The UC Davis connection to CalREN2 is up and carrying production traffic to vBNS sites as well as to other CalREN2 member sites. The campus continues to exchange multicast traffic with CalREN2. Recent low-probability outages at UC Berkeley that isolated UC Davis from the rest of the network have accelerated the work to establish a backup link. During the last week of August the backup link to Oakland became live. An alternate and less expensive backup strategy is being explored that would involve a route through Cal State University Sacramento and 4Cnet that in turn is considered interim while feasibility work continues on establishing a Sacramento Metropolitan ring and a dedicated ISP connection in Sacramento.
Communications Resources is continuing research in Voice-over-IP technologies. Public and non-disclosure meetings have been held with a representative sample of the early entry vendors to understand their current and planned product lines as well as their longer-range visions. While PBX vendors appear to understand well the applicability of VoIP as a trunking and toll bypass technology, there is an industry-wide absence of concurrence, even among traditional networking vendors, regarding the final form of desktop voice over the campus network. The Davis campus has procured equipment for the execution of a LAN-based, voice-over-IP pilot that will model a small departmental deployment, explore issues surrounding portability and 911 tracing, and eventually explore integration issues with the CENIC pilot.
Construction document preparation for this $12 million network expansion project has commenced. Recent changes in the market place and the continued maturity of gigabit ethernet have prompted a reevaluation of the network technology to be deployed and could result in a change from the existing campus ATM infrastructure. Alternative technologies such as point-to-point wireless, wireless LAN, and xDSL will be deployed to service about 10 percent of the connections where demand does not justify the cost of higher speed connections.Bidding is scheduled to begin in February 2000. Construction will commence in June 2000, and should be completed in October 2001.
The construction is to be bid in multiple prime packages aggregated into groups of like work. The intent is to structure the bid packages to be most attractive to bidding contractors with license classification appropriate to the specific bid package.
The campus modem pool upgrade has been completed. The aging 14.4 kbps modems have been replaced, which brings all modems up to 56 kbps, using primary rate ISDN trunks from Pacific Bell. The modems are now allocated by client group rather than by speed and functionality. The groups are: Students, with 756 modems and two-hour session limit; Staff, with 92 modems and two-hour session limit; and Faculty, with 92 modems and four-hour session limit.
Deployment of a production grade DHCP service is under way. DHCP as a central service was established one year ago as a pilot project. Product selection and acquisition is complete. We selected NetID. The servers are to be hardened against single points of failure of hardware, database, and network attachment points. Also, the project will integrate and automate DHCP and its interaction with DNS. Full implementation will be completed by early October.
Previously envisioned as a project to bring wireless network access to classrooms, this project has been re-scoped to focus on locations where students can benefit from un-tethered connectivity. Unavailability of power or space to set laptops along with support issues combined to suggest deploying wireless networking in locations more immediately suited to its use. The locations that have been selected are an Extended Hours Reading Room in Shields Library, the common area in the King Law School Library, and the Memorial Union Griffin Lounge. Two models will be explored. Semi-permanent student assignment of wireless NIC cards will be tried to assess usability in ownership mode, and use on a check-out basis will also be tried to compare the attendant support issues. The pilot is due to begin in January 2000.
This project will install and activate approximately 250 network ports in public and general access areas such as study rooms in libraries and classroom buildings as well as Memorial Union lobby space. It is hoped that this will serve to take some pressure off of the general access computing labs and will save students the need to hurry home between classes to fit in some computer work. Planning is complete and installation is due to begin in September.
The project to install and operate an emergency power source with generators obtained from the UC Davis Medical Center remains on track. A 300 KW generator has been moved to the main campus where it will remain in storage until the engineering and installation work can be completed. That work is expected to be complete by December 1999. A similar solution applies to the Campus Data Center which is also slated to install emergency back-up power by utilizing a surplus generator from the UC Davis Medical Center.
The 800 Mhz Trunked Radio System continues to operate without any significant disruptions or outages. Discussions regarding the feasibility of operating a shared system with the City of Davis are ongoing. A preliminary engineering analysis by Motorola has confirmed that such an arrangement is feasible given the availability of the frequencies that would be required to add additional channels to the system. Motorola will conduct a full audit of the UCD system as a first step in completing the feasibility study. The City of Davis has stated that the results of the audit and the engineering cost estimates will be the determining factor in deciding whether to proceed with this project. In the meantime, UCD will continue to pursue its investigation of the availability of additional frequencies through APCO.
The master planning for two major campus subdistricts (Vet Med and the Center for Performing Arts) have been completed. Infrastructure planning for the student-initiated, $65 million Athletic and Recreation facilities, Stadium, and Aquatic Park has begun. Development of a campuswide telecommunications master plan is scheduled to commence within the next few months. Construction and cutover services for approximately 35 major projects are in various stages of completion.The Sonet Ring to remote sites in Davis has been split for route diversity.
The DS3 microwave system to Research Park has been upgraded to 100MB service.
The planned conversion of CAD records from CableCAD to AutoCAD has been completed.
The administrative billing system has been successfully cut over to Pinnacle's AXIS software application and we are currently in parallel to test student billing. We are currently installing a new SUN server for full Y2K compliance. Also in conjunction with Y2K compliance, we are planning the decommissioning of our VAX cluster along with planning migration of the remaining systems still residing on that cluster. Installation of the last wave of PC hardware and software for Y2K upgrades is in progress.
The software upgrade to MSL10 (Nortel's Meridian SL-100) is now complete.
The detailed planning guide for a new 24,000 square foot communications and networking building adjacent to the existing facility has been completed and detailed design is scheduled to begin. Anticipated occupancy is scheduled for January, 2002. In preparation, most staff will be relocated from several decentralized sites to a temporary facility within the next six months.