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Minutes for Admin Computer Support Meeting - November 1, 2006


Location and Time:

MC 2009, 9:30 - 11:30 am

Agenda:

  1. Vlans - what a vlan is, why we are going to vlans, when, and what people can do to get ready. Yuri Kolomiyets is the speaker about Vlans.
  2. Security Update.
  3. Looking Ahead to 2007: Vista, Office 2007
  4. Decommissioning Windows 2000 Machines
  5. Experiences Turning Computers Off at Night
  6. Remote Desktop
  7. Desktop Rollover Update
  8. Eudora is disappearing
  9. Professional Development
  10. Other Topics

 

Meeting Minutes:

  1. Vlan Summary: What is a VLAN? A Vlan (stands for Virtual LAN) is a virtual extension of a physical segment of the network. In the old days all machines where connected to the same physical device (hub, and later a switch). Machines that are in different locations could not be connected to the same network segment. With advent of VLANs, physical connectivity requirement disappeared, and LANs became virtual. The consequence is that machines anywhere on campus could be connected to the same logical network segment. What do we have today? Historically on campus VLANs have been allocated based on organization/purpose. That resulted in people scattered in different places to be connected to the same VLAN. This method doesn't scale anymore with hundreds of  VLANs on campus that serve different purposes. What we are trying to do is limit propagation to any VLAN to a building. This will improve our network structure and will allow it to grow in the future as demand grows. What can computing support staff do to help? One of the most important things is make sure that everyone is using DHCP. That will allow for easier management of IP addresses especially when it comes to renumbering machines. Another advantage of using DHCP is that it will also allow people registered in Maintain to get a dynamic IP address when they try to connect their machine in a different building/VLAN. That mostly applies to laptops.
  2. Security Update: Thanks to the computing support reps that helped secure email on admmail, and for helping to implement secure ftp/telnet. We are securing email for watserv1 users now, and that will take affect on November 15th. For those that use Remote Desktop, there are some security precautions that you should be aware of. More information below.
  3. IE7: Tim Farrell demonstrated Internet Explorer Version 7. There are some issues with IE7 at UW, and these are documented at http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/ie7.html. More information about IE7 features is available at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx. If you try IE7, please report any issues to Bob Hicks.
  4. Looking ahead to 2007: Vista, Office 2007. A new project has been created in IST to investigate Vista and Office 2007. Details can be found at http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/projects/VistaOffice2007/charter.html. Vista will be deployed, and Office 2007 is under review. Bob Hicks talked about, and demonstrated some of the new features in Office 2007. A summary can be found at http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/Office2007.pdf
  5. Decomissioning Windows 2000 Machines: A recent report listed 99 computers in academic support departments still running Windows 2000. Some of these are no longer on the network, and we are tracking those. The goal is get all Windows 2000 machines converted to Windows XP by the end of this year (2006). The desktop rollover will take care of a lot of these machines.
  6. Remote Desktop: Many people in the meeting indicated that they use remote desktop. Bob demonstrated some useful options, and talked about some security features. These will be documented in http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/remotedesktop.html
  7. Desktop Rollover Update: We are in the process of configuring new specifications, and establishing pricing with Dell. Once this is done, order 8 will be submitted. The computers in the departments participating in the rollover are in good shape. We are now targeting computers that are 4 years old, in the 1.8 to 2.0 GHz range.
  8. Eudora is Disappearing:  Eudora is becoming open source and using Mozilla's Thunderbird technology, with the first release from Mozilla coming duirng the first half of 2007. Qualcomm will not be releasing any new versions of Eudora. This is a security issue, as there will not be any patches for Eudora. Suggestion is to convert Eudora users to Outlook. There are a lot of Eudora users, and this is going to take time. IST will set up training, and will help as requested. Several departments have already completed or started to convert to Outlook.
  9. Professional Development: The IST professional development seminars for November and December have some topics that may interest computing support reps (http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/istweb/profdev/profdev.html). Bob Hicks will send reminders each week to computing support reps so people know what the topics are. All are welcome to attend, and there is no need to register. The SEW courses have some new web courses.
  10. Other Items: SharePoint Services is now a production service. There is a SEW course about SharePoint on November 22nd. SharePoint is a collaboration tool (document storage, discussions, etc), with security features.

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