Dorm Storm? 628
The Ape With No Name writes: "I work as a network technician at a major Southern university and we are gearing up for what is lovingly called "Dorm Storm," aka the weekend the students return to their dorm rooms, ethernet connections and BearShare. We'll move in approx. 3500 students, install and configure 1500 or so network cards and troubleshoot hundreds of circuit, switch and routing problems over the course of the next two weeks (with less than 50 people or so). I was wondering if anybody out in the academic computing community had some advice, stories to relate, yarns to spin for the rest of Slashdot with regard to other universities and their networking for students. You might think you have had a hell of a time setting up machines for users, but this becomes a Sisyphean task when you face a wireless, IP only, Novell setup for a grumpy architecture student on a budget Win2K laptop - one after another after another!"
Want some cheese with that whine? (Score:3, Insightful)
500mhz or higher laptops are in the $900-$1000 range from HP and others. Sure, the screen isn't 16inches, the HD not 20gig, and the RAM a little low (upgrades cheaply though) but this whine is just pathetic. Kripes, mine even had a silly DVD player in it. Get your head out of the sand and shop around a little and stop talking out of your ass.
Watch your WalMart ads, that's what I did and I've got a servicable laptop without having to get a loan. They sell off last years models at fire sale prices and they work fine.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.gsp?cat=
There was another one in a recent sales ad too, an HP model think, that now sells for LESS than what I paid for mine, has 200mhz more CPU, a faster DVD, and a drive double the size of the one I bought! Heck, I just took the online sales-ad into my local store, had them match the price, and walked out with my new toy....
This is an investment in YOUR future, don't be penny wise and pound foolish!
Re:Did just this thing for 3 years (Score:2, Insightful)
Alert: this is not a troll, and I am only 30 years old. (Old enough to remember when dorm room connections were almost always dial-in, and that Mosaic browser in the computer lab was the cool new thing.)
Why bother to support broadband connections in the dorms?
I may be way off the mark, but I can't imagine the technophobic, behind-the-times profs I had in school putting enough course material online to warrant a wired dorm room. And that goes DOUBLE for the CS profs... man, we used to joke about how that weird Fortran prof probably used a punch-card word processor.
But suddenly now it's an educational Utopia where all the course material and TA office hours and crap are online? I have a hard time believing it.
Personally I consdier connectivity to be as important as running water, but I don't know if I can justify it in an educational setting. There are still computer labs, and there's always Earthlink if you really need it.
It seems to me that this is being done all over just because it seems like a good idea, when in fact it may not be. If connectivity is so damn important, why don't they provide computers too?
(I almost canceled this post, it's a bit cynical even for me.)
Re:Tech support load varies with configuration cou (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree. My answer would be that there is only one *supported* configuration. You can use our NIC, Windows 9x, NT, or 2000, and we have a first-call, first-served policy; or fix it yourself.
The users should be allowed (even encouraged) to run their own OS, but restricted from putting up servers just like most ISP's AUP's dictate. No one can run DNS, you can only run DHCP behind a firewall (and if it leaks, your IP gets shut off until you procure a clue.)
Re:mandatory laptops (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, let's make the (rash and perhaps partially correct) assumption that mommy and daddy have enough money to foot the bill for this little toy. Well, it turns out that like many Universities, they lacked the infrastructure (or even the _plan_ for infrastruction) to support 2000 new students with laptops. Furthermore, they lacked faculty support (CS department wanting to know why student who spend most of their time hacking on Sun machines were going to need laptops), student support, and though I wasn't working for the IS department here at the time, I'm guessing IS support. So, after a "campus meeting", during which a few gamers expressed their glee that now they'd be able to play a kickass game of Quake in freshman Physics lecture, the "decision" was may to delay the plan's implementation while they "studied the issue further", or some such nonsense.
Why do I say it is nonsense? Because the very next semester, the pilot program had already started (with, you guessed it, theater arts being one of the pilot degree programs). And to add to the foolishness, under the nose of nearly everyone the science and engineering college is requiring little WinCE gadgets for all incoming freshmen (which, of course, ended up requiring the IS department to give those little toys to all their staff members this summer _just_ so that they could be able to support them). Nevermind that the "plans" for using them are little more than vaporware (I'm told that one CS professor has some software developed over the summer to use in lecture notes in the CS Intro series, but other than that...), or that the wireless network on campus won't be anywhere near adequate to support a couple thousand people for another year or two. Oh, did I mention the WinCE pocket rockets run around $600 a piece?
