Report of the Information Technology Syndicate on the University Computing Service for 1996-97
Contents
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
Rules and Guidelines
The Computing Service
Network
Granta Backbone Network
JANET and SuperJANET
Cambridge University Data Network
Network-related Services
Electronic Mail
Information Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service
User Administration
Pelican data archive service
Advanced Computing
Support services
Unix and VMS Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
External Hardware Maintenance
Software Sales
Printing and Reproduction Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Support
Consultancy
Help Desk
Training
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Introduction
1. The main remits of the Information Technology Syndicate are to develop computing policy for the University and the Colleges and to supervise the University Computing Service. To facilitate both, by reducing the delay between the end of the reporting period and the publication of the report, the period will in future be aligned with the University's financial year rather its academic one; because of this, the present transitional report only covers the work of the Syndicate and the Service for the ten months between October 1996 and July 1997. A Statistical Annex giving details of certain services down to the level of individual institutions has been circulated to various University bodies and to Colleges and further copies are available from the University Registry; this information is intended to give a general picture of Service activities rather than to provide a valid basis for the attribution of Service costs.
Syndicate Matters
2. During the year,the Syndicate provided input to academic community-wide discussions about the procurement of the replacement for the existing high-speed network (SuperJANET III), the way in which it should be funded and the future of videoconferencing. It now seems certain that the University will in future have to make a substantial financial contribution to retain the high bandwidth to which it has become used as one of the pilot sites for SuperJANET. When the General Board decided for a second successive year that the equipment funding situation did not allow money to be set aside for an IT Fund, the Syndicate re-iterated its view that the experience with the first two rounds of such funding, not least in terms of improved liaison between the Schools and the Computing Service, had been so successful that the concept should not be forgotten.
3. The year saw much discussion about the need for centrally-managed classrooms for undergraduate teaching. Finally, following an interim report from the Natural Sciences Tripos review committee recommending that all first year NST students should be required to take a course in Mathematics (including computing), the Syndicate agreed to recommend to the General Board that one new 80-seater PC classroom should be established on the New Museums Site to replace the two existing smaller ones in the Old Music School and in the Mond (the accommodation in the latter being of a particularly low standard). It was also decided that the Windows 95 operating system was too insecure to be used in teaching classrooms and that Windows NT should be given a full scale trial, initially in the Computing Service's new PC classroom for training courses (see below).
4. In the Michaelmas Term, the Syndicate agreed to establish an informal Technical Committee, chaired by a member of the Syndicate and having a membership drawn from College and Departmental computer staff, the Computing Service and the Library. The elections at the end of the term for members in the first two categories were keenly contested and produced a committee reflecting the wide range of computing interests and expertise within the different constituencies. At the three lengthy but very valuable meetings which were held in the remainder of the year a wide range of a topics were discussed, at a level of technical detail which would be inappropriate at the Syndicate proper, and a number of useful initatives were produced. Further details are given in the appropriate places below.
5. The Syndicate noted with regret the untimely death of Mr C B Robinson, of the Department of Education, whose experience and enthusiasm for the application of IT to teaching has been sorely missed. Following a long history of informal cross-membership, the Syndicate membership was formally increased to include a joint Telecommunications Management Committee appointee.
6. At the end of the year, Professor Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, who had capped a long and fruitful association with the Computer Laboratory by succeeding to the Chairmanship of the Syndicate after completing the Review of Academic Computing, retired from the post after ably and effectively overseeing its post-Review development into a much more efficient body for the discussion of computing policy. The smooth course of its recent history is a tribute to his skill in ensuring that day-to-day concerns are not allowed to divert from the discussion of the really important issues. Professor N O Weiss takes over as Chairman from Michaelmas 1997.
Rules and Guidelines
7. While the Rules made by the Syndicate remained unchanged, by the end of the year their formal application had been extended outside the Computing Service to cover computing facilities in six University institutions and one College. At the beginning of the year, the University Software Policy was widely advertised to users. In July, following a relaxation of the previous policy of discouraging users from having personal World Wide Web pages on Computing Service facilities, a set of guidelines for their use was approved and circulated.
The Computing Service
8. The Computing Service provides a wide range of services. These include:
Necessarily University-wide services, including networks and related services such as electronic mail;
Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which may be used by any member of the University who needs them but are similar to the facilities which some institutions provide in-house for their own staff and students;
Support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities ranging from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;
Advice and consultancy services including a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities and training courses spanning all types of facility.
9. The Computing Service is organised into five divisions, three primarily concerned with providing centrally-managed facilities and specialised technical support and two concerned with supporting either individual users or institutions.
The Network division looks after the University Data Network (CUDN) and the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), and provides support for institutional networking;
The Systems and Development division is responsible for the PWF and the Pelican archive service;
The Systems and Unix division is responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services and the provision of Unix and VAX/VMS support to individual institutions;
The User Services division has two Sections. Technical User Support is responsible for the Help Desk, training courses and technical support for individual users; Information, Sales and Administration looks after software and documentation sales, purchasing advice, printing and reception;
The Institution Liaison division maintains contact with Heads of Department and other senior staff concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters.
10. The following table gives the estimated cost of each of the individual services which the Computing Service provides, with the previous year's figures in italics. All expenditure is included, whether funded centrally or by means of cost recovery from charged user services, which produce roughly one-fifth of the total (£840K in 1997 compared with £825K in 1996).
1997 (£K)1996 (£K)
ServiceStaffOtherTotal%Total%
Network46740987522.1%87422.0%
Network-related212943067.7%3178.0%
PWF24815239910.1%3959.9%
CUS152832355.9%2446.1%
Other centrally-run facilities136241604.0%1844.6%
Support services46538384821.4%81820.5%
Advice & consultancy4596252113.2%49012.3%
Directorate & liaison2601033639.2%3929.9%
Administration & overheads1431132566.4%2666.7%
TOTAL2,5421,4223,964100.0%3,980100.0%
The following paragraphs discuss each of the services in turn.
Network
Granta Backbone Network
11. The Computing Service continued to carry out all operations for the Granta Backbone Network Management Committee (as described in its annual report). Although the rerouting of GBN cables at the University Library (Aoi Pavilion) was completed, the refurbishment work at Trinity College continued and plans were made for temporary diversions in the coming year on account of work at Applied Mathematics and at two locations on the Sidgwick site; fortunately the design of the GBN usually allows alternate routes to be identified without too much difficulty. Data communications (as discussed in more detail below) continued to be the main use of the GBN, but there was also significant use for private institutional fibre links between physically separate sites and for carrying security camera pictures and building services monitoring information from remote locations back to the University's central control room. The JTMC also installed additional copper cables in the GBN ducts for voice network use.
JANET and SuperJANET
12. The capacity of international links was much improved during the year, both as a result of the first production elements of the Trans-European network at 34 Mbit/s (TEN-34) and the installation of a new 45 Mbit/s link to the USA, although the latter only seemed to move the bottlenecks to the far side of the Atlantic. Cambridge benefitted from the subsequent reorganisation of the SuperJanet SDH network by having an additional 6 Mbit/s channel for IP traffic; a 155 Mbit/s ATM link to the Rutherford Laboratory was also installed, as part of the Europe-wide JAMES network for communications research. The withdrawal of the JANET X.25 service in August 1997 passed off without problems, although the support of local X.25 connections is continuing for the time being and automatic routing to the JANET IP network is being provided for some popular services such as BIDS.
