 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
NEWS
FEATURE
FROM THE CIOFYI
KUDOS TO . . .CONTACTSNEWS
Classroom Technologies to Demo ITE Instructional Capabilities If you want to learn more about the new classroom technologies available in the new ITE building, OIT will be providing hands-on training to faculty on August 21 and 22 in the ITE Bldg. Please contact AV Services (x52461) if you are planning to attend any of the following sessions on either day: First
Session: Second
Session: ITE Classroom Technologies at a Glance
Other classroom technology plans or upgrades include the following:
- Victor Aulestia
OIT and Math Implement Beowulf Cluster for Research OIT and the Math Department have been collaborating on the construction of UMBC’s first large-scale Beowulf cluster. Named after the ancient Danish slayer of Grendel, the term “Beowulf cluster” is typically used to describe a collection of individual Linux hosts (or nodes) that are linked together to provide a powerful, parallel computing environment suitable for demanding research applications. The Beowulf project involves four principal investigators from Mathematics: Jonathan Bell, Florian Potra, Madhu Nayakkankuppam and contact person (and OIT liaison) Matthias Gobbert. System administrator Randy Philipp served as OIT’s project lead, assisted by PhD student Frances Roth, who has been working as an RA in OIT to investigate grid computing and build a research computing web site. Funded by UMBC and a SCREMS (Scientific Computing Research Environments for the Mathematical Sciences) grant from the National Science Foundation (www.nsf.gov), the massive Math Beowulf harnesses 32 IBM servers, each containing a gigabyte of RAM and dual Intel Xeon processors clocked at 2 Gigahertz. The cluster’s RAID array can store a half terabyte of data. Gobbert noted that the hardware was purchased using a combination of grant money, university funds and a “significant hardware discount from IBM.” Locked inside OIT’s secure, climate controlled server room (ECS 012), the cluster’s nodes are stacked vertically within two steel server cabinets. Each host runs RedHat Linux (kernel version 2.4.18), and is connected by a high speed Myrinet (http://www.myricom.com/myrinet/overview/) network switch, capable of transferring data between nodes many times faster than conventional Ethernet equipment. Building the Math cluster to suit the specific needs of academic researchers wasn’t exactly a “turnkey” project. Rather, numerous fixes and accommodations were made as needs arose. At one point, Randy Philipp pried out and hauled several fifty pound reinforced floor tiles to a metal shop (for perforation) so that the cluster’s wiring could slip neatly beneath the raised floor of room 012. After discovering that the individual nodes weren’t initialized to communicate together as a cluster, Randy Philipp and grad student Frances Roth had to install Message Passing Interface (MPI) software that was subsequently tested by the Math researchers. According to Prof. Gobbert, the cluster’s number crunching power will be applied to a wide range of scientific research areas, including “microelectronics, manufacturing, quantum chemistry, computational neurobiology, and constrained mechanical systems.” "OIT gained valuable experience in setting up a Beowolf cluster that I am sure will come in handy when another big grant is awarded to a research group at UMBC," says CIO Jack Suess. - Vergil Bushnell
The great news is that existing Webmail users will continue to access their mail using the same buttons in myUMBC -- without having to login twice --or via the familiar http://webmail.umbc.edu web address. In addition all address books will be exported from the old Webmail database and imported into the new Webmail server. While the new Webmail server looks a little different we are sure that the new features now available will make this transition well worth it. Some of the new features include a quota usage bar, options to monitor local weather, custom display themes and the ability to change the color of specific messages based on criteria like a name in the “from” field. These are just some of the new features that we are sure you will enjoy. We will be transitioning to the new server during the week of August 18th, 2003. To make the transition a little easier we have created a web page with FAQs. Please visit http://www.umbc.edu/oit/webmail for more information. UMBC7 or "Research" Accounts Migrated to Centralized Environment Since the summer of 2000, the Office of Information Technology has been working to provide a single ubiquitous computing environment for both students and faculty. Prior to this time, accounts on UMBC7 had separate file storage from the rest of OIT's infrastructure. In order to provide enhanced services and simplify support to those whose accounts were created before this time, we migrated these accounts into our centralized environment over the summer.