And why do we have these lovely bits of technology? We're told it's to "make the University more competative with other schools around the country", but it's not the faculty, staff, or students who want these things. It's the administration with their "technology makes education better" mindset. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that if you introduce technology to an educational setting the quality of education automagically increases. Then again, these people often haven't set foot in a classroom for decades, if ever in a non-priviledged situation, so their experience with that kind of educational environment is lacking.
The point? Students don't _need_ laptops. In my experience they're more of a pain in the ass for everyone, rather than being a benefit. They cost too much for the average student's budget, and most professors don't know what to do in order to make them valuable in terms of assisting their course plans (putting notes in PDF form to reduce photocopy costs really doesn't count). Support for them can be a pain (unless everyone uses the exact same system/software combo, which seems like a pipe dream to me), assuming you can organize any at all (it was amusing to watch the IS folks play a game of "not it" when it came to WinCE gadget support).
In short, Friends Don't Let Friends Support Manditory Laptop Programs.
Re:Tech support load varies with configuration cou (Score:5, Insightful)
Spoken like a person who has no respect for his users.
There's a fundamental difference in philosophy here. One camp would suggest that the tail wags the dog--the network admins get to say who can use the network, and how the network gets used, because it's their job to keep the network up. The other camp--the dog-wags-tail group--would acknowledge that they A) are working at a university B) would have no power if it weren't for the users they serve and C) only really have to deal with a single mad rush for a few weeks at the beginning of the year. These people would have to begrudgingly accept a few rough weeks at the beginning of term as a part of the job.
Yes, users can call tech support with stupid/unanswerable/unsupported questions. Yes, you can simply refuse to answer those questions. Yes, these users still take up a call. How many times do you think they'll call back if you tell them no?
I have worked tech support, and I do understand the frustration. However, I also know that imposing arbitrary restrictions isn't the answer. Sooner or later, your users will figure things out, and if your restrictions are too imposing, someone will be clogging your lines with complaints, instead of questions--or worse, calling the dean to get you canned. Being draconian is never a winning strategy.
mandatory laptops (Score:4, Insightful)
Summary: mandatory laptops = kicking poor students in a vulnerable spot.
Re:Strict Guidelines only way to cope with load (Score:2, Insightful)
An idea for next year... (Score:3, Insightful)
Essentially take the good junior, senior, and grad students and make them an offer to be able to move into the dorms a day or two early, get a free t-shirt, and eat for free for that week... Then in return, they work their TAILs (pun intended) off for the next week or so setting up PC's for people moving in...
We did that for the "move in crew" - the people who helped you schlep your stuff to your dorm room in a laundry cart - they moved in a coouple of days early for training, etc. but it worked out well.
They got to hit the campus before everyone else, before the traffic jams, packed Wal-Mart's and grocery stores, got their room set up, and even snuck in a semester's worth of their favorite alcoholic beverages before the usual security forces were on duty
PLUS, you got to meet every hot looking chick before everyone else did... Some of them couldn't wait to get movin if ya know what I mean...
Aside from the free crew - make sure you have standard procedures set up for accomodating Macs, PC's, Linux boxes, and Laptops. Only support about 5 different interface cards. PUBLISH PUBLISH PUBLISH what you support. Anything else - don't even install it if it's in there when the tech shows up. Tell them it's not supported, and you're not allowed to install it. Tell them they can buy a supported card at a hefty discount from Academic Computing or whatever and walk out. Stick with what you know and it'll go smoothly for everyone. Just one "unsupported" install will have a ripple effect that will adversely affect everyone's appointment for days...
And yes, definately give lessons to these geeks on people skills... Flat out tell them to FAKE BEING NICE. No condecending attitudes... Tell them it will get them dates! That alone will force MOST of them to be nice.
Leave a simple survey URL to be completed once they're online. The tech getting the highest score gets a free hard drive, or some RAM, or some food points or whatever... It's cheap encouragement...
LARP + Steam Tunnels = No Cable (Score:5, Insightful)
Except they forgot to secure the wires in any way. And, while the tunnels weren't used to provide steam to the whole campus anymore, they still did pass near several heat sources. And you (very occasionaly) ran into racoons in there, for fsck's sake (Warm + underground + old grates = racoon heaven). The racoons tend to run like hell when people came around, except for that one poor bastard who ran into momma racoon.