13. The prospect of charging for the use of SuperJANET, combined with the new JANET policy for sponsored connections, is causing the Computing Service to try to rationalise the ad hoc arrangements under which Research Council institutions and other bodies such as the Royal Greenwich Observatory have been using the CUDN to access JANET. Arrangements have also been made for issuing proxy licences to members of conferences who wish to use JANET while they are in Cambridge, usually for electronic mail.
Cambridge University Data Network
14. The table below gives numbers of CUDN connections of various kinds at the end of 1996-97 (with end 1995-96 figures in italics). The numbers of asynchronous and X.25 connections again fell, while practically every institution now has one or more local area networks (LANs) connected by ethernet to the CUDN. Although the Computing Service has no direct knowledge of the equipment connected to the these LANs, some idea of the number of individual computer systems is given by the fact that the total of Internet addresses issued for the University as a whole now stands at over 15,200, having increased by more than one-sixth during the year.
University Data Network
AsynchronousX.25Ethernet
University6215628347973
Colleges82110103232
External23 1412
TOTAL721803844125117
15. The individual LANs are connected to a number of area routers interlinked by GBN fibres to provide the CUDN's filtered ethernet service. Following the success of the previous year's pilot, further steps were taken towards converting this backbone to the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol, which is faster and can also carry several different types of service simultaneously. Two ATM area routers were purchased in January as part of the first phase of the HEFCE LAN/MAN Initiative and the purchase of additional ATM equipment under the second phase was approved in July; the non-ATM equipment is being redeployed to provide additional ports in parts of the network where ethernet speeds are still adequate.
16. The charged Magpie fast modem service proved popular with staff and research students (although less so with undergraduates) and during the year some 1,400 individuals (or their institutions) paid £30 each for up to 250 hours of connect time, the money being used to purchase additional lines and modems as required. Although some congestion was experienced in the Michaelmas Term, it disappeared as the number of ports was gradually increased, to 40 by the end of the year. Further expansion is being planned and the support of ISDN is being investigated.
17. In addition to the developments described above, Network division staff continued with their bread and butter activities of providing CUDN connections and advising institutions on how to wire up buildings, establish local area networks and connect them to the CUDN. The installation backlog was again kept under control throughout the year despite a very high level of demand. In some cases, where there was a need to provide connections for parts of institutions occupying temporary accommodation far away from the main University sites served by the GBN, the Cambridge Cable LANEX fibre service proved very useful.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
18. The Computing Service operates two electronic mail (email) facilities, the central mail switch and the Hermes networked message store. After the major software and hardware reorganisations and enhancements described in the last Report, Hermes coped well throughout the year, although the peak load increased from 2,750 messages an hour in February 1996 to over 4,000 in June 1997. Since further increases on this scale are anticipated, a new fileserver and two additional processors have been installed in preparation for the new academic year. Some further information on how the load varied during the year is given in the Annex.
19. Personal mail filters for individual users were introduced, also a managed domain service which allows institutions which lack the relevant equipment and/or technical expertise to have a mail domain which is hosted on a Computing Service facility but under their own management. A new mail user agent for Macintoshes, Mulberry, was also introduced. Much time and effort was spent on trying to filter out "spam" (unsolicited and frequently improper email advertising whose content can be very frightening to inexperienced recipients). Blocking out new sources as they come to light is of only limited value against such fast moving targets and the details of other countermeasures have had to be deliberately kept obscure to avoid assisting the "spammers", although this risks causing problems for innocent users. Unfortunately, no-one has yet found a comprehensive solution for this worldwide problem.
Information Services
20. In accordance with Syndicate policy, each institution is encouraged to develop its own Web server and information is only held on the central server until this can be arranged. During the year, data from the University Library, the Development Office and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology was moved to local servers while the introduction of a server at the Local Examinations Syndicate was particularly helpful in dealing with Webmaster enquiries. In the other direction, over 70 student societies took advantage of a new facility for keeping their information on the central server, and other new postings included information about Fellowship competitions, the National Science Week, Kettle's Yard and staff training directories. The Information Group also provided much input to the planning for the new Web server at the University Offices (not to mention providing them with trained personnel in the form of the person who stood in while our Web data manager was on maternity leave) and also to the paper and electronic versions of the new University map.
21. The following graphs show the popularity of the central World Wide Web server, which continued to hold both Computing Service material and general University information, including the Board of Graduate Studies prospectus:
Daily average of all Monthly accesses to successful accesses Graduate Prospectus
22. Computing Service documentation, both on the Web and in printed form, was updated in line with new developments, including the move of the PWF to Netware 4 (see below). After much planning and consultation, it was decided to make the Computing Service Newsletter a Web based publication and to cease general circulation of the printed version after the July 1997 issue.
23. Requests to the Web server peaked in May, when the daily average of 28,600 requests was about double that of a year earlier; During the year, the number of other servers in the University increased from 75 to 110. The following table compares central Web server activity in July 1997 and 1996:
July 1997July 1996
Total requests received, total data sent706 K, 3,580 MB424 K, 1,775 MB
% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world34%, 12%, 54%39%, 12%, 49%
Originating computers: University, rest of world4.4 K, 55.2 K2.9 K, 38.1 K
24. The investigation of proxy/cache server facilities, which aim to reduce external network usage and improve response times by automatically maintaining local copies of recently referenced Web documents, continued in the form of a pilot trial to evaluate various software options for a full-scale service. In May the proxy/cache server dealt with 1.66 M requests from almost 900 computers in 90 departments and Colleges, with 25% of requests (16% by data volume) being satisfied by documents already present in the cache.
25 The USENET news server continued to remain popular, although it suffered from problems with "spam" in the same way as the electronic mail service. The following table compares the levels of activity in July 1997 and July 1996:
July 1997July 1996
Monthly news server connections, proportion from the CUS137 K, 15%129 K, 16%
Institutions making non-CUS connections, peak connections109, 135105, 180
Total, local newsgroups8,500, 1907,000, 160
Monthly volume, number of individual postings12.6 GB, 5.5 M7.9 GB, 3.5 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
26. The following table summarises the usage of the PWF in terms of users and sessions for 1996-97 (10 months), with 1995-96 (full year) figures in italics:
Public Workstation Facility
UsersSessions
University3,161 (48.0%)3,114 (46.2%)152,467 (49.7%)175,767 (47.4%)
Colleges3,417 (51.8%)3,614 (53.6%)152,521 (49.7%)192,810 (52.0%)
External13 (0.2%)17 (0.3%)2,069 (0.7%)2,328 (0.6%)
TOTAL6,591 (100.0%)6,745 (100.0%)307,057 (100.0%)370,905 (100.0%)
Other tables and graphs are to be found in the Annex; note that all undergraduate use is registered under a student's College.
