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!"

Comments

Ugh, I'm so in the middle of that now.

[da3dAlus]

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...

Intranet File Search at Iowa State

[km790816]

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?

Strict Guidelines only way to cope with load

[green pizza]

At the university I recently graduated from, dorm dwellers had to meet strict guidelines to connect their computers to the LAN. It was a bit of a pain at first, but the years went very smoothly.

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.

Re:Wondering

[Wolfstar]

Not really, and for several really good reasons.

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:bearshare/napster/etc

[b0r1s]

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.

Arizona State University

[zpengo]

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.

my experiences with ResNet

[Jett]

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.

Here's what we did...

[headless_ringmaster]

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