First time I ever heard of a network tech needing to get a rabies shot because of the job. (Those things are vicious.)
The 'tunnels' were about 3 ft wide, 6 ft tall in most places, connected most major buildings (including the Athletic Center- great for midnight skinny dipping, but I digess), and a bunch of techs with cable ran wire all summer.
Then the students showed up. And the SF fans took out their skeleton keys, and lockpicks... and costumes.
Yes kids, AD&D in the tunnel systems is not just an urban legend or a myth from the Big U. Although no one ever built an APPASMU as far as I know.
People running around in tunnels in near darkness plus cramped tunnels plus exposed cables...
One pratfall later, you just un-wired all the freshman dorms.
It would have caused much more of a fuss, except back then, only about 30 students (out of about 1000 freshmen) had even signed up for ethernet! No one got all that bent out of shape over a blown gopher session anyway.
Then that winter, the cables running through one of the tunnels overheated. The idea that some of the steam tunnels might actually pass near some working boilers never occured to anyone, amazingly enough.
So they got a whole bunch of PVC tubing, insulated it, and re-ran the whole thing to the freshman dorms... again.
Supposedly, a few students tried running cables to various locations near surface grates to set up a WAN back in 98 or so- don't think anything ever came of it though.
While you are trying to set up accounts for thousands of students who need their pr0n, just remmeber, you could be facing down a crazed momma racoon instead.
Re:Believe it or not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Tech support load varies with configuration count. (Score:3, Insightful)
Spoken like a person who's never had to do tech support.
Any user whose install doesn't go *perfectly* or who doesn't know how to install/configure network gear will be asking tech support for help. If there's one and only one allowed configuration, there's one and only one way to set up one's network card. Tech support is easy.
Allow arbitrary hardware and software to be used, and you have a geometrically increasing number of configurations that your tech support staff will be asked to troubleshoot.
Only give tech support for sanctioned configurations? That won't work very well. Joe Idiot will say, "But I paid to be on this network! Set up my machine!", or "But it's *almost* the sanctioned configuration! Now tell me why my FooCom 7 card is barfing!". Joe Linuxd00d will say, "Um, sure I'm using Windows. Help me debug my firewalling rules.". Even if you hang up on these people, you'll still get the calls.
The university's networking department has to deal with all of this crud on a budget that is almost certainly far too small. I have no problem at all with them restricting hardware and software for machines connected to the dorm network drops - they're paying for the network infrastructure and support, so they have every right to say what they'll let people do on the network.
Re:Did just this thing for 3 years (Score:2, Insightful)
The Computer Science department at BYU where I was attending Grad School actually requires internet access of some sort for every class. Professors no longer hand out a syllabus at the start of the semester. Students are expected to read it online. All homework assignments are posted online. Every class has a newsgroup and students are held responsible for information, assignments and schedule changes posted to the class newsgroup.
In many classes, all grades are distributed only through an online system that requires a student ID and password to gain access.
Besides, the school uses broadband internet access as a lure to get people to live in the dorms. Most people here live off-campus after their freshman year, and the school is trying to get more people to come back as sophomores and longer. Broadband internet is the number one reason folks choose to stay in the dorms.
Wondering (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm suspicious, I think you might just be feeling a little down, watching your fat summer pipe go down the tubes again and all.
Some Tips (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Post network info in BIG poster boards attached to the dorm bulletin boards right at the entrance to each dorm. Some genius admins have directions to getting ethernet posted on the web. That sure helps when you have no ethernet connection in your dorm.
3) Plan conservatively when making troublshooting appointments. People get discouraged when you tell them you'll send a tech to their dorm at 7:30pm and the tech doesn't show because he's still at another dorm rebooting for the 9th time. People will be surprised the tech is early and appreciate him/her spending extra time troubleshooting their connections. It's better to take it slow, get one problem done right then do quick fixes and make repeat visits.
4) Have a TOS in plain english. List programs people are discouraged to use. If you have a per port traffic limit, publish an easy link for people to check how much they've used.
That's about it!
What I learned in my one experience (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Make sure people sign out when they are going to do an install so people know where they are. Walkie Talkies for the higher level techs can be a good idea, and if you have desks spread out to the different dorms, you're definately going to want a good way to communicate. When you can't track down the Level 2 tech because he didn't sign out for an install, it's going to be frustrating.
