The Times They Are A-Changin': Upcoming Changes at the ADN

At the ADN Computer Center, our mission is to provide the UIC community with universal access to computing and networking services, to further the use of computing in teaching and research, and to support the large number of people who need a little computing as well as the small number who need extensive facilities. To accomplish that mission, given the technical and economic realities one can expect in the near future, we will be moving our infrastructure towards a network-based, distributed computing environment over the next several years.

In plain English, that means we will have fewer expensive computers and many more smaller and medium-sized machines, all connected by a high-speed network. Some of the machines might be clustered together in a central location, and many will be distributed in labs or on desks in departments. The details of exactly what services to provide, and how to best distribute them, will ultimately be decided by various groups on campus with disparate computer and networking needs. We will discuss more details of these considerations in future issues of The ADN Connection.

Although the debates will continue, some decisions can't wait. Some of the following improvements are already available; the rest we intend to make during this semester.

• The Public Personal Computer Labs: Fix-up, Cleanup, and Trade-up
• Client Services Office: the Return of Face to Face Consulting
• Information 'R' Us
• POP Mail: Email Direct to the Desktop
• More Elbow Room on the ADN-ii Network
• UNIX Is Coming!
• Some Things Aren't Changing...

We are now completing the process of replacing the terminals in SEL with 20 DOS PCs (Dell 486/33's with 8MB memory), and will soon add 10 Macs (Centris 650, 8MB RAM and CD-ROM) to the lab in SRC. Also the LAN servers for the labs have been upgraded. The BSB PC Lab will be partially remodeled next year, and restocked with new PCs. Ultimately, of course, all of the old personal computers must be replaced by new ones on a continuing, rotating basis. All of the new PCs will have more memory so that newer releases of programs such as Microsoft Windows can run.

The Client Service Office is now located in Room 2267 SEL (840 West Taylor) and has a new phone number (312) 413-0003. It is open from 9am to 5pm, Monday through Friday, except University holidays. Face to face consulting is a primary function of the CSO, and it has several other additional functions.

In-person consulting:

Either drop-in or by appointment. You are certainly welcome to just drop in to the CSO for help whenever the CSO is open, but our ability to help you will be limited by how busy we are at that time. So if you have a long question, please call ahead.

Telephone consulting:

The ADN-Help Desk's number (312) 413-8080 still rings in the Computer Center's machine room in BGRC, and the operators there will help with hardware questions tape mounts, network outages. But all other questions should be sent to the CSO at (312) 413-0003, during the hours that it is open. (If you forget and call 413-8080, don't worry, the operators will transfer the call.) Email questions still should be sent to consult@uic.edu. Please note: no telephone consulting on software will be available when the CSO is closed.

Hardware and software demonstrations:

We hope to have a real variety of hardware for you to try out, and the software demos will include the software we sell, as well as other interesting software that we just don't have the expertise to support. Even if we don't know the software intimately, there is no reason that you can't take it for a test drive.

Periodical library:

A variety of computer magazines and newspapers are on hand, if you'd like to keep up with the industry.

Pickup of site licensed software:

Purchase of software under the Computer Center's site licenses is still being handled at the Computer Center's main office in Room 124 BGRC. [Not true anymore -- you can now purchase site-licensed software at the CSO. See "The Times They Are A-Changin' Part 2". - Ed.] However, if you make other arrangements to pay (say, by fax), and request that the disks and manuals be sent to the CSO, you may be able to avoid actually going to BGRC when you want to make a purchase. (Call (312) 413-0196 to make arrangements.) The CSO will keep copies of free software in stock; these may be picked up at the CSO without making prior arrangements.

Lab Monitors:

The lab monitors extend CSO services to the point-of-service for many students -- the public personal computer labs. Ask a lab monitor first to have your password changed, to check a printer, or to answer a simple software question; they will usually be closer at hand. Difficult questions will be referred to the CSO, but we hope that many problems can be solved on the spot. The monitors will be in SEL, BSB, and SRC, Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm, except University holidays. We may be able to extend these hours as we hire and train additional monitors.

We will continue to improve our electronic communications, including Gopher, INFORM, electronic mail and mailing lists, Netnews/Usenet groups, and other network information services. This will include more campus information on Gopher, easier ways to find relevant documents on INFORM, more options for receiving mail (such as the POP3 service), and support for better information-gathering software, such as Mosaic (a World Wide Web browser from the National Center for Supercomputer Applications).

Improved communications also means improved "birds of a feather" communication between people on campus with similar interests. There are already many Netnews/Usenet groups and Listserv lists that target groups of people with specific interests. We will encourage their use and will also help local groups and information providers select and set up an electronic forum that is appropriate to their needs. Although electronic junk mail is inevitable, the signal-to- noise ratio should be as high as is practical.