The good news is that with this migration complete all UMBC account holders can now manage their accounts using myUMBC's "Personal" tab or http://accounts.umbc.edu. Now everyone can use the Web to setup UMBC Vacation Messages, SPAM Filters, Mail Forwarding and much more. No longer will you need to manage these features using an SSH window and special commands. For those of us that like to point and click we are sure that you will enjoy this new interface. For more information about some of these features please visit http://www.umbc.edu/oit/sans/helpdesk/acctmgmt.html Old Accounts to be Deactivated and Deleted OIT has begun the process of deactivating and deleting old accounts in order to make account management more reasonable. If our records show that an account holder is no longer attending classes or they are not currently employed by UMBC an e-mail will be sent notifying them of the deactivation for their account. Upon receipt of the deactivation message the account holder will have sixty (60) days before the account is actually deactivated. After deactivation the account will no longer be able to be accessed to read mail, or dial up modems. The account name and all files will actually be deleted 30 days after the date of deactivation date (i.e. 90 days from the initial notification). If someone believes that they received this deactivation notice in error they can contact OIT and we will address their account inquiry. As everyone who reads email has noticed, Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), or SPAM as it is often called, is increasing in volume. While it is hard to identify the exact number sent to UMBC, periodic samples have indicated that between 33 and 50 percent of the incoming mail from off-campus is SPAM.
Last spring OIT released a set of user-configurable spam tools for the campus to use; however these tools did not work for people who read their mail through UMBC7. Over the summer we have identified all 3,800 faculty and staff still using UMBC7 and migrated their mail over to our campus mail servers. With this change we want to encourage everyone to take a second look at the web pages we provide for fighting spam. Available through the Personal Tab inside myUMBC, select "Create/Manage A Spam Filter" and you can begin fighting back against SPAM. These spam filtering tools are not perfect. Sometimes they will incorrectly identify legitimate email as SPAM, and sometimes they will not identify mail that actually is SPAM. We categorize incoming mail messages into 5 distinct categories.
The battle against SPAM is an ongoing one. The groups sending SPAM change their methods in response to the tools. The tools then change to better identify SPAM. We all hope that some day this deluge of SPAM is turned off through a combination of technology, law, and common sense. - Jack Suess OIT Upgrades Existing PC & Mac Labs, Sets Up Five New ITE Labs This summer OIT was busy upgrading several labs and setting up new ones. Specifically, labs located in ECS 333 and ECS 104 were upgraded to new Dell GX270s with flat panel monitors running Windows and Linux. Also, we replaced the older Apple G3s located in OIT labs with sixty (60) new Apple eMacs. The good news is that these new Macs, running OSX will now have roaming profiles and AFS volumes mounted similar to the our Windows labs. This will allow our Mac users to customize their desktops and easily access their centralized account space. All the new machines also come with CD-RW capability to allow students to save their information on a CD. All Apple machines will have Microsoft Office, the Apple development tools, and X-Windows. During the fall we will work to install Mathematica and Maple on all the machines and add additional open-source utilities. Finally, with the opening of the new ITE building, OIT set up five (5) new computer labs for the department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and the College of Engineering.
No More Lines for Faculty/Staff Parking Each year Faculty and Staff renew their parking hangin permits and gate cards via a personal interaction with the Cashiers Office located on the 3rd floor of the Admin building. However, Tom Vogler, Vice President for Finance, worked with several keys leaders on campus to develop an alternative that greatly reduces the effort to obtain your new Parking materials. Working closely with Helen Garland of Parking Services, OIT developed an auto assignment of parking permit to all faculty and staff signed up for payroll deduction. The new process will make the distinction of the different type of hangers and assign them appropriately. It will also rollover gate cards to the new year for all who currently have them. This will eliminate the need to distribute new gate cards if you have already received one. Once the process is completed Parking Services will bundle up the hangers by department for distribution by the department payroll processor. Although this process affects only those who do payroll deduction, others paying with cash, check, etc. should experience much less traffic on the 3rd floor of Admin as they renew their parking materials. Parking Services announced more information on the actual administration of the distribution process on August, 14. - Joe Kirby
