Communications Planning Group
UC Davis Campus Report
Submitted by Information and Educational Technology's Communications Resources
(CR).
May 2002
Infrastructure
CENIC Sacramento Wide Area Networking Project (SWAN)
The SWAN co-location facility has passed the final approval and UCD has a Letter of Occupancy. The Digital California Project (DCP) has already placed equipment in this facility, and 4CNet is getting ready to install equipment there as well. We are working with CENIC to connect into the California Department of General Services; this will provide a secure network connection from the Governor's educational Web server to DCP. Work continues with SureWest and Charter Communications to provide a dedicated fiber path from the campus to the co-location facility.
Disaster Recovery
Planning work has commenced to perform a threat, vulnerability, and risk assessment on all network elements that comprise communications services. This is the first step in an 15 month plan to provide greater system reliability, service resumption protocols that coincide with campus business continuity planning in the event of an emergency, and backup plans and infrastructure modifications to prevent or minimize impacts from critical system failures.
Infrastructure Planning and Engineering
The Systems Engineering and Development unit within Communications Resources is actively working on approximately one hundred projects, of which forty-seven are Major Capital Projects for Architects & Engineers. The remaining jobs are Facilities or Departmental related.
The Major Capital Projects range in size from 3,000 gross square feet (gsf) to 212,000 gsf. Of the major capital projects currently underway, seventeen of them will be completed before 2005, adding more than 1.4M gsf to the overall campus.
Mondavi Center for the Arts
In preparation for the opening season at the Mondavi Center, IET helped Campus Events establish an ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) call center and are housing the new ticketing system in the Data Center. Campus Events selected Paciolan to provide the ticketing system for the campus. Both the call center and ticketing system were in place at the beginning of April; Campus Events waited for the announcement of the Mondavi schedule before starting ticket sales. Individual tickets will be available online starting Fall 2002.
UCDNet2
The UCDNet2 Project, which expands the Network 21 network infrastructure into the outlying areas of the UC Davis campus, continues to progress on schedule. This past quarter the Communication Outside Plant and Communication Station Wiring subprojects were completed.
Only the Electronics subproject remains. Configuration and "burn-in" of the electronics equipment is complete, and will be followed by installation and cutovers. When the cutovers are done May 21, 2002, the project will be finished.
Update on Wireless Networking Advanced Technology Project
The Campus Wireless Policy is being routed through the approval process. It is expected to be approved this summer. Public areas of Shields Library and the Memorial Union continue to see steady rates of usage as the word gets out that wireless networking is available in these areas. The authentication process, though not a long term solution, is working well and we have seen little technical problems in processing user requests. A draft of this policy, as well as information about the wireless service, is on the Web at http://wireless.ucdavis.edu/.
The Wireless RFI group, composed of representatives from UCD, CSU-Chico, CSU-Sacramento and the Chancellor's Office of the California Community College system, determined that only one vendor response warranted further investigation. Ericsson/IPWireless gave a presentation to the Wireless RFI group in April. The presentation focused on the ability of IPWireless to provide 3G wireless data services over digitized ITFS channels and their future development timetable. In addition, Ericsson focused on the integration of PBX and cellular voice, upcoming 2.5G - 3G cellular data services and devices, and discussed how universities can leverage in-building signal amplification of cellular signals to achieve better coverage and rates from cellular vendors.
Service Developments
Caller ID
New hardware was installed on the switch and software licenses were purchased in preparation for offering caller ID to students and administration in July, 2002. The type of Caller ID phone and adjunct devices that will be available for purchase is currently under evaluation.
Music on Hold
Communications Resources is working with the UC Davis Music Department to use a Campus Orchestra CD for the "Music on Hold" feature that will be put in service in July, 2002.
MyPhone
The second phase of MyPhone, the student telephone service online application program, is complete. This phase builds on existing student services by providing Web access to:
- Online billing detail,
- Services ordered, and
- Access through the campus Web portal, MyUCDavis
Paper bills will be printed in addition to online access throughout this school year. Next year billing will be accessible exclusively on the MyPhone Web site.