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!"
Ugh, I'm so in the middle of that now. (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, the only problem I've seen this year is just the arrogant "freshies" as we lovingly call them. They insist on giving bad advice, plugging things in wrong, using the wrong settings and workgroup, etc. Some love to run Win2k Adv Server, and leave the DNS and WINS services on...
Re:mandatory laptops (Score:1, Interesting)
Intranet File Search at Iowa State (Score:3, Interesting)
Strict Guidelines only way to cope with load (Score:5, Interesting)
Each dorm room was configured for two residents, and thus had two phone jacks and two switched 10/100BT ethernet drops.
The guidelines were as follows:
Thankfully, the rest of the university was a pleasent blend of Windows, MacOS, Linux, and commerical Unix. "Housing and Dining" was the only department with the Windows and our NIC only policy.
Had I not lived through it, I would probably bash and complain about such strict regulations. But, hey, it worked. Bandwidth was plentiful and the LAN was always up.
Old Timer at 29? (Score:1, Interesting)
"When I was in the dorms, we didn't have no stinking ethernet - the only ether we had was for gettin' dates."
"Whadda' you mean 2 phone lines? We had one crappy line and felt grateful. Besides, it was a good way to hit on your roommate's dates."
Seriously, I worked for Academic Computing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in the early 90's. Everything that the students had then was crap. It started to change just as I was graduating, but I was the one who managed the lab in the library that had 30 green-screen encrusted Zenith XT's with dual 5 1/4 drives.
Of course, you could use the mac lab which was better stocked, but the students (or BDU's) never could figure out that they had to get a 3 1/2 floppy and only use the macs.
Of course, now all the dorms are wired, and the campus is interconnected with fiber. A couple of years ago, I had a chance to go back and visit. I went into the rooms where the VAX's were installed, and saw 2 new additions. There on the floor were 2 beige-box clones running linux, replete with stickers. What were they? They were the firewalls for the dorms! Apparently it occured to far too many students that the proper use of their new-found bandwidth was running a porn site!
Too funny...
Alvin...
Move ins and computers (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah...the network changes completely (Score:1, Interesting)
The first weekend of my freshman year was horrible. I came from home with (unheard of then) an ISDN line, and was excited about a faster connection at school. There were set time slots where you could bring in your boxen, and they could insert the card, load the (then Win95) drivers and then configure the software. Well, I bought the Ethernet card they required - $50 from the school store (rip off). Then the computer guy - they must have just asked a student to help out - he didn't realize that you had to physically push the close button on the cd-rom...not push on the caddy. We take that for granted now, but then these drives were novel, and my boxen was a franken-puter. To top it all off, we all had static-IP's so you had to get someone from the central IT to come and give you an IP address, and then turn your drop on. A better way is implemented now - dynamic IP's off of a DHCP server. Easy for connection, bad for me hosting that pr0n collection
Re:Wondering (Score:4, Interesting)
First off, he says that out of the 3500 students invading the campus, 1500 of them will be screaming Mommy when they head in and try and get connected. This is about right for A) The incoming Freshmen, and B) The terminally stupid upperclassmen.
Also, the number of people bringing computers to school with them and thinking that the archaic 8088 XT that they just dug out of the basement - usually because their parents can't or won't let them take the high-end 486 that the family uses - might be a bit surprising. (This is of course an exaggeration, I hope. None of my friends who've been there and done that ever mentioned anything quite so drastic.)
Also, there's the fact that, while the NETWORK might be able to take the abuse, it's not guaranteed that the Network ADMINS can handle the stupidity. Super-cheap-laptop + Win2K + Novell + Wireless = Twitching Admin. I really can begin to imagine the hell of it all compressed into three days or so, because - even if it wasn't tech related - I've worked the bookstore during hell week at a fairly large University before. You can't begin to imagine the disruption of life that occurs to the people who work on campuses at the end of the summer unless you've been one.
And yes, I imagine he IS in fact crying over his lost phat pipe. =)
Re:When our campus got Ethernet in the dorms... (Score:1, Interesting)
If your admin has done his homework correctly, there will be a solid mapping of switch ports to patch panel ports, and in turn the patch panel ports to drops in various rooms.