UMBC & JHU Collaborate on Internet2 Performance "Landscapes" was a collaborative performance event streamed and intermixed between the Mattin Center at the Johns Hopkins University and UMBC on April 12, 2003. This event explored Internet2 as a performance environment. Students, faculty and staff worked to facilitate a collaborative student performance blending poetry, dance, video and sound via Internet2 and Real video-streaming technologies. The "Landscapes" performance events were streamed and intermixed between the Mattin Center at the Johns Hopkins University and UMBC. Carol Hess and Sandy Lacy of the UMBC Department of Dance joined Steve Bradley of the Department of Visual Arts, and Timothy Nohe of the Imaging Research Center's Fellows Program to guide and mentor the event at UMBC. Douglas Basford lead students in the Writing Seminar at JHU and Joan Freedman, Director of The Brown Foundation Digital Media Center at the Mattin Arts Center facilitated the netcast at Johns Hopkins University. The collaboration proved to be quite fruitful and exciting for all involved. OIT's Paul Iwancio and Bill Shewbridge combined UMBC's teleconference and streaming capabilities to meet the unique technical demands for this event . In addition to facilitating the collaboration, the New Media Studio produced a short feature on the production: http://www.umbc.edu/sug/jhu. Finally, the "Landscapes" collaboration was one of several pieces featured during the "Five Minutes of Fame" showcase at the 2003 summer conference of New Media Centers hosted by Virginia Tech in June. -Bill Shewbridge FEATURE
Diary of an Internet Worm Attack--and OIT Response On Monday, August 11, like many organizations around the world, UMBC was hit by the MSBlast Internet Worm that causes PCs running Windows to shut down and reboot. The following is a diary-like account from Michael Carlin, Director of Infrastructure Support Services, that describes OIT's response: August 11, 2003
August 12, 2003
August 13, 2003
FROM THE CIOCampus Network Upgrade Focuses on Security, Performance, and Access As you read this article OIT is in the middle of a year-long effort to upgrade the campus network. I consider our campus network to be one of the most critical pieces of IT infrastructure we provide to the campus since it is the critical pathway for every IT service we offer. As we started planning the data network for the ITE and PP buildings we knew we wanted to provide a state-of-the art network, complete with high-speed network access to each office and wireless access throughout each building. At the same time we needed to make certain that bringing these buildings online did not negatively impact network performance for every other building on campus. Mark Cather, our network manager, did a fabulous job of designing the network. By taking advantage of new technologies that have recently come out we were able to provide high quality building networks for the new buildings, expand the capability of our central network core to accommodate these new buildings, and raise the level of the quality throughout the campus. One issue that shaped our planning was security. During our last legislative audit the auditors spent considerable time focusing on the network security. At the same time we are increasingly seeing issues with computer security. As a result, from the beginning we designed security into this network plan. The other two tenets: performance and access are focused on making certain that every faculty and staff member has adequate bandwidth to meet their research, instructional, and administrative needs and that we have broad wireless access throughout the campus, especially in places used heavily by students for studying. Network Security Changes We designed this network to integrate firewalls into our network design. A firewall is a device that can be configured to block access to campus computers from outside but let those campus computers communicate freely from inside the campus. In general, most staff, students, and many faculty don’t need to have their computer accessible from an off-campus computer. Installing a firewall protects those computers from being probed and potentially compromised for security weaknesses. That said, in designing this network we knew that a number of faculty have research needs that might be impacted by a firewall. To support faculty research we provide a means where we can put particular machines on a part of the campus network that bypasses the firewall. Another aspect of the design is that we have put each building on a dedicated network router. Associated with each building and department are unique firewall rules associated with the department. In this way we can work with different departments to better meet their security needs. In addition to providing these firewalls we will provide what is called a Virtual Private Network (VPN) concentrator for off-campus access. By connecting to the VPN from off-campus you can have full-access to all the IT services we provide on campus. Network Performance Our goal in this project was to bring every desktop up to a minimum level that would allow its network connection to support streaming video to the desktop and provide reliable access to campus services such as Novell, Web, and PeopleSoft. To do this we updated the network hardware to support 100 megabits to every faculty and staff desktop (some desktops will initially be limited to 10 megabits till we get their phone cabling running to their office updated; however this will still be a major improvement over what was installed). Beyond the minimum, many faculty need high performance network access to support their research. We will be updating every building to have a Gigabit network connection back to the network core. Within each building we are deploying the capacity to provide faculty with the network speeds they need to meet their research goals. We have also purchased new hardware for our Internet access that will support higher speeds.
