously, and will be forwarded to Chancellor Jackson, with copies to Vice Chancellors Winters and Poshard, with the names of all those who voted attached. The resolution itself will be attached to these minutes as a text document.

The next topic was the Illinois Century Network. David pointed out that there was some unclarity about the relationship between the various high-speed/bandwidth initiatives, including ICN and Internet II. The sense of the committee was that the University needed to actively pursue a connection with ICN, an activity in which the University of Illinois is heavily engaged. Geoff will draft a letter to be sent around for additional signatures and forwarded to the ICN administration.

Bjorn asked about the possibility of 800 numbers for dialup connections, noting that graduate students, particularly, often live outside of the local calling area, and many of our students go home for vacations and this would allow relatively easy checking of e-mail. The issue of cost was raised and it was suggested that perhaps there could be a time limit which would limit its use to checking e-mail. The suggestion will be passed on to IT.

Additional issues that the committee should be looking at were then suggested. These included the possible establishment of a technology center and the question of the whole place of academic computing at the University. Another question that was briefly discussed and needs to be looked into further was the question of reporting lines for director of IT. It was also pointed out that there are a number of questions that need to be raised about administrative computing, including the fact that a large number of administrative processes need to be re-engineered in light of the movement to the Oracle system, and it wasn’t clear if this was being done in any organized way. Finally Duke reminded the committee that no progress had been made on our proposal for a distributed support system, and institutionalization of recognition for those who supply that support.

There will be an extraordinary meeting of the CAC this Thursday (February 17) at 9 a.m. to discuss the IT candidates and formulate a recommendation. The next regularly scheduled meeting will be Monday, February 28 at 8:30 in the Library Dean’s Conference Room, as usual.