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OIT > About OIT > Faculty Advisory > 2004 Updates

OIT Faculty Advisory - Update
November 29, 2004

Summary: OIT shared the following updates with the Faculty Advisory Committee when the met on November 29, 2004.

Budgetary Challenges: 

Like other UCI departments, OIT has been struggling with budget reductions. We have received a total budget cut of approximately $700,000/year over the past several years, although it has been partially made up by new funding. The greatest challenge is keeping up with major campus growth (student population, new buildings, etc.) and ever increasing interest in harnessing Information Technology in new ways. We have staffing challenges with regards to network support, network security, instructional lab support, central services, and other areas. We are also forced to make some compromises regarding adding capacity to support OIT services.

Network Upgrade: 

The campus has funded the proposed major upgrade to the UCInet backbone, border router, and 52 building routers. As of this writing, 1 of the 4 core backbone sites has been upgraded with the new equipment, and the border router has been upgraded to support 10 gigabit/second connections. We hope to have the remaining 3 backbone sites upgraded within the next several months.

Wireless: 

Buildings (or subsets of buildings) continue to receive wireless coverage as a result of OIT/departmental cost-sharing. We have nearly complete wireless coverage in common spaces around the campus and in Biological Sciences, GSM, Humanities, and some Engineering buildings. We are planning wireless expansion in Physical Sciences, Social Ecology, the Anteater Recreation Center, the Beckman Laser Facility, and in the Department of Education. There is much of the campus left uncovered, however. We continue to cost-share, by covering half or more of the equipment costs along with all OIT labor to implement and maintain the wireless infrastructure. We have some manpower challenges that have slowed our progress.

Network Security: 

OIT security staff, departmental computing staff, and end-users continue to devote substantial attention to managing the onslaught of network viruses, worms and "malware."

24,116 off-campus systems and 1,223 UCI systems were blocked during the month of September as a result of being infected or other security issues.  In October there were 13,153 off-campus and 916 on-campus hosts blocked. We continue to see new ways to compromise systems because software is not updated in a timely manner. 

Overall, Microsoft Windows XP service pack 2 has been a significant improvement to Windows security, with the negative impact has not as great as some feared it would be. Except in a few cases, we strongly encourage installation at this point. OIT Instructional Labs have all been updated to service pack 2.

Departmental Firewall Services: 

We are implementing new departmental firewall services to acquire, configure and maintain firewalls to protect local electronic resources. 

New Webmail: 

New software and hardware were put into production on September 1, in support of the OIT Webmail service. This greatly improves the reliability and responsiveness of this service, which is used by about 14,000 students and 1,000+ faculty/staff daily.

Cal-(IT)2: 

OIT has been very involved with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Cal-(IT)2. OIT designed and implemented a high-end network for the new building (10GB backbone, 1GB network connections, wireless throughout) but had to "get creative" to keep it under budget as money became a challenge. OIT helped coordinate the technical aspects of the November 19th opening ceremony and research demonstrations, and is working with the Institute to setup an initial computing support mechanism.

Instructional Computing Labs/SmartClassrooms:  

Over the summer, OIT made significant upgrades to instructional computing labs it manages:

OIT has also been working in support of the Division of Undergraduate Education on the SmartClassroom project, which added about 25 SmartClassrooms this summer (this brings the total on campus to approximately 60, including large lecture halls).

New EEE Tools: 

OIT Instructional Web Technologies announced several significant enhancements to the Electronic Educational Environment (EEE) tools this fall:

On-line Course Evaluations: 

OIT has been working with the schools, EEE partners, and the Academic Senate on the on-line course evaluation system. The system is being used by the Schools of Engineering, Physical Sciences, and most recently the School of Biological Sciences.