3. When people say "I'll try to do it myself", unless they have an iMac, tell them just to wait for a while and someone can do it for them. Once you've done 50 of these, you can do it in your sleep. However, if they've severely screwed up the machine before you get there, it makes your job a lot harder.
4. Make sure the computer runs before you get there. You're job is to fix the network, not to get their CD-R drive working, not to show them how to download pr0n, or how to install Quake 3. If you fix a printer or something else, they are going to tell their friends to call your office when their printer breaks, and your boss is going to hate you. If you are really nice and fix it, make sure they know never to call you guys about it again.
5. Send everyone out with certain things: Screwdriver (multiple bits, you can get them cheap), a 50' ethernet cable that you know works (can reach across the dorm room, can eliminate cable as an option), a PCI card, an ISA card, a CD with drivers for all the cards you support. You'll be amazed how many people try to use a phone cord instead of Cat5, so you'll want the cable for sure. Bring cards that you know work so you can eliminate the card being broken quickly.
6. Remember - Computers don't always work like you think they should. You'll find that a card will work in one PCI slot but not another. That if an ISA card is in one slot but not another, the PCI card will stop working. There are a million little things like this that cause problems because you think it should work, but it won't. Experiment with things like this. Make sure to check the BIOS and that it doesn't have some stupid issues. Don't be afraid to disable something in Windows Control Panel, but ASK FIRST.
7. Since you should keep computerized records of all these appointments, if there is anything strange about the install (had to use a certain PCI slot, had to disable something), make a note of it and keep that around. This will help immensely in the future. You might do a million installs the first few days, but if you keep track of them, when you have to fix them later you will be really happy you did.
8. Laptops suck. They love certain PCMCIA cards, they hate certain ones. We had a card that IBM's would never work with, but everyone else loved. I think IBM had a deal with 3Com so you couldn't use cheap cards in their laptops.
9. Remember, the low level techs that don't know as much and cause more problems than they fix? They're very good at going and getting you food and drinks. They're beeter at doing that then fixing a computer they don't understand.
10. Figure out who knows Macs, who knows NT/2000, who only knows 95/98, and if anyone knows Linux. Keep a list so people go to a computer they know. Have people write down what kind of computer and card they have when you go to do an install for them. It saves time and makes everyone happier.
If you like doing installs, this is a really fun week, and after a day or two it gets really, really easy to do. You also get good stories:
Compaq's had the expansion slot covers soldered at 10 points on certain models. They were not easy to get off. Nothing makes a parent feel confident like you ripping off their computer case and attacking the case with screwdriver with all your might to force it open. Sony VAIO desktops had this issue as well, but they were far less common. This week also teaches you what computer makers do a great job with their computers (Dell, Apple), and those that don't as much (almost everyone else).
Re:mandatory laptops (Score:3, Insightful)
My friend once made an offhand remark a few years back. At the time, I thought he was merely being sarcastic. He said, "I kid you not, colleges exist only to make money."
I know, I know, acedemic institutions are supposed to exist solely for the purpose of education. And, for the most part, they fulfill that adequately. But why, when colleges get all these grants and donations, do the students have to pay through the arse for education?
Not just for the tuition either. Think about it. You have to pay for *everything*. Books, supplies, meals, rooms. Even frigging lab hours. This is one of the reasons I'm partially disgusted at colleges and universities. I'd like to hear other people's comments on this. Don't just mod me down (which I know you will), please tell me if and why I'm wrong.
They won't come to you (Score:3, Insightful)
This is sort of the classic trap to fall into. I should know, I did. It's a simple fact of life that most people are more interested in themselves than they are in you. They aren't being inconsiderate, intentionally ignoring you, or anything else. You have to give other people a reason to pay attention to you. If you sit at a computer instead of interacting with people, you are not going to get any attention. You may as well be furniture.
Learn their name, find out something about them, talk to them and be interested (even if you aren't). You don't have to like them, be friends with them, date them or even see them again. But it's good practice for the Real World, and guess what? You'll meet some pretty interesting folks along the way.
Not everyone is interested in the same things you are. Just because someone could care less about computers does not make them boring, stupid, or worse in any way. It just means they are interested in other things. Chances are good those things might be pretty interesting themselves. Let them tell you about what they like. People love this.
Most people are just as scared as you. They may not show it, or cover it up better, but it is true. Meeting new people is very hard to do. But they aren't going to come to you. Show them that you care and are interested in them and they'll usually respond in kind. Just ask questions and show a genuine interest in the responses. Will you meet some jerks? Sure. But most folks are pretty decent at heart.