27. The major development this year was the conversion of the PWF server network operating system from Novell Netware version 3 to version 4, which was particularly complex because of the extent of the PWF and its interconnection with College and departmental systems. Planning started in earnest in the Lent term and extensive trials of version 4 were carried out during the Easter vacation. Two working parties were established, one internal to the Computing Service and one including computer support staff from departments and Colleges and the Technical Committee was also involved. The decision to go ahead was taken unanimously at the start of the Easter term and the actual change was made in the first two weeks of August. Thanks to the sterling efforts of the Small Systems Integration Group, it went off without major problems, although the PWF Macintoshes were left connected via Netware version 3 for a time pending the completion of a rewrite of their log-in software.
Central Unix Service
28. The Central Unix Service continued to provide a Unix service to a large number of users in institutions throughout the University using two Sun SPARCserver 1000s with two 20 GB RAID filestores, while the separate SPARCserver-based Thor teaching facility was used for taught Unix-based courses, primarily in science and technology subjects. Towards the end of the year, Thor was enhanced by the addition of a pair of Linux hosts which were funded by Computer Science for use by their students only. The following table presents summary statistical information for the use of the CUS and Thor in 1996-97 (10 months) with those for 1995-96 (full year) in italics.
Central Unix ServiceThor
CPUUsersCPUUsers
University93.3%97.8%5,3284,77114.4%12.1%141124
Colleges6.1%2.1%37534085.6%87.9%482415
External0.6%0.2%6057
TOTAL100.0%100.0%5,7635,168100.0%100.0%623539
User Administration
29. Planning took place throughout the year for pre-registering new post-graduates on the PWF and Hermes (in addition to new undergraduates) to further reduce the need to issue large numbers of new accounts in the first few hectic days of the new academic year. Post-graduate pre-registration poses new challenges and the Technical Committee proved extremely useful in resolving potential problems such as the rather different requirements of the Colleges and those departments such as Engineering and Computer Science which prefer their graduate students to use in-house mail systems. Data on all prospective postgraduates was collected from the Board of Graduate Studies during the summer and installed in the user database, so that in October it was only necessary to distribute the relevant information to those who turned up (including former Cambridge undergraduates, who kept their old accounts) and to cancel the rest.
30. These developments, together with the additional administrative load caused by the introduction of the charged Magpie service and the need to issue conferences with proxy licences for JANET, instigated an assistant staff reorganisation which resulted in a full-time assistant for the User Administration Manager. During the year, the Manager also co-ordinated investigations into 113 incidents of computer misuse. The police were involved on several occasions and one suspect was actually detained in the User Area; other incidents involved the harrassment of one student by another and one of these ended up in the Summary Court. Fortunately, this year produced no major security incidents requiring bulk password changes.
Pelican data archive service
31. The ATL library which provides the Pelican data archive service (as described in the last Report) continued to function well and is now using the Solaris 2 version of the Epoch software. At the end of the year, the library was storing 89 GB of data (40% up on a year previously) for 842 different users; details are given in the Annex.
Advanced Computing
32. The Computing Service continued to provide facilities management for the Hitachi multiple parallel processor installation (which does not come under the Syndicate but has a separate committee of management) in the form of a senior programmer with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Unix and VMS Support
33. This service provides the managers of institutional Unix based computing facilities with support tailored to their specific requirements and covering several proprietary versions of the operating system - Sun (Solaris 1 and 2), DEC (Digital UNIX), and Silicon Graphics (IRIX) - together with LINUX, a free and very popular Unix-compatible operating system which runs on IBM PCs and a range of other hardware types. UNIX Support provided assistance to over 100 institutions during the year, including Astronomy, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, Pharmacology, Physics, Plant Sciences, and Pure Mathematics. Although the number of institutions using the DEC VMS operating system has declined substantially, it remains important in a number of institutions (such as the University Library) and the Computing Service is fortunate in having staff with VMS expertise who can provide relevant assistance when required, although they spend most of their time on other things.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
34. Computing Service staff continued to collate information from vendors and other sources and to hold regular meetings with major suppliers so that they could provide both individual users and institutions with advice about the equipment which would best meet their particular requirements and where to buy it most cheaply. Following the success of the second annual Demonstration Day in November 1996, planning is well advanced for the third.
External Hardware Maintenance
35. The Engineering Group continued to offer both a full cover contract service and a non-contract service for repairs undertaken on a best-efforts basis and charged according to the time and materials involved. The following tables summarise the repairs carried out during 1996-97 (10 months), with the figures for the full year 1995-96 in italics. Taking into account the different time periods, the number of contract repairs stayed much the same while the number of non-contract ones showed a significant increase. In general terms the mix of work was much the same, although the number of Macintosh repairs continued to increase; towards the end of the year there was an above average number of monitor faults.
Equipment repaired by Type
ContractNon-Contract
BBC microcomputers661425
IBM PC &c.228237135189
Apple Macintosh10987210194
Printers47573849
Other Equipment21224665
TOTAL411409443522
Equipment repaired by Institution
ContractNon-Contract
University340328340417
Colleges718110098
External--37
TOTAL411409443522
Software Sales
36. This service supplies members of the University and Colleges with a range of charged software at advantageous rates for personal computers and scientific workstations and also administers a University-wide support agreement for Sun workstations. The table below summarises software sales during 1996-97 (10 months), with the figures for the full year 1995-96 in italics. Even in a short year, the number of items supplied (which might be full copies of a software package, upgrades, sets of documentation or maintenance contracts) showed a substantial increase. Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit was once again the single most popular software item, followed closely by Novell Netware, while LAN Workplace for DOS and Microsoft Office each also had over one thousand sales. The presence of the second full-time technician, funded out of sales income, ensured that there was no significant backlog of outstanding orders at any point during the year.
Software SalesItems
Communications8,5869,082
Graphics & drawing, statistics270384
Office packages & operating systems11,8846,912
Programming languages, mathematics/libraries394266
Word processing, spreadsheet & databases1,0381,215
Miscellaneous1,2192,432
Media & manuals17,16116,090
TOTAL40,55236,381
Printing and Reproduction Service
37. In the year to July 1997 the Xerox Docutech produced a total of 1.8M impressions for the Computer Laboratory (the same as in the previous year) although for a variety of reasons the total produced for external customers fell from 1.2M to 0.8M; ways of reversing this trend are being investigated. In September 1997, all of the existing equipment was replaced by a new Docutech and a colour system with improved performance and scanning capability.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Support
38. In addition to the Help Desk (see below), Computing Service staff assisted users by means of consultations on a wide range of topics, while the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) combined their highly appreciated specialist consultancy and programming service for literary and humanities computing with looking after the Sidgwick Computing Facility and housing the small two-person Sidgwick support team (one from the Service and one from the School of Arts and Humanities) which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Service for all departments on that site. A new server facility, provided in collaboration with the Library, to give users client/server access over the CUDN to the SilverPlatter Medline and MathSci databases proved very successful, especially after a software update installed at Easter greatly improved its reliability.
