DDD Letter #66

Introduction of PC's and Multimedia Network to Renovated Classrooms and Laptop Ethernet Connections

Reformatted: August 25, 1997

ATTENTION: Storrs Faculty, Teaching Staff, and Other Interested Parties

There are two major new services being offered by the University Computer Center's Communication Services this fall in renovated classrooms throughout the Storrs campus:

• Addition of a dedicated Windows Pentium PC in each classroom for presentations, multimedia access, and internet access.
• Addition of both voice dial-tone and DHCP-enabled ethernet for laptop network connection.

CLASSROOM COMPUTERS:

The Windows PC is currently installed with Windows 95, Microsoft Office 97, Networked Multimedia Winremote, Netscape 3.0, FTP32, and TCP3270. These are the only "supported" applications on these machines. Users may load other applications to suit the needs of their classes at their own discretion; however, they must provide their own support. Communication Services will be periodically "cleaning" the hard drives on these machines, so please do not leave important programs or documents on the PC's. We strongly discourage reconfiguration of any portion of these computers without discussion with our office first. Users should never make "Control Panel" changes without prior approval. This impacts subsequent users and is generally discourteous.

Our procedure to deal with failures and troubles is to swap-out the machine in question and replace it with a new one as soon as possible. This minimizes "down-time" for subsequent classes, but means that any locally-saved data will be lost. In the future, we will upgrade these machines to Windows NT workstations with usernames and passwords for each user so that class-specific resources can be archived on a central server in a secure and reliable manner.

Please join us in thanking Facilities Management, UCIMT, and the Scheduling Office for facilitating this work during a tight summer renovation period.

LAPTOP NETWORK CONNECTIONS:

Both a telephone dial-tone (locally restricted) and ethernet connection are available in the knee-well of each teaching station for connection to the campus network. The telephone jack, labeled "Voice" can be used with a staff member's PPP account to dial-in to the campus network. Users will need to change their dial-in procedure to reflect the on-campus dialing pattern of "6-XXXX" instead of a typical off-campus pattern of "486-XXXX."

The ethernet jack is enabled with Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP) to allow automatic configuration of Internet Protocol addresses. Users who have an ethernet card in their laptop and who wish to take advantage of this service should set their Network Properties to "Obtain an IP Address Automatically." Also, users need to use a standard straight-through ethernet cable, available from the Computer Center Data Communications Group. (Some users may have non-standard cables; we recommend advance testing before critical class sessions.) Additional assistance about configuring DHCP can be received through the Computer Center's Help Desk at 486-4357.

All classroom problem resolutions will continue to be channeled through UCIMT at 486-1774. Communication Services will be providing second-level support through UCIMT referral for both of these new services.