Approximately one third of the campus network has been cutover to the new ATM backbone. This is represented by the cutover of 3,511 of the 9,981 network connections, 84 of the 231 Vlans and 61 of the 168 departments. The project is about 7% ahead of schedule and shall be completed under budget. The only major difficulty encountered is with the 3COM Transcend management software which is to be used for ATM device configuration. In consultation with 3 COM, three remote polling stations with 256MB of RAM were installed in addition to the main management station which consists of a 300 Mhz Ultra Sparc 30 that has been configured with 1GB or RAM. Transcend initialized and built topology maps at an acceptable rate, however, various applications running under Transcend either failed to load or load at an unacceptably slow rate. It does not appear that the system is processor or memory bound. The software is apparently not written so as to scale to a network of the magnitude of Network 21.
Network 21 provides connectivity to nearly 200 buildings in the core of the Davis campus. There are approximately 300 buildings located outside the campus core that require some level of network connectivity. A consultant has been acquired to develop financial and technical alternatives for servicing these facilities. The results of this work should be completed by November 1, at which time a campuswide consultation process shall begin to determine which facilities should be connected under the UCDNet2 project.A campus committee is being appointed to recommend principles and policies for determining when and how to address horizontal wiring upgrades within existing networked buildings. This is intended to address balancing the costs associated with upgrading Category 3 wiring to Category 5, Level 6 wiring with the need for higher bandwidth network services.
The replacement of the aging campus broadband and baseband video system was originally envisioned as part of the UCDNet2 project. This portion of the project has been put on hold for an indefinite period of time pending campus decisions with respect to the role that video will play in education on the Davis campus.
The Calren2 project continues to make progress towards the initial goals of having basic connectivity and routing inter-campus traffic. All equipment at UCD has been installed and is ready to carry traffic.
Beneficial Occupancy was filed on the campus video distribution system which consists of a 29 channel lineup plus four student housing channels. The system is being extended to the new Primero Grove Complex which shall be completed later this month.
Partial acceptance of the system was signed on April 1, 1998. Full acceptance is contingent on resolution of Y2K compliance and certification. A meeting including all participating UC campuses was held on 8/27/98 to confirm the steps that must be taken. What appeared to be a serious network interface problem has been resolved and means that direct connection and status monitoring of the system will not be required. At least two campuses have conducted preliminary compliance testing and/or compliance verification and there appear to be no serious problems at this time. All campuses agreed to exchange information and UCD will conduct a local scan of the Motorola Web page on compliance. We will have the option of requesting an Assessment Service should that be required.A Joint Policy Committee has been established to deal directly with procedural and policy issues related to the management and administration of the system. Representatives from both the UCD and UCDHS have been meeting on a regular semi-monthly basis for this purpose. The committee resolved a serious system reliability problem by installing a full T-1 between UCD and UCDHS on 8/25/98. This will result in placing the microwave in a backup role and permit a major rehabilitation of the m/w system to take place prior to the onset of the winter season.
It is currently supporting over 700 portable and mobile radios -- nearly double what was originally anticipated. The unexpected level of system participation and utilization by the campus has prompted consideration of the need to expand the system from its current seven channels to eight. While the system is being monitored to detect congestion, plans are underway to apply for an augmentation of the required frequencies. Seven steel-reinforced buildings and basements require additional bi-directional amplifiers for signal penetration. Funding of nearly $250,000 is being sought to address this problem. Additionally, specifications are being developed for analysis on new construction projects so that new buildings can be equipped with amplification when necessary.
The campus was allocated $563,000 as interim funding to support the addition of 384 56K modems for two years. The new modem pool became active 1 August 1998 for pilot faculty members with implementation for staff and students on 1 September 1998. The addition of the 384 Staff/Student modems augments the existing 96 56K modems from the faculty pilot program. The legacy modem pool of 391 14.4 SLIP/PPP modems is available for general use along with 48 14.4 TELNET only modems (the TELNET only modems will be converted and reduced to zero over by February, 1999). A detailed service level and connectivity statement may be found at http://noc.ucdavis.edu/. Non exclusive agreements with MCI and CalWeb remain in place for those who want to use an ISP.