Consultancy
39. The following table summarises the time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work (including the Help Desk) for 1996-97 (10 months), with figures for 1995-96 (full year) in italics. The "External" heading includes both time spent responding to enquiries from outside institutions world-wide and charged specialist work carried out by LLCC. The considerable fall in the total, while in part due to the shorter reporting period and some changes in accounting practice, also reflects the success of the new Help Desk arrangements, which have allowed Service staff to spend more time on unaccounted activities such as TechLink development and less on one-to-one support for individual users.
ConsultingHours
University4,828 (69.6%)7,161 (69.2%)
Colleges1,183 (17.1%)1,698 (16.4%)
External922 (13.3%)1,486 (14.4%)
TOTAL6,933 (100.0%)10,345 (100.0%)
Help Desk
40. The following table summarises Help Desk calls for 1996-97 (10 months), with figures for 1995-96 (full year) in italics:
Help DeskCalls
University8,177 (70.2%)13,162 (72.7%)
Colleges2,657 (22.8%)3,796 (21.0%)
External816 (7.0%)1,144 (6.3%)
TOTAL11,650 (100.0%)15,383 (100.0%)
Of the calls, 45% (46%) were made in person, 33% (32%) by telephone and 22% (22%) by electronic mail. Although many calls had well known and easily given answers, some were extremely complex; the logging software output shows that 87% (85%) were answered on the spot or later the same day and that only 7% (11%) were still open after two days.
41. The number of calls was down by 26% on the same 10 months in 1995-96. This reflects the new support arrangements, brought in at the beginning of November, which inter alia encouraged users to obtain more front-line advice from the computer support staff in their own institution, who are often more familiar with the background to a user's problem than someone at the central Help Desk. In return, Technical User Support established a "fast track" mechanism called TechLink to provide additional help to local computer support staff and to keep them fully informed about all new developments relating to Computing Service facilities. TechLink has proved very successful and now has approaching 150 members, two mailing lists (one general and one giving details of planned interruptions to services) and a dedicated Web server. Two successful workshops for Techlink members have also been held (on Windows NT and on security issues) and more are planned.
Training
42. The Computing Service provides a wide variety of training on network-related services, centrally-managed services and applications software; this is designed to produce added value by reducing the advice and consultancy load and enabling computer equipment throughout the University to be used more effectively. Courses for academics continued to be advertised jointly with the Committee on Academic Staff Development. Personal training in Novell Netware administration was given to departmental staff who were about to establish new servers in their institution. The modular training courses for assistants were further developed with financial support from the Assistant Staff Office and also extended to include charged sessions for similar staff from the Colleges. In all, 294 people attended 39 standard modular sessions (including one at Physics) and a further 38 five specially commissioned modules at Haematology; in satisfaction surveys most of them rated the courses as "excellent".
43. The steady increase in the number of IBM PC training courses for staff and research students has caused the arrangements for sharing the same classrooms with timetabled undergraduate teaching sessions to come under such increasing pressure that the Computing Service has decided to establish a new PC classroom in the Phoenix Building for training courses only. This will be similar in design to the very successful Balfour Macintosh Room and should be in use by the end of Michaelmas 1997. Following a meeting with the Adviser for Students and Staff with a Disability, the potential demand for courses for the disabled is being investigated.
44. The following tables give a summary of statistical information for 1996-97 (10 months), with figures for 1995-96 (full year) in italics. Courses on the Internet and World Wide Web (including the publishing of Web pages) remained very popular, as did those on personal computer applications such as word-processing and spreadsheets. Some more advanced topics, including simple C programming, also went down well. The teach-yourself courses were expanded to 41 titles (including tutorials on C, C++ and Java) and a total of 415 loans/purchases were made (compared with 305 in 1995-96).
Course TypesSessionsAttendances
Computing in Cambridge353589
Personal Computers21403141,175
Unix1617580557
Networking46401,001920
Word & Doc. Processing4340774687
Spreadsheets & Databases2311460221
Statistical Computing913208212
Other courses9628476
TOTAL1701723,6563,937
Course Attendance
Attendances
University2,8413,007
Colleges719794
External96136
TOTAL3,6563,937
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
45. The two members of this division continued to provide advice to the Councils of the Schools and to individual institutions, calling on the services of other Service staff, especially from the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Support, as required. Close liaison was maintained with the University Library by means of regular meetings of separate policy and technical liaison groups, while staff from both organisations were involved with investigating possible technical solutions to the problem of networking CD-ROMs. A survey of academic computing facilities in Colleges which was circulated at the start of the Easter Term generated considerable interest and, at the suggestion of a working party established by the Technical Committee, was extended into an ongoing survey both of facilities in College computer rooms and of Departmental plans for the use of computers in teaching.
46. During the year, two separate pairs of liaison meetings and one joint meeting were organised for College and for Departmental computer staff; all proved very successful. Institution Liaison staff assisted in the selection process for computer staff in over 20 University institutions and Colleges (often following this up by helping integrate the newcomer into the world of Cambridge computing) and complied with requests to attend over 70 School, Departmental and College computer committee meetings.
N. O. Weiss
Andrew Cliff
M. A. H. Demmpster
P. K. Fox
D. A. Good
N. C. Handy
R. Hanka
M. F. Heath
S. Kearsey
D. H. Mellor
A. J. R. Milner
R. M. Needham
B. K. Omotani
M. D. Sayers
K. J. I. Thorne
Clive Trebilcock
A. G. Tristram
©University of Cambridge
Information Technology Syndicate, November 1997
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About this capture
Report of the Information Technology Syndicate on the University Computing Service for 1997-98
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
The Computing Service
Year 2000
Network Security
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
Cambridge University Data Network
Granta Backbone Network
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
Information Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service
User Administration
Pelican data archive service
Advanced Computing
Support services
Software Sales
Unix and VMS Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
External Hardware Maintenance
Printing and Reproduction Service
Photography & Illustration Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
Consultancy
Help Desk
Training
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Statistical Annexe
Introduction
1. The Information Technology Syndicate develops computing policy for the University and the Colleges and supervises the University Computing Service. To re-align the reporting period with the University's financial year the last report covered only ten months, but the present one covers the full year up to July 1998. In a change from previous years, the printed version of the Statistical Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services; breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are to be found on the World Wide Web, at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/itsyndicate/annrep/stats97.98.html. It should be emphasised that the information provided is intended only to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities.
Syndicate Matters
2. Professor Weiss took over as Chairman in October 1997 and under his direction the Syndicate continued to function very effectively. In its first full year the Technical Committee, chaired first by Dr Tristram and then by Dr Heath, proved so useful that it is difficult to imagine how the Syndicate managed for so long without it. The technical issues it discussed, usually but not invariably with the help of papers and other input from Computing Service staff, ranged from network authentication to standards for student computing and from security issues to commitment accounting; in practically every case the Committee provided the Syndicate with clear recommendations which were acted upon without delay.
