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

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.

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