Improving Access to the Network Access has two meanings in this project – reliability and wireless. In terms of reliability our goal was to build a network that can provide the reliability needed today – meaning always available. While that is a daunting challenge we have worked hard to build in redundancy as much as possible. Time will be our judge but Mark has done a great job identifying ways to address problems we have encountered in the past. In terms of wireless access we are making a push to broadly expand wireless networking on campus, especially in areas used by students. By the end of the calendar year we will have full wireless access throughout the Commons, Library, ECS, ITE, Public Policy, and Administration building. In addition, we will be adding wireless access to areas on campus that are frequented by students – 1st floor of Math/Pysch, University Center, 1st floor of Fine Arts, and lecture halls on campus. In addition, OIT has allocated 40 wireless access points for use in departments. If a department or faculty member requires wireless coverage, OIT will supply the access point at no cost if the department pays for the data line and network port, a total of $160. If you are interested in taking us up on this offer please send an email to helpdesk@umbc.edu with the name of the departmental contact person. We will setup a time to do a site survey. Timing of These Changes We have procured the firewalls and will install these in the summer to cover the residential network. Most building upgrades will be completed by the end of summer to bring everyone up to the minimal standards and increase performance of the network. During the fall we will focus on the Public Policy installation and wireless initiatives. Late fall or early winter we will bring up the firewall for external links. Spring semester we will configure the department specific firewalls and complete the wireless upgrade. FYITLT Brown Bag: Search Engine Optimization (8/21, 1 p.m., ECS 023) If you want to improve the odds that your site will be found by UMBC's (or any other) search engine, then you need to use meta tags, which are distinctive content descriptions search engines use to index and prioritize results against a user's search term. New Media Content Developer Vergil Bushnell will provide a demo of how UMBC search engine results vary depending on meta tagging, and demonstrate strategies on making your site search engine compliant. Thursday, Aug., 21, 1 p.m., ECS 023. The Teaching, Learning and Technology (TLT) Brown Bag workshops are sponsored jointly by the Faculty Development Center and Office of Information Technology. To register, visit http://www.umbc.edu/brownbag. Computer Replacement Initiative Update (CRI) Due to financial uncertainties the CRI was delayed to ensure that adequate funding was available. The order was recently placed and we expect the machines to be installed in mid September. OIT staff will contact each recipient with the actual dates and times of delivery. The Student Telephone and Registration System (STARS) has been in place since the mid 1990s. Although very popular in the early years it has seen a tremendous drop off in usage with the introduction of online registration through myUMBC in the late 1990s. OIT has been working with Tom Taylor, Assistant Provost for Enrollment Management, to review the usage of STARS and the impact of discontinuing this service. Many factors contributed to the decision to discontinue the use of STARS. One such factor was the decision by the vendor to stop supporting the current hardware and software configuration and requiring a complete upgrade to maintain current functionality. The anticipated date for STARS to be shutdown is October 1, 2003. Understanding and Avoiding "Spyware" or "Adware" "Any program that runs constantly in the background of your computer and establishes frequent Internet connections to unknown servers in order to upload and download unknown information has the potential to constitute a security risk," writes OIT's Vergil Bushnell, in a new guide to understanding 'spyware' or 'adware,' which are hidden programs that can drain your computer's resources or (worse) share your private information with others. Note: While personal vigilance about the origins and terms of freeware or shareware software downloads is key, OIT expects to implement a campus firewall in late fall to early spring, which should help prevent unfettered access to your work computer from external sources.
KUDOS TO . . .Marie Toomes (New Media) who retired July 31 after 18 years of service in OIT, most recently as a desktop applications training consultant. Bill Shewbridge (New Media) who, with Education Professor Zane Berge, co-authored "The Role of Theory and Technology in Learning Video Production: The Challenge of Change," to be published in an upcoming issue of The International Journal on E-Learning. Josh Pilachowski (Desktop Support) and Patrick Simon (Business Systems) who earned Bachelor's of Science degrees in Computer Science and Information Systems, respectively, from UMBC in May. CONTACTSThe OIT Newsletter (www.umbc.edu/oit/newsletter) is provided as a service to UMBC students, faculty and staff, and to help keep OIT staff updated on the work and interests of their colleagues. For more information or to suggest story ideas, contact John Fritz at 410.455.6596 or fritz@umbc.edu.
Office of Information Technology (www.umbc.edu/oit)
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Office
of Information Technology • Main Office: ECS 125 • Phone:
410-455-3838 • Email: oit@umbc.edu
|
Finally,
UMBC Videoconference Services is capable of conducting two-way conferences
practically anywhere in the world. We have the equipment, the network
and ISDN connections and the facilities to conduct videoconferences.
Examples of past conferences include:
This
summer OIT systems administrators have been developing and testing
a replacement for UMBC’sWebmail server. The existing Webmail
server, made by Captaris, will no longer be supported by the vendor
beginning this fall. The new Webmail server is a free "open
source" product that runs on a Linux platform. For more information
about this open source product please visit 