3. During the year, the Syndicate began to come to grips with the need for the University to pay for its use of SuperJANET, with volume-based charges for incoming transatlantic traffic applying from 1 August 1998. It was decided to top-slice these charges for the first year, but to put much effort in to making individual institutions aware of their share of the cost and advising them on how it might be kept down. This will provide a breathing space to decide whether and how to pass on the costs to institutions in future years and also to develop tools for investigating unusual patterns of use at the level of individual internet addresses.
4. It proved impossible to find suitable space on the New Museums Site for the new 80-seater PC classroom whose need had been established in the previous year, so it was decided to convert the Old Music School into two classrooms with a total of rather fewer seats. These classrooms came into service by October 1998 and will provide a medium term solution until more suitable space becomes available following the planned move of the rest of the Computer Laboratory (but not the Computing Service) to West Cambridge.
5. The Syndicate and the Technical Committee both discussed the implications of the Dearing Report and the extent to which more standardisation of student hardware and software could help reduce the very considerable support load which is now placed on local computer staff, especially in Colleges. Student computing requirements vary so widely from subject to subject that no single recommendation will fit all cases, so the Computing Service circular sent to all new students in August 1998 recommended not buying new computer equipment until after they had come up and had had time to work out exactly what would best meet their needs.
6. There were several discussions about administrative computing issues, especially the commitment accounting project (CAPSA). Although the Syndicate had no wish to extend its remit to include administrative as well as academic computing, the two could no longer be kept completely separate, as developments like CAPSA relied heavily on the involvement of local computer support staff. The proposed appointment of a Director of Management Information Systems was clearly a step in the right direction and the Syndicate looked forward to the establishment of close links between the two Directors and their staffs like those already well established between the Computing Service and the University Library.
7. In July 1998, the Syndicate agreed to submit to the General Board proposals for adjusting the lower grade Computer Officer salary scales to make it easier to recruit good young staff and for reorganising the senior managerial grades in the light of the proposals for the introduction of the grade of Senior Lecturer. It also discussed improvements in the ways in which Appointments Committees dealt with recruitment to local computer support staff posts.
The Computing Service
8. The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service include: Necessarily University-wide services, including networks and electronic mail;
Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which are available to any member of the University who needs them but are similar to the facilities which some institutions provide in-house for their own staff and students;
Support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities ranging from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;
Advice and consultancy services including a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff and a wide range of training courses.
9. The Service is organised into five divisions, three looking after centrally-managed facilities and providing specialised technical support and two supporting users, either individually or by institution. The Photography & Illustration service was formed in January 1998 by taking over relevant staff and facilities from the former Audio-visual Aids Unit.
The Network division runs the University Data Network (CUDN) and the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), and provides support for institutional networking;
The Systems and Development division is responsible for the PWF and the Pelican archive service;
The Systems and Unix division is responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services and the provision of Unix and VAX/VMS support to individual institutions;
The User Services division has two Sections. Technical User Services is responsible for the Help Desk and Techlink, training courses, technical user support and the hardware maintenance service; Information, Sales and Administration looks after software and documention sales, hardware purchasing advice, user administration and the printing and photography & illustration services;
The Institution Liaison division maintains contact with Heads of Department and other senior staff concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters.
10. The following table gives the estimated cost of each of the individual services provided by the Computing Service, with the 1997 figures in italics. All expenditure is included, whether funded centrally or by making cost recovery charges to end users. The latter account for around three-tenths of the total (£1,475K in 1998 compared with £980K in 1997).
1998 (£K)1997 (£K)ServiceStaffOtherTotal%Total%Network485571105622.0%87521.3%
Network-related2092154248.8%3067.5%
PWF2551203757.8%3999.7%
CUS146481944.0%2355.7%
Other centrally-run facilities140191593.3%1603.9%
Software Sales12664076616.0%52312.7%
Other support services42822565313.6%46711.4%
Advice & consultancy4756454011.3%52112.7%
Directorate & liaison269913607.5%3638.8%
Administration & overheads1441232675.6%2566.2%
TOTAL2,6782,1154,793100.0%4,106100.0%
Two major issues affecting many parts of the Service are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.
Year 2000
11. The year saw increasing user awareness of the Year 2000 or "millennium bug" problem whereby systems which store only the last two digits of the year may malfunction at various dates in 1999 or 2000. Early in the year, the Computing Service completed a survey of the equipment used for its main services and concluded that, once the planned replacement of some of the older items had been completed, no major difficulties were to be expected. To inform users, a fairly comprehensive set of Web pages were compiled, including many pointers to information on sites belonging to suppliers and other organisations. The Service also provided a member of the Treasurer's Year 2000 working party (which is requiring institutions to identify their critical systems and formulate appropriate action plans) and a speaker at the well attended University-wide seminar on the subject held at the end of July 1998.
12. It is now clear that the Year 2000 problems associated with computer systems per se are likely to be much less disruptive than those caused by the ubiquitous but rarely obvious chips which are embedded in all kinds of other equipment (and which are outside the Computing Service's sphere of expertise). However much remains to be done by the Service between now and December 1999, particularly in scanning the vast amount of information which is becoming available from a wide variety of sources about the computer problems and extracting that which seems most relevant to the Cambridge context. Fortunately, most users of personal systems purchased in the last year or two and running standard software packages seem unlikely to have major problems, although they should clearly take the obvious precaution of making comprehensive backups of all important programs and data.
Network Security
13. The many advantages of ready access to JANET and international networks are unfortunately offset by the scope this offers for unauthorised access by unidentified intruders from anywhere in the world. After a bad start, with an unseasonably high number of security probes and scares in August 1997, there was a steady succession of individual attacks before the year ended with a huge escalation of activity, involving repeated probes of many University institutions from around the world. Initial investigations of all security incidents were carried out by the local Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), which is made up of network and user administration staff and liaises closely with its national equivalent (JANET-CERT). However, since most attacks were based on known vulnerabilities in Unix systems, much of the work of looking in detail at successful break-ins and helping local computer support staff with recovery and securing systems against further attack had to be carried out by the handful of staff of the Unix Support service who, like those in the CERT itself, shared a massive workload with far more equanimity than anyone had a right to expect.
14. Security breaches can have much more drastic effects than just unauthorised reading of data, since the intruders can not only mis-use the compromised system (e.g. by forging email or storing and distributing obscene material) but can install a "sniffer" program to pick up user passwords as they go by on the ethernet and so gain access to other systems far removed from the original break-in. Since the security of the whole CUDN depends primarily on ensuring that all the machines on it are running secure versions of their system software, in July 1998 the IT Syndicate authorised regular friendly probing of all computers connected to the network, in order to identify instances of known security weaknesses. The results of the probes, and recommendations for remedial action, will be fed back to the relevant computer support staff and their senior management; if this advice is ignored disconnection from the network could follow, although it is hoped that this sanction will rarely need to be used.