The final report associated with this study should be completed this quarter. The major current focus is on the evaluation of an AT&T Wireless Office Service (WOS) proposal which amounts to a joint/cooperative undertaking by UCD and AT&T Wireless to provide a combined capability for both voice and data users. Negotiations with respect to the proposal are currently underway. This service provides for portable phone use while reducing the losses associated with campus units replacing desk sets with cellular phones. The system would be linked with the campus PBX so that toll revenues are maintained while users are calling from within the Davis area.As with 800 MHz Trunked Radio, penetration of steel reinforced buildings and basements has proven to be a significant problem. Negotiations with AT&T have led to a commitment on their part to share the cost of enhancing their local Microcell facilities. The estimated total cost to upgrade is $204,000. UCD's share is estimated to be approximately $52,000. This cost could be extended over a period of three to five years at no interest.
The 530 area code cutover was completed on schedule on May 16, 1998.
The legacy voice mail system was replaced by a LUCENT Overture 350 voice mail system on 11 July 1998. Combining enhanced reliability with additional capacity for servicing up to 6,000 customers, the system has 4 one-gigabyte storage drives with redundancy.
Negotiations with Pinnacle are completed and project implementation is underway. Phase 1 implementation involving customizations, service order and facilities module cutovers is scheduled for completion by April 1999. Switch interface and web interface implementation is scheduled for completion by August 1999. A determination of the ability of Pinnacle to scale will be complete by December 1998. A contingency plan to modify the existing Year 2000 non-compliant software has been developed and can be implemented beginning in January 1999 should any issues with the Pinnacle software arise.
UC Davis has acquired the Enterprise Pro (E-PRO) system which is a network status and trend analysis program providing near real time monitoring of network performance, trend analysis, error and executive reports. It is being used to proactively send fault or threshold alarms to HP OpenView and to manage network growth, traffic shaping, and overall performance.
This project, developed by a cooperative effort involving several CR units, provides access to network statistics and centralized floorplans to users provided with a security clearance. By combining AutoCAD Internet utilities, web server programming, and relational databases, SMARTMAPS provides users with the ability to search, view, and print campus building floor plans from any PC web browser in just a few seconds. Users with security clearance can search the site, located the appropriate floor plan, zoom-in on a specific wall jack and retrieve network status, relevant wiring and cable link information. A presentation of this system was made at the annual ACUTA conference and was well received.
Approval has been received to prepare schematics for a new 16,000 square foot telecommunications/networking building to be constructed adjacent to the existing building. The new building will house all public and administrative support units, while the older building will be remodeled into machine and technical support space. A design professional should be selected to perform this work within the next two weeks. Construction could begin in 1999.
Two major areas of campus development - the Health Sciences District and the Center for the Arts District, have prompted the development of master telecommunication plans for these areas of the campus. Both districts are lacking in systems and cabling capacity. In addition, engineering work is underway on numerous other campus construction projects: the Center for Comparative Medicine, Contained Research Facility, East Hall, Environmental Design Building, Environmental Services Building, Equine Analytical Lab, Human Nutrition Research Facility, Memorial Union, Primero Inclusion Area III, Waste Water Treatment Plant, Recital Hall and Technical Classroom Building, Walker Hall replacement, Webster-Emerson Resnet Extension, Western Center for Agriculture Equipment, Plant and Environmental Sciences Replacement Facility, Center for Companion Animal Health and Center for Comparative Genetics, La Rue Housing Project, and Life Sciences Secondary Effects Project.
The "Wide Area Network Davis" (WAND) project intended to get apartment complexes connected through highspeed connections to campus is underway. An initial pilot carried out with Greystone Apartments shows that this approach can be successful. Their computer lab and 75 apartment residents are utilizing Greystone's T-1 connection (UCD subsidized an ISDN connection as part of the Caltrans research contract). Two presentations have been made to the local property managers' professional association about this idea with the Greystone Manager's help.Four complexes (Sharps and Flats in south Davis, Le Tournesal and The Trees in west Davis, and Sycamore Lane in central Davis) have been identified as additional pilot sites, and ISDN services have now been installed at each site. The plan is to meet business needs (which improves the marketability of this service to apartment complex owners) by networking complex offices and to meet the residents' and campus' needs, at the same time, by creating small adjacent labs (one Macintosh, one PC, and one laser printer in the labs) which are also connected to the Internet. Now that the Internet connections have been established, work is progressing with partners (public and private) to implement a pilot wireless project at one site. This project allows apartment complex owners to test the market before planning expensive wired retrofitting.
Campus dissatisfaction with commercial advertisements adjacent to payphones resulted in discontinuing the contract with MCI despite relatively lucrative commissions.
UCD provided a Disaster preparedness presentation that was well received and resulted in an article published in the ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education.