There is software out there that will do this for you, and (of course) it's GPLed, so it may already be in use at your favorite educational institution. It was written in one...
Students know best (Score:2, Interesting)
Whether or not you do that is irrelevant, however... Give some of the kids some admin responsibilities (or pay?), and let them deal with some of the simple problems. Lots of those kids can probably fix things anyways.
Re:bearshare/napster/etc (Score:5, Interesting)
I've actually challenged the "its hard to exceed this legally" nonsense, because I download quite a few operating system ISO every few weeks, usually all in one day, when I need to use them, but as a whole, it's a decent policy. As an student sysadmin, I know that very rarely does anyone actually exceed a gig a day, and on top of that, I know that most of the emails go ignored as "one time accidents"... Only once do I know of the school actually cutting someone off at the router, because the person thought it was cool to run a warez box from the dorms.
Faculty Storm. (Score:2, Interesting)
What a great word! (Score:1, Interesting)
Nice use of the word 'Sisyphean'! For those of you who do not know the definition of Sisyphean:
Sisyphean \sih-suh-FEE-un\ (adjective) : of, relating to, or suggestive of the labors of Sisyphus; specifically : requiring continual and often ineffective effort
Example sentence: No one works at the Happy Burger for very long, so it's a Sisyphean task for the manager just to keep the place adequately staffed.
Did you know? The legendary Corinthian king Sisyphus annoyed the gods with his trickery. As a consequence, in Hades he was condemned for eternity to roll a huge rock up a long, steep hill, only to watch it roll back down. Sisyphus' story is often told in conjunction with that of Tantalus, another king who offended the gods and paid the price in Hades. Tantalus was condemned to stand beneath fruit-laden boughs, up to his chin in water. Whenever he bent his head to drink, the water receded, and whenever he reached for the fruit, the branches moved beyond his grasp. Thus to "tantalize" is to tease or torment by offering something desirable but keeping it out of reach -- and something "Sisyphean" (or "Sisyphian," pronounced \sih-SIH-fee-un\) demands unending, thankless, and ultimately unsuccessful efforts.
BTW, 'Sisyphian' is Merriam-Webster's word of the day [merriam-webster.com] today.
Arizona State University (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't be like my university.... (Score:2, Interesting)
I phoned up the computer room, explained what had happened, and asked if they could fix the problem.
"We don't have anyone here who really knows about DNS servers, so if anything goes wrong with it, we just reboot it"
was the reply.
Michigan State University (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Create floppies of the 5 POS net cards that Best Buy sells down the road. Keep them around, this year I burned a CD with them and a bunch of other utilities (3c95diag, etc).
2. Tell your consultants to not worry about turning people away because they bring you their Grandma's old Recipe machine (you know, x86, 8 megs of ram, win3.1 or pre MacOS 7.0). They're job is one of utilitarianism, if they can help the old machines, try, but if not go on to the next walk-in.
3. Work with the computer store oncampus (if you have one). They can ease the pain by handing out your documentation on how to setup pre-installed NIC's for your network. Putting some of these sheets in dorms would be great, we have yet to do this however. When those tech-sav's that come by to just pick up a NIC for their GF's give them a few network config packets to put in their dorm
4. With a campus thats nearly 36 square miles we have setup multiple stations, some on dorms, one in the union, one in the Computer Center (mid-campus). If you can trust your consults to open and close a room with expensive equipment in it, do it. If they play quake 3 when it gets slow, fine, they make space issues go away almost completely, plus you look more professional and helpful when you are closer to students.
5. With over 30,000 people on campus wanting ethernet, have late phone support (we are at midnight, but ever 2 am seems reasonable). Hook up some phones in 24 hr labs if need be.
6. Mailings - Campus mail generally can put a 1 page flier in all mailboxes, put the URL/phone/location stuff on it. Nothing worse then a crying guy begging the front desk dude to setup his ethernet.
7. Block netbios access between routers. These shares KILL our bandwidth, so reducing sharing to one's own dorm, or 1/2 of it helps a lot.