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
15. As a result of their replacing BT as the national SuperJANET provider, Cable & Wireless installed new fibre-optic cables all the way from the Computer Laboratory to the Science Park before the actual changeover of services to the new network was carried out gradually and successfully during March 1998. Reduced congestion following the addition of a second 45 Mbit/s transatlantic link at the end of May 1998 led to an increase in incoming traffic from 10 to 16 GB per day (at a potential cost of over £300); it will be interesting to see how this reduces as information from the itemised bills is fed back to users. An outline bid under the 1998 HEFCE Metropolitan Area Network Initiative for funding for a MAN linking four universities (Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic, East Anglia, Hertfordshire) and Homerton College proved unsuccessful, although resubmission in 1999 was encouraged.
Cambridge University Data Network
16. The Annex contains information on CUDN connections of various kinds at the end of 1997-98. However, since most institutions now use a single ethernet link (unless their geography requires more) to connect to the CUDN what may well be very extensive local area networks (LANs), and the older types of connection are only retained for special purposes, these figures give little idea of the continuing growth in network activity or the number of individual computer systems attached to the CUDN. A far better indicator is the total of Internet addresses issued for the University, which at the end of 1997-78 was nearly 18,900 (24% up on the 15,200 at end 1996-97).
17. The individual LANs are connected to area routers interlinked by GBN fibres which provide the CUDN's filtered ethernet service. During the last two years, almost all of this backbone has been converted to the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) protocol, using equipment funded both by the HEFCE LAN/MAN Initiative and by reserve funds built up for this purpose over a number of years. As a result, most client sites can now have 100 Mbit/s connections using either ATM or fast ethernet, while the possibility of offering Virtual Private Networks over the CUDN is also being investigated. The total of (mostly staff and graduate student) users of the charged Magpie fast modem service increased from 1,400 to 1,800 over the year, with the minor congestion seen in the Michaelmas Term disappearing once new equipment to support a further 30 ports (making 73 in all) was introduced in January 1998. Future support is planned for both ISDN and the V.90 56 Kbit/s standard.
18. Staff continued to put much effort into the more routine work of advising institutions on how to wire up buildings, establish LANs and connect them to the CUDN. Following a review of all CUDN charges in the light of the new backbone infrastructure and lower costs for active network equipment, considerable reductions on almost all of them were introduced from 1 August 1998, with the charge for the new filtered 100 Mbit/s ethernet service becoming less than that for the 10 Mbit/s service a year earlier. Several fast ethernet orders have already been placed and institutions are also interested in using it on their internal networks, as experience with the central Unix-based services, including email, shows that even if the individual server interfaces remain limited to 10 Mbit/s the greater bandwidth can reduce overall contention.
Granta Backbone Network
19. The Computing Service continued to carry out all operations on behalf of the Granta Backbone Network Management Committee (as described in its annual report). The cable re-routes on account of building works at Trinity College and Applied Mathematics were completed and a start was made on installing additional cables on busy routes where almost all the original 62.5 mm fibres are already in use. The CUDN continued to be the main volume user of the GBN, although its router network had sufficiently blanket coverage of University and College sites to leave little need for new links. More private institutional fibre links were installed between physically separate sites, including GBN mininodes at three College hostels, while GBN fibres continued to carry security camera pictures and building services monitoring information from remote locations back to the University's central control room.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
20. In the Michaelmas Term 1997 the Hermes message store, consisting of a fileserver, a master configurator and five main service processor systems all linked to a 100 Mbit/s LAN switch, coped well although the load was 50% up on the previous year. To keep up with demand, a 4-processor Sun E450 was added in January and a RAID array and solid state discs in April. During the year, Hermes dealt with mail for 22,000 internal users (i.e. practically all staff and students) and regularly processed around 5,600 messages an hour at peak periods (compared to 4,000 a year earlier). Overall the total of messages sent and received averaged around 750 for University users and over 1,250 for College users (mostly undergraduates), while the latter accounted for two-thirds of all messages. Although exact comparison is not easy, users relying on the telnet terminal access method still outnumbered those with mail user agents on their personal computers using the imap or (less commonly) pop protocols by approximately two to one, which will affect the design of future Hermes enhancements.
21. The misuse of student mail lists led to the introduction of moderated and closed lists in January 1998, while several students had their Hermes accounts suspended for other kinds of mail misuse. The greater problem of "spam" (unsolicited and frequently improper email advertising) continued and the filtering provided by the central mail switches was extended to provide protection for some departmental and college systems. The "spammers" responded by exploiting a loophole caused by the fact that most newly supplied Unix systems relay mail indiscriminately unless and until the local administrator switches off this facility. These are merely minor skirmishes in a worldwide battle which it seems impossible to win; unfortunately it seems that many people must lose much time just to reach an acceptable modus vivendi.
Information Services
22. The Information Group provided much input to the general planning and training for the new World Wide Web server at the University Offices, including the thorny issue of the design of the University's home page. Although the new server went live in April 1998 with welcome innovations such as an on-line version of the Reporter, staffing and other problems meant that very little of the planned transfer to it of information such as student prospectuses and Press and Publications Office material could actually take place. The Group therefore remained heavily involved with putting up or updating general University information on the Computing Service Web server, which delayed a badly needed update of the Web pages about the Service in order to orient them around user needs rather than its own internal structure.
23. At the start of the year, the transfer of the Computing Service Newsletter from a paper to a Web based publication went very smoothly. In response to the rapid growth in the number of World Wide Web sites within the University, liaison meetings were established for both new and experienced Webmasters and proved very popular. The complicated structure of the University can make it very difficult for an outsider to know where to start looking for information on a particular topic, and so by the end of the year a system was being brought into operation which uses commercial search engine software (Ultraseek) to produce a single index of the contents of all relevant local Web servers. In addition to the usual program of regular updating, extensive changes were being made to both the Web and printed versions of Service documentation in summer 1998 because of PWF developments (see below).
24. For the second year running, the rate of requests to the Computing Service Web server almost doubled, and by the end of year they were totalling 1.3M per month. The two Webmasters (who double as technical librarians) answered an ever increasing number of questions on a wide range of topics and received at least one "virtual bouquet". Over 100 student societies now take advantage of the facility for mirroring their information on the server. During the year, the Service Web server received over 14.5 M requests for information from computers in over 160 different country-level domains and sent 69 GB of data in response. The following table compares the levels of server activity in July 1998 and 1997:
July 1998July 1997Total requests received, total data sent1.3 M, 6,890 MB706 K, 3,580 MB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of World37%, 12%, 51%34%, 12%, 54%Originating Computers: University, rest of world6.1 K, 80.0 K4.4K, 55.2 K
25. Proxy/cache server facilities aim to reduce external network usage and improve response times by automatically maintaining local copies of recently referenced Web documents. Providing a sufficiently robust service on the Computing Service's pilot system took longer than planned (in line with experience elsewhere) but was successfully achieved just as the transatlantic network charges were announced. The default configurations for the Web browers on the PWF and CUS were therefore changed to use this cache, users throughout the University were exhorted to follow suit and additional equipment was installed to substantially increase the capacity of the cache by October 1998. The following table compares activity in June 1998 and July 1997 (when the pilot was just under way):
July 1998July 1997Total requests received, total data volume5.3 M, 39.6 GB994 K, 7.3 GB% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)38.0%, 20.2%24.0%, 17.1%Client systems, client domains1100, 96560, 87
26. To cope with the continually increasing volume of news articles in local and worldwide newsgroups, the USENET news service was transferred to new and substantially more powerful hardware in June 1998. The following table compares the levels of activity in July 1998 and July 1997; the apparent fall in the numbers of connections is as likely to be a function of operational differences between newsreading packages as of any falling off in user interest:
July 1998July 1997Monthly news server connections, proportion from the CUS108 K, 18%137 K, 15%Institutions making non-CUS connections, peak connections111, 115109, 135Total, local newsgroups11.1 K, 2108.5 K, 190Monthly volume, number of individual postings16.8 GB, 7.4 M12.6 GB, 5.5 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
27. After completing the move of the PWF server network operating system to Netware version 4, this year's main emphasis has been on replacing or upgrading the workstations and changing their operating system to Windows NT. The Phoenix Teaching Room served as a pilot exercise, with 26 new PCs being installed during the Easter vacation to run a Windows NT system with a limited range of applications adequate for training courses; that system worked well and is now being extended to include all the software required for the full PWF service. More PCs to the same basic specification were installed in the Old Music School teaching rooms while the newer of the machines thereby released were upgraded for use at the Sidgwick site. By October 1998, all PWF PCs will have Pentium 233 or better processors and most will run Windows NT as their primary operating system. Useful input and liaison has again been provided by two working parties on PWF development, one internal to the Computing Service and one including departmental and College computer support staff.