Just because some folks will not be that interested in you does not mean you should just go "oh well, nobody likes me, guess I'll just go play Quake". That is avoidance behavior. You're afraid of the opinions of a bunch of folks who are mostly interested in themselves. Most folks are more interested in themselves than anyone else most of the time. You probably are too, whether you care to admit it or not. It's ok, it's normal. But it's silly to go crawl into a corner because someone acted selfishly. It hasn't been the first time and it won't be the last. If you reach out and get ignored, it's ok, it happens to everyone. But if you stop reaching out, you will get ignored. Retreating into your computer, though seemingly comfortable, doesn't solve the problem. It's no different in most respects than an alchoholic drinking to forget his troubles. Sure you'll feel better for a while, but the problem will still be there the next day because you haven't dealt with it.
geeks find ways (Score:1, Insightful)
my last two years i built a cluster for a project and "i just _had_ to have at least 1 static IP to properly configure my cluster" (gulible admins can be persuaded to belive anything)
wouldn't you know that there soon magically appeared a comptuer of mine that resided right off the T3 with full FTP/nap and no cybernanny
easy ways to make friends with all the delightful delinquents/geeks all over campus -
that's my story and i'm stickin' to it
Re:Strict Guidelines only way to cope with load (Score:5, Insightful)
And you were also probably the least used network on campus. Maybe that's why you had so few network problems. And it's not that impressive a statistic, precisely because you serverely and arbitrarily limited the functionality of your network service to attain the (less important) standard of uptime.
I mean, listen to yourself! You required users to buy your NIC (at $50?!?), use only the operating systems that you allowed (I still haven't figured out what you're preventing by not allowing Linux as a client OS, aside from happy users), you misused the concept of DHCP, and you completely violated any standards of academic opennes and integrity. Your network sounds not like a success, but a disaster!
I wouldn't be so harsh about most of your policies, if you didn't also mix in a number of shortsighted, non-benificial rules in there as well. What the hell do you care what the user does behind his/her dorm-room port? Are you filtering packets? Blocking ports? Yes? Then it doesn't matter if Joe User wants to set up a single windows PC, or establish a 10 computer NAT network in their room, hidden behind a linux firewall. Second, why would you want to alienate technically savvy users by requiring them to use hardware or software different from what they already have? If a Joe User can do his own install, do you care *what* he installs? Of course not! Your rules provide no benefit, other than to stroke your own sense of power.
If I were both a competent network user and a paying student at your university, I know I would've done my best to get you fired. Sheesh.
I'm doing this in two weeks.... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) If a user has crappy hardware, tell him or her so. Make them splurge for a 3com. When you're configuring that many students, if 1% of them are running cheap-ass ethernet cards that their local vendors told them would "speed up the internet" or some such nonsense, I can guarantee you'll be spending plenty of time supporting that 1% over the phone for the rest of the year. Nip the problems in the bud.
2) Definitely keep it as simple as possible. Make flowcharts. Win98? Ok, open box, insert card, driver disk / os disk, so on and so forth. Make sure everyone working gets a flowchart. Make them for the top 5 operating systems at your school. If the situation they encounter doesn't work / doesn't have a flow chart, have the consultant refer the problem to his manager. This minimizes hassles for everyone - flowcharts help your techies streamline things, and as a bonus you only get problems that require actual thought.
3) HIRE AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. One day of training for 1 consultant for every 50 anticipated setups per week. (Our "Dorm Storm" lasts for three weeks. YMMV) Seem excessive? This is 10 setups a day - enough to compensate for the average difficult setup. More will leave your techies bored. Training should include NIC installation, different OS's, common user questions and the like. Bonus: handing out cd's with an automated installation and config program
is a good idea. Handing out static wrist guards so that someone working under you doesn't fry an expensive machine and piss of someone's daddy is a *great* idea.
4) Only higher tech support that is friendly. These people will be interacting IRL - they'd better be able to at least fake people skills.
5) Keep everything as low stress as possible. That means air conditioning everywhere (it's the little things), free coffee for techies / walk in students, and anything else that makes this massive hassle a little less of, well, a massive hassle.
6) Past five o clock, stay open with a skeleton staff, and have consultants ready to drop in on the dorm who are on call (i.e. have immediate phone access and the ability to go at a moment's notice.) Don't abuse this privilege, but do use it.
