Slashdot Mirror
Dorm Storm?
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!"
Geez, I'm going through that right now. I'm starting my last year at SPSU, but also my first year as a resident assistant in the dorms. After checking in all the students, the next thing we face is helping the newbies with getting set up on the network. Many do know what they're doing, but some (like the ladies and some REALLY dumb freshmen) that just like to plug telephone cords into their NIC's. Anyway, aside from them, it's not too difficult, but we only have 400 residents in 2 dorms, and maybe 50-70% with computers. It's not anyone's duty to help, but most of us do it out of the kindness of our heart (or for the affection of one of the ladies, as the case may be for some single RA's here).
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...
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
I would think it might be ok if it was nestled into tuition. Yes, the raise in tuition would suck but, hey, you get a laptop.
At ISU, a guy wrote a program to index all of the files shared on the network and then allowed people to search using a web interface. What a great way to reduce bandwidth. We had over 2TB of files shared at one point...over a dozen guys were sharing over 100GB. He wrote StrangeSearch on a Win2k box with Win32. I've written something very similiar in C#. A friend of mine used PHP and Samba. Anyone else do this?
A speech...
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:
- Windows only (Win95/98/ME/NT4/2K)
- Desktops *had* to use a campus-provided (free) 3Com NIC
- Laptops *had* to use a campus-provided 3Com PCMCIA/Cardbus NIC (not free, but only $50)
- The NICs were distributed with the MAC addresses already recorded and configured into the DHCP servers. Thus, the user always got the same IP address.
- "Academic file sharing" (windows file sharing not requiring a password) was welcome. Warez was not. Napster, etc were blocked, but all outgoing requests were logged and investgations were made.
- NICs had to be plugged directly into the wall jacks, no hubs, switches, or routers. The LAN level switches monitored MAC addresses to enforce this.
- EVERYTHING was logged at the switch and router levels. Violators *were* contacted, warned, and often expelled.
Harsh, perhaps. But I can't recall a single problem aside from a few intial NIC driver issues (which 3Com and the university were able to resolve quite quickly). Verbose, step-by-step installation procedures with screenshots for every modern version of Windows were included with the NIC. Free installation and setup was also available.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.
OK, you guys are really starting to make me feel old. Here goes the old geezer lines...
"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...
At my school a subportion of the students are trained to help with computer problems. These students are usually work-study students, and also usually have a decent amount of computer background. While most of them are completely inequipped to deal with any serious technical problems, the student base providing top level support frees those who are more competent to deal with the real issues. In order to make sure that the students who are the "Information Technology Advisors"(ITAs) (Who don't necessarily have much prior technical experience) are qualified, they all have to come in a week and a half early, and are given training courses. While I don't have a behind the scenes perspective, the system does seem to work pretty well, and although the ITAs are very busy at the start of the year, nobody seems overwhelmed. (Plus the people who do the REAL work and who aren't students don't have to deal with individual problems and are free to run around dealing with all the problems generated by the newfound network load of thousands of mp3s and movies being traded over the network all at once...)
"You can take our lives, but you can never take our Flerbage!!!!"
Yes, the network does change. The IT department here is upgrading from a 10 Mbps to 100Mbps line ALL OVER CAMPUS. The system is buggy now; I can't wait until 5000 new freshmen enter the dorms. I am in school now, and will have some overlap of next quarter, and from past experience the first week will be hell.
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
Please email all complaints to root@127.0.0.1 and the issue will be dealt with in due time.
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. =)
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
You're not any safer on a dynamic address if you have halfway decent networking equipment and a savvy admin. Hint: ask the right router for the MAC address, then ask all the switches for the right port, and stop when you find a port that doesn't lead to another switch.
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...
There are many universities where admin simply gives the task to students. They build and run their own routers, wiring, etc, off one large connection to the rest of the U.
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.
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
my school has a slightly different solution ... each IP gets 1.5 GB a day of bandwidth. Exceed that, you and the admins get an email, explaining that bandwidth costs money and also explaining that it's very hard to exceed a gig a day in legal downloads. Three emails in one semester, and the admin's start threatening that you'll lose TCP/IP access beyond the router if it doesnt stop immediately.