8. No use in dwelling, the students will come, and no matter how much you prepare, they will overwhelm you at least a bit. Damn pr0n Monkeys.
Re:Do what my university did (Score:2, Interesting)
I do this on my @home connection and recently complained about a speed problem. The response was that they couldn't ping my computer. It is also quite amazing the number of scans that I log. Including from @home corporate themselves.
As best as I can tell the only way they can tell you're on the network is by watching for arps and arp responses or udp traceroute packets. For some reason it seems the udp traceroute packets aren't subject to the input chain in iptables, but I don't know fer sure.
Re:bearshare/napster/etc (Score:1, Interesting)
Why do you need quite a few operating system ISO every few weeks?
You don't.
Learn how to use the tools available that are NICE on bandwidth...
C'mon! One more K per second! (Score:1, Interesting)
Imagine these users' collective surprise when they got emails that contained copies of their usage logs and a stern warning. None of them were real l33t d00dz, of course, and the getting on the busy network got much easier after that day.
Coming from the field ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Even though our scale is (much) smaller, I'm sure we face the same types of problems. So, I do have some advice:
In my experience, the first point is the most important one. The more stable your infrastructure is, the less problems you'll have. Use reliable network cards, switches, and cabling. Unless you're professionally trained, contract out your cabling, or at the very least, get it professionally certified. You do not want to spend 2 days troubleshooting a network problem a single student is having only to find out it's because their wire is running beside a BX cable in the wall somewhere.
Cheers,
Jason.
Just "The guy who can fix my computer" -Seriously! (Score:2, Interesting)
I know that the news roll around, and girls seem to find out about you faster than prospective male friends. It gets to a point where they give you X program and say "here, fix it" and you go "Hmmm, let me have a look... I've never seen this software before" and they go like "well, < girl smile> you're better prepared to fix it than I am! < /smile>." Sad. I spent a lot of overtime at my helpdesk job, maybe an inertial thing to do in a college that's mostly females.
:`(. You won't believe how much you can chill with girls without getting the slightest hint of interest, other than one seemingly deep look once in a lifetime. Geez, maybe I just imagined that look?
Sometimes it seems you get to be nothing more than the "safe" guy for the girls that you're around. They tell you anything when you're as much of a worry as a gay person could be to them
As just the "guy who can fix my computer" I even knew a certain Epson 740i mac driver that kept me going back to this girl's room. Torture to be just there when you're too introverted to make that first move :)
It does make for some good friendships if you tag along with them to the mall, movies, college events... Well, I'm very quiet and sometimes I'm almost not even there. How about you guys? ~Fractaltiger
my experiences with ResNet (Score:3, Interesting)
Our solution? Thin Clients... (Score:1, Interesting)
At our K-12 all-girls school, we are running Citrix with StarOffice, IE, a few chats and games. Registry changes are locked down. No one installs anything anymore.
This was necessary since we have 100 dormers and 1 admin (me). Keeping things under control is a full time job but is made FAR easier with this solution.
We control bandwidth (and filtering) through the use of Windows 2000 ISA and Surfcontrol. Although ISA claims that it will control bandwidth, it doesn't do it at an individual level. You must create bandwidth 'pools'. This will be our first year with ISA, as we used M$ Proxy last year.
We had some issues with file/disk compatibility with foreign students' computers. Also, differing versions of Office and other apps really made things a bit confusing. Citrix solved all of that for us by letting us standardize our office and app software.
In addition, *YES* those dongles WILL NOT take the kind of abuse that a 14 year old girl will give them. Either use a molded all-in-one PC Card, or go with a simple USB Ethernet solution.
I always keep a few spare USB's on hand...
Chuck Hunnefield, chuckh@hotmail.com
Technology Coordinator
Linden Hall School for Girls
Here's what we did... (Score:4, Interesting)
check out: http://sourceforge.net/projects/rnm/
Our company, Anylevel, Inc, uses this for contract work in doing the same thing. Check out www.anylevel.com (down now - changing DNS's - will be up in a day or two)-- there's more info there when the site comes up.
pzugnoni@pellam.ucr.edu