7) Lastly, be prompt. Have everyone who doesn't get serviced by flowcharts go to the first manager AND DEALT WITH IMMEDIATELY. More than 24 hours for turnaround is too late, especially with this heat. Those who can't get helped by the managers should be an extremely small group - have one more manager and/or an emergency response team to deal with these guys.
Good luck with yours... I'm at 1.5 weeks and counting...
Ugh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Self Install Guide (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't just be "The Guy who....." (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't look at having geek-skills as a way to guarantee you'll score. All it is is an opening. Other guys usually have to buy her a drink (or several), compete with a dozen other guys, get her away from her friends, impress her with dance-skills and somehow manage to charm her over the noise of a nightclub. As a geek, you get invited into her room, get to do her a favour, and have a perfect opportunity to chat to her and show her that you're an actual human being, and can be witty, interesting and smart.
And most girls (particularly university girls) really do value brains more than guys do. If she's after a jock, then you're wasting your time trying to pull her, but she may have friends who're more interested in someone who looks OK and can actually hold a conversation and make them laugh than they are in someone who's on the football team, but who's more interested in being a drunken-caveman-fratboy.
Oh, and one piece of advice - download some file recovery software. You have no idea how grateful someone who's fairly inexperienced with computers will be when you magic a deleted file back into existance from their floppy drive. A common problem that need not be the disaster it seems.
your guide lines are a little too strick (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Self Install Guide (Score:2, Insightful)
Western Washington University Tales (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll include some great war stories from the dorm trenches at my particular university:
The Residential Technology department (ResTek [wwu.edu]) has a program called TekHelps... 8-12 volunteers for each hall process work tickets for students needing to hook up ethernet for the first 2 weeks of school. We moved in 2 days early for training. Their policy was "TekHelps can touch the computer", which meant the user had to sit their and possibly learn how to operate the computer Daddy had bought for them. Cons: no pay, too much work. Pros: experience for resume, early move-in, many ignorant dorm honies. (Many of the girls I helped continued contacting me throughout the school year for my geek prowess.)
As far as ResTek themselves, they wouldn't hire me into a paid position (despite my previous experience as a lab consultant at a previous university). I later discovered they had a policy of avoiding people with experience, and preferred people-skills. They figured they can train them later and be friendly for now. This is what happens when non-techie managers are in charge.
This ignorance extends to their ethernet network. All the residence halls are either 10 mbit or 100 mbit depending. Internal LAN thoroughput is dandy... I was pulling, umm, academic documents off people's FTP servers at 1-2 mbits. Once you left the LAN and went out through the ResTek Qwest Internet link, it all went to hell. ResTek is fond of the term "T1", but they really just have a fractional DS3 connection, and they buy chunks 1.54 mbits at a time.
Picture 2700 students trying to cram data through 4 mbits of pipe. Yeah. That was the beginning of the year, and after many frustrating e-mails and calls to ResTek they added another "T1", or just upped the cap on the Qwest link. Ping times were still 1200+ 24/7 (no gaming for you!), and thoroughput was usually less than a 28.8 modem. More angry calls until the end of winter quarter.
End of winter quarter, and the pipe is cranked to 7 mbits. Ping times go down to 600-800, with decent pings late late at night. There's a twist at this point, though. ResTek was running an HTTP proxy server that leeched off the seperate academic link... 10 mbits of virgin pipe just asking to be sucked up by Napster transfers and porn. Up until that point the proxy had been sucking 3 mbits 24/7 off the academic pipe, and the academic technology dept (my employer, as a matter of fact) finally shut that little scheme down.
This coming year they added two more halls and the pipe is now 9 mbits. The number of people on the network will be close to 3600, and I feel the utmost pity for those poor souls. I will be living in a lake house sitting on a fat DSL connection cackling like a madman.
All in all it was a nightmare dealing with their ignorance and denial of the problem. They remained convinced that if they stopped the top 15 bandwidth users everything would be fine. That's the last time I try to explain to a manager how you can't cram almost 3000 people down 7 mbits. One of their staff members answered my complaint with "move off campus and get a cable modem", which I did at the end of the year. :)
Now that the story is done, here's some tips to reduce headaches:
That's my essay, hope it helps people reduce headaches for poor college kids... I don't want my suffering to be in vain. ;)
Re:Believe it or not... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rogue DHCP Server (Score:4, Insightful)
For the last two semester I resided in a fairly wired dorm apartment. Eight computers for four people (two dualboot Windows/Linux, one dualboot Windows/BeOS, three Linux, one Mac OS and one Mac OS X (yea BSD)).