28. The following table summarises the use of the PWF in terms of users and sessions for 1997-98 (full year), with figures for 1996-97 (10 months) in italics. The numbers of users and sessions both increased substantially, although there was little change in the division of use between University and College registered users (the latter including all undergraduates).
Public Workstation Facility UsersSessionsUniversity4,444(47.4%)3,161(48.0%)204,055(47.0%)152,467(49.7%)Colleges4,903(52.3%)3,417(51.8%)228,157(52.5%)152,521(49.7%)External20(0.2%)13(0.2%)1,969(0.5%)2,069(0.7%)TOTAL9,367(100%)6,591(100%)434,181(100%)307,057(100%)
Central Unix Service
29. The Central Unix Service is widely used throughout the University and runs on two Sun SPARCserver 1000s with two 20 GB RAID filestores, while the separate Thor teaching facility, also SPARCserver-based, runs taught Unix-based courses primarily in science and technology subjects. The main changes to these two well-established systems were to install Java on them for teaching purposes and to react to a new trend amongst network hackers by restricting the configurations of X-server they accept. The influx of new CUS accounts in October 1997 was the lowest for five years, probably because mail-only users now prefer to use Hermes. The following table presents summary statistical information for the use of the CUS and Thor in 1997-98 (full year) with those for 1996-97 (10 months) in italics.
Central Unix ServiceThor CPUUsersCPUUsersUniversity94.2%93.3%5,3895,32842.3%14.4%155141Colleges4.8%6.1%42137557.7%85.6%426482External0.9%0.6%6260 TOTAL100.0%100.0%5,8725,763100.0%100.0%581623
User Administration
30. The first pre-registration of new post-graduates on the PWF and Hermes took place in August 1997, when forms and letters for all the 3,600 who were currently holding an offer were sent to their Colleges to be given out if and when they arrived; about 40 departments were also notified of the relevant user identifiers. In September, the now almost routine process of pre-registering over 3,300 undergraduates took just four days, while 1,300 Magpie registration reminders were also sent out. The reward for all this preparation was the quietest early Michaelmas Term for many years. The remainder of the year went fairly smoothly, although on several occasions staff were called on to carry out limited password changing exercises for users in Colleges or departments which had been the victims of security breaches.
31. The user administration manager is also responsible for the front line investigation of security and other incidents both on Computing Service facilities and elsewhere in the University. The number of incidents increased dramatically from 113 to 280; all had to be looked at since prima facie it is impossible to tell a hoax from a case of genuine misuse. Besides the serious network security breaches already mentioned, there were cases of harassment (both personal and by email), disruptive behaviour in terminal rooms, misuse of accounts, pirated software, keyboard capturing, offensive email, massive junk emailings, denial of service attacks, a pornographic Web server and the arrest of an illegal immigrant at a public terminal. The summary disciplinary procedures were evoked on a number of occasions.
Pelican data archive service
32. The Pelican data archive service was changed to run on new hardware and software, but without any change to its user interface. It was used for three collaborative projects with the University Library, one for the storage of scanned photographic data, one for archiving material from the Taylor-Schecter Collection Web server and finally the multi-university CEDARS project on how to organise electronic data for long term storage. At the end of the year, Pelican was storing 118 GB of data (33% up on 1997) for 884 different users.
Advanced Computing
33. As in previous years, the Computing Service provided the Hitachi multiple parallel processor project (which comes under a separate committee of management) with the services of a senior programmer with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Software Sales
34. Software Sales supplies members of the University and Colleges with a range of competitively priced software for personal computers and scientific workstations and also administers a University-wide support agreement for Sun workstations (SunSpectrum). The table below summarises software sales for 1997-98 (full year), with the figures for 1996-97 (10 months) in italics. Over 10,000 copies of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit were distributed in the first seven months of the year, before the supplier agreed to relax the terms of our site license so that individual registrations were no longer necessary.
Software SalesItems Communications9,6628,586Graphics & drawing, statistics2,734270Office packages, operating systems/utilities19,34211,905Programming languages, mathematics/libraries717394Word processing, spreadsheets, databases4,3451,097Geographic, miscellaneous1,3501,139SunSpectrum501442Media & manuals5,84617,161
35. A Web version of the Software Sales product catalogue was warmly welcomed by users, especially when a facility was added to allow order enquiries to be sent directly from its pages. Records of the time taken to process a request for software and have it ready for collection by the user showed that, except at the start of the Michaelmas Term 1997 (when a large year-on-year increase in orders coincided with a shortage of trained staff), 50 - 90% of items were available either immediately or within one week and only 5 - 10% were still outstanding after four weeks. Microsoft products were again very popular, although in late 1997 representations were made to the supplier about some unwelcome new features in their Select 4 agreement. Other discussions with Microsoft (in collaboration with Oxford and Imperial College) about a better licensing model for their products have so far come to nothing.
Unix and VMS Support
36. The Unix support service continued to meet the specific requirements of the managers of Unix-based computing facilities in University institutions, covering the Sun (Solaris), DEC (Digital UNIX), and Silicon Graphics (IRIX) proprietary versions of the operating system as well as the free LINUX operating system, which is very popular especially on IBM PCs. Unfortunately, as indicated above, on several occasions this year normal support activities had to be suspended while the staff dealt with security incidents involving Unix systems. The use made of the similar support for the VMS operating system has been falling off for some years and towards the end of the year the decision was taken to formally discontinue it.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
37. Computing Service staff continued to provide both individual users and institutions with advice about the personal computer system best suited to their particular needs and where to buy it most cheaply, based on the collation of information from vendors and other sources and regular meetings with major suppliers. At the annual Demonstration Day in November, hardware and software vendors again exhibited their wares to hundreds of University users.
