Minutes - September 14, 2001
2-4 pm - I.G. Greer Room 224
Persons Present:
Ex officio members: Doug May (ACS), Jeff Williams (ITS, Chairman), Margaret Yaukey (Faculty Senate)
Voting members: Lynne Lysiak (Library), Dick Riedl (RCOE), Bill Ward (Academic Affairs), Greg Lovins (Business Affairs), Tom Leonard (Univ. Advancement, for Teresa Canton), Chris Conca (WCOB), Bill Bauldry (CAS, for Ed Pekarek) and Don Rankins (Registrar).
Guests Attending: Steve Breiner (ITS), Steve Hopper (ITS), Erin Simmons (ITS), Jeff Church (ITS), Larry Boyer (Library), John Spagnolo (RCOE), Pamela Graham (CAS), Tom Culver (ITS)
I. Welcome and Greetings:
The meeting was called to order at 2:08 PM with Jeff Williams presiding. Williams welcomed the group and mentioned that there were membership issues to be decided at a later time and that they should be resolved before the next meeting. Williams ask if any attendees, members or guests, present at the meeting had not received the e-mail about the meeting and would like to receive it from this point forward. He also asked that if anyone else should wish to receive notices, they need only give him an e-mail address and he would make sure those people would receive future email announcements.
II. Review of minutes for the meeting of April 27, 2001.
Williams stated that there had been no quorum at the meeting on that date; hence no minutes had been taken.
III. Network Related Issues
Tom Culver (Network Support Services, NSS) presented a brief description of the newly implemented network device registration process. He discussed the requirements which led to the implementation of the process, including the need to identify and validate devices connected to our IP network, to segment traffic on the internal network to optimize bandwidth use within the individual subnetworks. Culver went on to describe operation of the ERMIE (Ethernet Registration Made Incredibly Easy) system as a simple interface that all users, on a first connection to Appalachian�s Ethernet network, are sent directly to a registration page where they must agree to the Appalachian State University Computer User Policy before receiving an IP address and the ability to access other resources on the network.
IV. Security and Protection of Resources
Regarding some recent slowness in connecting to resources outside the university network, Culver identified the gateway to the commodity Internet (i.e., the transition from NCREN to the worldwide Internet) as the most commonly seen �bottleneck� � the limited bandwidth of that gateway has been essentially consumed by mostly student-related traffic. He stated that in an attempt to maintain some portion of the available outbound bandwidth for educational and administrative uses, NSS has limited the per-user bandwidth for outbound, off-campus peer-to-peer file sharing (e.g., Napster, WinMX, Gnutella, etc.) to 64 kilobits. To date the strategy seems to be at least moderately successful, limiting the aggregate outbound bandwidth to something below the available amount. When questioned about the real need for such action, Culver replied that, to his knowledge, the current NC budget difficulties render any systemic bandwidth upgrade essentially impossible. In addition, Culver mentioned discussions at the system-wide level that would charge campuses for Internet use on a per-packet basis; he cautions that, without significant use constraints, the new model could prove to be a significant financial liability, possibly exceeding and additional $100,000 per year.
Williams then added a concern to the discussion as to whether allowing students to consume state-funded network resources for primarily entertainment-related uses are a sustainable student option. He mentioned that he and Peter Wachs (Student Development) had begun discussions to explore options such as a student funded commercial link to the commodity Internet and that the possibility may require more consideration as the state legislature begins a comprehensive review of our current Internet provider (MCNC � Microelectronics Center of North Carolina).
Doug May briefly addressed the possible issues with the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) and Appalachian State University�s responsibilities related to issues involving file sharing software.
IV. Printing in Student Lab
Doug May reported that over the last few months, he has visited ITAC, the Council of Deans, the Council of Chairs, the Student Government Association and others reference the planned implementation of a pay-for-printing system in student labs. He reported over 5-1/2 million pages had been printed in labs (as compared to 30 million pages for the campus at large). The current proposal seeks to charge $0.03 per black and white leaf (up to 2 sides of a page) of letter, legal or envelope size. He suggested that this figure is substantially less than the roughly $0.09 per page costs a student would encounter using an inexpensive inkjet printer (cost of printer included). He reiterated that the plan is currently in the proposal state, with possible implementation by spring semester 2002.
Margaret Yaukey (Fine & Applied Arts, Art Department) asked whether high-end printing devices might be administered using the proposed system. May replied that once implementation details had been worked out, the answer would be affirmative.
V. Account Certification Process
Williams briefed ITAC on the recently implemented certification system for computer user accounts. He stated that during an audit four years ago by the state, Appalachian had been found in violation of state standards regarding user access control. The problem had not been resolved as of the last visit by the auditors, placing Appalachian at risk of losing its flexible funding options. In response to a directive of Appalachian�s administrative cabinet, ITS, in conjunction with the Payroll Office and Human Resources Services is conducting a �clean-up� of the Appalachian user database. The policy implemented requires that every active user ID in the Appalachian computer user community must be identified with a �responsible party (RP)� (i.e., supervisor, chairperson, dean, etc.) in order to retain computer use privileges. In phase I of the cleanup, known RPs were asked to claim users and those who remain unclaimed were identified and targeted for follow-up. In phase II, soon to begin, those users not claimed by known RPs will be notified that their privileges may be revoked � they will be asked to contact the appropriate RP to ask to be placed in the RP�s user list. After a reasonable time, unclaimed users will lose their computer privileges. Once the user list is cleaned out, all privileges will be granted and suspended, based on dates delineated in active employment contracts. Yaukey and Jeff Church (Instructional Computing Services) each suggested that, given the short time frame in which temporary or part-time employees are sometimes contracted, there should be a �grace period� during which privileges would be retained, pending the users� claim by a RP. Don Rankins (Office of the Registrar) stated that, because of the need to strictly follow state mandates regarding computer users, RPs in various departments could avoid such problems by being diligent in claiming those users where appropriate.
VI. New Human Resource System implementation
Williams reported that Appalachian had acquired the Banner HRS system and would be implementing the new system over the next year or two, with a projected deployment in 2003. He mentioned that Clayton Cooke of the Auditors Office was chair of the implementation team, and that discussions about implementation would be held widely in the university community, beginning in November of 2001.
VII. Raley Hall computer room upgrades
Williams reported on progress in the reconfiguration of the Raley Computer Center, emphasizing the efforts being made to assure redundancy of critical components and reliability.
VIII. Campus Pipeline/Portals Status/Directions
Williams then reported that a recent minor upgrade of the Campus Pipeline (CP) software to version 2.2.1 had gone �without a hitch� and that there were virtually no disruptions in service. He also notified the group of plans to migrate to version 3.0.1 of the software (along with its industry-standard iPlanet email system) over Fall Break. The new system will incorporate multiple service and machine redundancy with automatic fail-over. Students� accounts will be migrated first, with other users to follow. He mentioned also the move in CP toward more open (i.e., standard and highly interoperable) systems and tight integration with the WebCT course management system.
IX. Other Information Items
Lastly, Williams asked that ITAC begin to devise a recommended policy regarding e-mail resources and quotas and how to implement them. He requested that ITAC consider that there are currently users with tens of thousands of unread e-mail messages, using enormous amounts of space on our servers and begin to think of ways to address that drain on resources.
VI. Ajournment
With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 3:55 PM.