Originally we just plugged ourselves into the network. My roommate happened to be running a DHCP server on his one box to lease IPs to the other three machines of his. Apparently a bunch of other Windows boxes on our subnet defaulted to DHCP and the computer illiterate owners of those boxes just thought 'hey, it set itself up by itself and didn't think twice about it'. Around the second semester the other guys in my apartment and I decided to grab our own subnet (our University owns an entire B class and only uses about twenty three of the subnets) and firewall ourselves off from the rest of campus (tangent: when our University blocked Napster's server IPs this setup was very useful because we just set our router, a linux box, to dial out to a local ISP and route all packets destined to the servers out the modem). At this point, the DHCP server on his one box stopped leasing IPs to the subnet we were previously on. After a couple annoyed students came to ask us to fix their computers after they suddenly stopped connecting to the network we figured out what happened. After checking the DHCP server's logs it turns out he was leasing IPs to around thirty or forty other computers.
We've been lobbying our University to use a DHCP setup. It would really faciliate moving in for students and stop those annoying problems like students mistyping their IP addresses (or simply just putting in a random IP in their subnet) causing multiple computers to have the same IP address.
Have good staff (Score:1, Insightful)
The key is also to do as much in preparation as absolutly possible. Have all your documentation written, web pages done, forms and paperwork done, and printed, space reserved, staff trained, etc. But the two most important things, in my opinion, are to have all jacks that can be wired, wired. Even if they aren't all active, as long as they can be turned on remotely. We spent a great deal of time and effort (which could have been better spent) hooking up jacks on weekends people are moving in. Also make sure all the jacks have been tested within a couple of weeks of students moving in. Janitors can knock things in closets, staff can (and frequently do) bang jacks when moving funature, etc. creating problems that can be tough to track down when people have moved their things into the rooms. The other thing to make sure you've absolutly done is to have a worknig office, with trouble call database (or some other good way to track calls, not little slips of paper), with people to anwser the phone, already schedualed. Waiting until students arive to hire work study students or waiting until then to schedual them, to anwser the phones is a big mistake. The office will end up mostly empty for the first week to two weeks, which is the most important time.
Also dhcp will help a great deal. But what ever you do, do not require a MAC address to lease an ip to them. If you require a form to be filled out, or the student to pay a feet, etc. before they get serivce, remotely activate their port when they do, it's much easier to allow the person anwsering the phones to have a web page, or some other application to turn jacks on or off, than to have them (or in our case have them, ask someone else to) enter a MAC address in the dhcp table.
Re:Tech support load varies with configuration cou (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, we don't discourage Linux use. I've run Linux, Solaris, and now Irix from my dorm room, even though I only do Macintosh support (I've avoided Windows, thank god). You'll get nasty messages if you're insecure or sucking bandwidth, but there's no policy against Unix or even running (secured) servers. People just know not to call us for help because they can't get printing working under RedHat. It's not that hard.
And students usually pay for network access. The only fair rules are "don't make life difficult for other users or net admins". This means no bandwidth hogging, no warez/mp3z servers, no packet sniffing Linux boxes or trojaned Windows machines. As long as students play nice and don't fuck up the network, admins should not care what they run on it.
And in fact, we have proportionally far more network abuse (intentional or not) from Windows users than from anyone else. The few of us here who use Linux usually know what we're doing.
Re:Did just this thing for 3 years (Score:1, Insightful)
Almost all course notes were placed online as well as information about coursework and the end of year projects. There was always one module a year that didn't go online because either the prof didn't make notes or didn't like computers but the majority were online.
Also email replaced using a notice board to check if a lecture was cancelled or if some other important announcement (eg price of beer fell) needed to be made.
Dialup was not an option thanks to a contract that the University made with some weird phone company that meant that data phone calls cost almost double the price of what someone in a normal residential house off campus would pay.
If everyone who needed to use a computer or even a networked computer had used the computer labs then it would have been impossible to get in them, the contention ratio was impressively high. It was bad enough when everyone was reaching a coursework deadline and had to print out stuff... there was only electronic submission for code, not documentation.
And then there is all the warez and IRC and
--dan