We are now offering access to POP3 mail servers (short for Post Office Protocol, version 3), and we are distributing Eudora mail client software for Apple Macintoshes and Microsoft Windows at minimal cost under a site license. Together with an ADN account and your own personal computer connected to the ADN-ii ethernet network (either on campus or by the ADN-ii dialin lines), POP and Eudora allow you to download mail to your personal computer and upload outgoing mail, all without logging on to your mainframe account. The client-server nature of a Eudora mail client and the POP3 server gives the best of both worlds. Your ADN mail address remains the same as it is now, and your incoming mail is sent to the mailbox of your ADN account as usual, regardless of whether your personal computer is turned on or connected. Then, at your leisure, you use the point and click interface of the Eudora client on your Mac or PC running MS Windows to bring the mail down to your PC to view, reply, forward, save, and discard.

The system works as follows. When you get the urge to check your mail, start Eudora (the client program) on your PC or Mac. Eudora checks its configuration file, and discovers your mail is being held on CMS [or ADN UNIX]. Eudora makes a connection to your POP3 server (the POP3 server program, which is always waiting for these requests), and asks it to retrieve your mail and to send it to you. Once POP3 has verified your identity, it sends your incoming mail down to your PC. All subsequent reading, replying, and editing is done on the PC itself, where many people these days feel most at home. You can even move the mail to a portable PC and read your mail on the train. Of course actually sending the replies requires a network connection, but Eudora has all the details of that in its configuration file, as well.

Eudora was originally developed at CCSO, the Computer Center's counterpart at UIUC, and is now a product of Qualcomm, Inc. We have a site license for both the Mac and Windows versions. Please call or visit our new Client Service Office (Room 2267 SEL, (312) 413-0003) to sign up to use POP3 and to get your copy of Eudora. The staff of the Client Service Office will advise you on Eudora's configuration and use.

Do you want to get connected to the ADN-ii?
Did you notice that the new services for desktop machines are available only on the ADN-ii network? This is a trend. Does your PC, Mac or workstation need a network connection? If it's on the UIC campus, the chances are that you can get connected to the ADN-ii. For an individual desktop machine, the initial connection costs $250, plus the cost of an ethernet card for your machine (usually about $120); there is also a monthly charge of $14. On-campus local area networks also may be connected to the ADN-ii. The charges and requirements vary with the type and size of the LAN. Contact the Client Service Office (Room 2267 SEL, 312) 413-0003) for more information.

Routers are themselves computers that are specialized for high speed communications. They don't provide any apparent computing that you will see, but they are essential in an environment that requires fast access to remote resources. Such an environment already exists at UIC, just by virtue of the roughly 3000 existing ADN-ii connections. And the demand is increasing rapidly, partly due to new connections (we add approximately 30 ADN-ii connections each month), and partly due to new use of bandwidth-hungry applications.

Perhaps most interesting are new applications that the routers will make practical at UIC. Anything that depends on moving large files over the net will benefit, particularly graphics, sound, video, and hypertext. One interesting possibility is use of the MBONE, a way of broadcasting real-time video over the Internet. This paves the way for inexpensive video teleconferencing, and makes remote collaborations almost as easy as email.

The routers will make life better on campus, but what about people who work from home? We will expand our dial-in modem service by adding a third terminal server with more 14.4 Kbaud modems on the 413 telephone exchange. A real advantage, aside from the obvious increase in the number of high speed connection ports, is that you will be able to connect to any machine on the Internet directly from this new terminal server. (To do so, we plan to use an account verification program called TACACS on this terminal server. That way we can offer this service to members of the UIC community without offering free Internet access to all of Chicago.) This service will make it possible to run programs such as Gopher or Mosaic from home without having to log on to CMS or another computer system on campus first.

Our support of UNIX will bring several advantages to campus computing. First, UNIX is an open system on which many new network services are being developed. Having a stable UNIX system means we can bring those services to UIC more quickly. Second, many vendors are in hot competition to provide UNIX computers, so the performance to price ratio for UNIX machines is quite high. This means that in the future, we will be able to expand and adapt our UNIX computing capacity in a gradual and economical way. Third, we will acquire enough experience in UNIX software support and system administration that we may aid departments and researchers who want to own but not operate their own workstations. And last but not least, the choice of operating system is a matter of personal taste and judgment. There is a significant population on campus that prefers UNIX, and we need to provide this service for those who want it.

• Free computing for faculty, staff, and students on our mainframe.
  
  
• Distribution of site-licensed software for PCs and Mac at nominal cost.
  
  
• Distribution of site-licensed software for Sun, IBM, and DEC workstations.
  
  
• Free seminars on CMS, DOS, Mail, and so on. (See "Free Computer Center Seminars for Spring Semester 1994.")

Comments are appreciated; send them to
Ahmed Kassem, kassem@uic.edu