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.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
I wish I could tell you that it's easy, that with good organization and understanding it just "does itself". But I have no idea. Dare I say you actually have an easier task... I work at the helpdesk for the College of Ed at a Southern University. There are Three of us that service about 1500-2000 machines. It's hard to be exact. And I'm talking 45%-50% Mac's. Running on a Novell network. IP's assigned from BootP. I've got Grad Students running Win95 on Compaq Deskpro 166's...up to new faculty that spent $25000....yes Twenty-Five Thousand Dollars...on new equipment. You should see the office, Post-It notes everywhere. We talk about organization, but it's impossible, the time we do have a spare moment is spent catching up on jobs that got forgotten about, or a job that you were working on and had to put down thinking you'd be back in a minute only to be out for 3 hours. We tried a web-based ticketing system, in the midst of setting up ~300 new machines over the summer, needless to say it's still a Pre-Work in Progress. At the most jobs get written down in a notebook. We've got a backlog of 60-75 work orders called in since Monday. It can be frustrating, but also rewarding...Free food from faculty, a chance to check out the latest gadget. And the experience is crazy. I've learned more in the 8 months I've worked there than in the 10 years since I've been using computers. That's not just PC's either. I know a Mac like I know the back of my hand...now. Try telling a full professor that's got written instructions on how to check their email that they have to switch their AppleTalk connection from Ethernet to Printer/Modem port so they can print and then back again to get to shared drives...Jesus. I'm looking for ways to improve the situation...sounds like I'm bitching, but I'm not, it's a great job, great experience. Anyone down here in GA need a hardworking tech with Mac/PC experience? Send me a line, you'll get my resume. Bottom line - You need people. You need a way to use them effectively. You need an up-to-date and easy to use network. Good luck to you.
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 today.
You might look into what Arizona State has done to overcome their amazing feat: They're making it *mandatory* for business students to have laptops with wireless ethernet cards, which are then going to connect to a variety of online academic services, including those used during class. There's been a lot of news on it recently, and Google should be able to get you what you need.
Got Rhinos?
The DNS server dropped my ip out of the table, so I couldn't collect my mail or anything as I was an "untrusted IP"
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.
I've been a helpdesk consult for 3 years now, I installed ethernet cards for MSU students before I had my first class. This is what I do to prep my coworkers for the rush.
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.
The solution to this is now quite simple. Use iptables to drop everything incoming except from trusted addresses or networks.
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.
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...
The only tale I can tell was on the student end. The university I attended installed a dorm ethernet network and made the several thousand students share a limited number of connections (I think 500 or so). Given that the pr0n and warez leechers were on every single moment of the day, getting on the network was a test of patience to say the least. Being friends with the grad students responsible for helping support this monstrosity, I was one of many people who pointed out to them that the problem wasn't just the number of available connections or bandwidth (although those were problems), it was these losers abusing the usage policy.
:)
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.
My sigs always suck.
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.
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
"Wireless : LAN
I've worked for the past several years of college for the ResNet at my school. We too are in the process of getting prepared for the coming hordes but still have a few more weeks to go thankfully. The big thing I've been working on recently is putting together our manual. In it we have customer service guidelines, troubleshooting checklists, terminology definitions, job description (with specific duties clearly stated), and lots of other misc. things that all my co-workers should know. One thing I would like to state clearly to anyone involved in getting large amounts of people online in a short amount of time: DHCP IS THE SHIT. There is no other way to put it, DHCP kicks all ass. Before we had DHCP here we had to visit every single person who wanted online and issue them an IP, now anyone with low-level networking skills can get themself online (most the time you plug it in and it JUST WORKS). It makes the job 1000x easier. So if you work somewhere that doesn't have DHCP, you should bitch and moan and raise hell until you get it, it is really good stuff. That said, the way things go around here in the beginning of the year: We hand out information sheets to anyone who will take one, on these sheets are simple instructions on how to get online and some basic information about available network resources. Anyone who can't do it themselves calls our voicemail and says what they need. We then come out to their place and do it for them (or call and talk them thru it). If they need an ethernet card we can sell them one and install it, or they can get one on their own and we'll install it for them if they need us to. After a few weeks and demand for network hookups has died down some we have expanded services. Pretty much any computer problem we'll come out and see what we can do about it. OS reinstalls, software installs, hardware installs, help setting up email clients, etc. etc. etc. You name it we'll at least take a look at it, unless we're busy getting people online. The job is pretty easy for the most part. For awhile I was really bored and got into this thing where I would see how fast I could install a NIC. If nothing went wrong I could do it in about a minute or two, depending on case design and CPU speed. You run into lots of weird computer things, strange hardware, really bizzare problems. The worst part is dealing with the residents. It is interesting to see so many different people's dorms and stuff (you'd probably be amazed at some of the weird shit I've seen), but a lot of them don't really care about anything except the computer working how they want it too. You explain what you are doing hoping they will learn and not need your help again, they don't pay attention. Some of them are really rude and unfriendly for no reason. You try to be friendly and helpful and they treat you like total shit, and since it's your job you have to stay friendly and helpful. On the other hand, there are really nice people. I've been offered alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, food, money, dates, and numerous other things on the job. As another poster said, it is a great way to meet girls. It feels great to fix someones computer and have them get really happy and be just so incredibly thankful. Knowing that there are times where I just totally make someones day is the reason I stick with this job. That and the fact that I can educate people about computers.
I am surprised that more of you out there aren't using some sort of thin client solution! For me, it's the perfect way to control apps, bandwidth, and security.
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
While working IT at a UC school, we had the same situation. My co-worker then (and now partner for a company) wrote RNM: ResNet Monitor--Essentially a set of scripts to work with Ted Newman's DHCP server on a Linux/Unix system. The project is very robust, expandable for your organization, and GPL'd.
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
and they think I know what I'm doing....