External Hardware Maintenance
38. The Engineering Group has a full cover contract service and a repair service charged on a time and materials basis; both are used by many institutions and individuals. The slow decline in the number of contracts was reversed during the year, helping to provide a more dependable level of income. Two long-serving members of staff departed, one retiring after over 30 years in post, but capable replacements were recruited. The following tables summarise work carried out during 1997-98 (full year) with figures for 1996-97 (10 months) in italics; both the volume and the mix of repairs were much the same as in the previous year.
Equipment repaired by Type Equipment repaired by Institution ContractNon-contract ContractNon-contractIBM PC &c.;217228172135University333340389340Apple Macintosh134109170210Colleges12771127100Printers134109170210External 33Other Equipment54279160TOTAL460411519443TOTAL460411519443
Printing and Reproduction Service
39. In September 1997, the existing Xerox equipment was replaced by a refurbished Docutech for black and white copies and an entry level colour copier/printer. Apart from numerous faults in its first two weeks, the Docutech worked very satisfactorily. The colour machine worked reliably but lacked certain commonly needed facilities which were provided by installing an Agfa machine alongside it. A new booklet making machine was also obtained. In the year to July 1998 the Xerox Docutech produced a total of 1.9M impressions for the Computer Laboratory (up from 1.8M in the previous year) and 0.9M for external customers (0.8M). Colour copies totalled 12,000 for the Laboratory and 19,000 for external customers.
Photography & Illustration Service
40. This service was established in January 1998 to continue the traditional photographic services and to develop the newer techniques of digital scanning and illustration; apart from the salaries of the manager of the service and one clerical post, all costs are recovered from charges to users. During the year, the photographic side produced 125,000 colour prints, 1,200 black and white photographs, almost 12,000 films of transparencies and over 10,000 new or duplicate slides, while the illustration service produced almost 18,000 computer generated slides and over 800 posters. Photographs for sale were taken at Congregations, both inside the Senate House and on the Lawn, and some original photography was undertaken on other occasions; it is hoped to build up this side of the service during the coming year. New equipment was also purchased to replace the very dated Minilab colour film processor.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
41. In addition to the activities described in the next two sections, this group maintains a wide range of application software on the PWF and other Computing Service facilities. Major developments during the year included a new Netware 4 login/logout program for the PWF Macintoshes, the availability of the popular Mulberry IMAP-based mail user agent on IBM PCs as well as Macintoshes and a determined attempt to curb the spread of viruses by establishing rapid delivery mechanisms for new releases of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit. Also, in response to user demand, staff were trained in Windows NT Server support.
42. The joint Service/Library server facility for the SilverPlatter Medline and MathSci databases continued to be heavily used and the number of simultaneous users was increased from 25 to 99. Although much effort was put into assisting the Library with its project to provide remote access to CD-ROMs across the CUDN, a workable system still seems to be some way off. From October 1998, it is planned to offer a charged video-conferencing service using the (small) room and equipment left behind by Audio-visual Aids; if this proves successful a larger facility which is also suitable for teaching and seminars may be developed.
Consultancy
43. Staff from Technical User Services give user consultations on a wide range of topics, including the specialist service provided by the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC). The group also provides one of the two people in the Sidgwick support team, which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Service for all departments on that site. The following table summarises the time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work (including the Help Desk) for 1997-98 (full year) with figures for 1996-97 (10 months) in italics. The "External" heading includes both time spent responding to enquiries from outside institutions world-wide and the charged specialist work carried out by LLCC for institutions around the University.
ConsultingHoursUniversity5,624(67.0%)4,828(69.9%)Colleges1,212(14.5%)1,183(17.1%)External1,553(18.5%)922(13.3%)TOTAL8,389(100.0%)6,933(100.0%)
Help Desk
44. The following table summarises Help Desk calls for 1997-98 (full year), with figures for 1996-97 (10 months) in italics:
Help DeskCallsUniversity9,461(73.6%)8,177(70.2%)Colleges2,899(22.6%)2,657(22.8%)External486(3.8%)816(7.0%)TOTAL12,846(100.0%)11,650(100.0%)
In June 1998, the old Help Desk logging software, which among other deficiencies lacked Year 2000 compliance, was replaced by a new system based around Remedy ARS. Of the calls, 39% were made in person (compared with 45% in 1996-97), 35% by telephone (33%) and 26% by electronic mail (22%). Many calls had well known and easily given answers while others were extremely complex; as in previous years approaching 90% were answered on the spot or later the same day and no more than 10% were still open after two days.
45. This was the second (and first full) year since the introduction of the very successful TechLink scheme, which encourages users with problems not directly related to their use of Computing Service facilities to first approach computer support staff in their own institution, who can have "fast track" access to backup from Service staff when necessary. Since the 200 or so members of TechLink have widely differing levels of technical knowledge and experience, weekly "troubleshooting" seminars at a fairly elementary level were provided alongside the less frequent workshops on new developments. The response was enthusiastic, a total of 31 were held during the year and another series is planned for 1997-98.
Training
46. By providing training on network-related and centrally-managed services and on popular applications software, the Computing Service hopes both to reduce the advice and consultancy load and to enable computer equipment throughout the University to be used more effectively. The main development this year has been the establishment of the 25-seat Phoenix Teaching Room, which has up-to-date computing and audio-visual equipment and is ideal for the heavily practical-based courses which now dominate the training schedule. Although the discovery of mercury during the refurbishment delayed the completion of the room for several months, it was brought into use at the beginning of the Easter Term and was formally opened by the Vice-Chancellor on May 29. Over 20 courses had been held there by the end of the year and practically all attendees were very appreciative of the enhanced facilities.
47. The following tables give a summary of statistical information on taught academic courses for 1997-98 (full year), with figures for 1996-97 (10 months) in italics. A reduced demand for introductory courses was offset by a very large take-up for new courses on specialised topics such as Java, Filemaker Pro, Photoshop and running a Web site under Windows NT. Electronic registration proved very popular and sending reminders to those booked on courses noticeably improved both the turnout rate and the number of advance cancellations, which is important in matching the number of customers on practical-based courses with the number of computers available for them to use. The Michaelmas Term 1998 schedule will include courses for Microsoft Office 97 (PC) and Office 98 (Macintosh).
Course Types Course Attendance SessionsAttendnces AttendencesComputing in Cambridge131535University2,9212,841Personal Computers1921308314Colleges667719Unix1416421580External17196Networking52469601,001TOTAL3,7593,656Word & Doc. Processing3647870806Spreadsheets & Databases2623693460Statistical Computing79215208Other courses95284252TOTAL1611703,7593,656
48. The modular training courses for assistants were further developed with financial support from the Assistant Staff Office and to cope with demand for these courses a total of 39 half-day and 6 full-day sessions were given during the year. Following feedback from departments most of the existing IBM PC modules are being converted to Microsoft Office 97 and the Macintosh ones are being discontinued. Use of the self-teaching courseware library was well up on the previous year, the most frequently borrowed modules being the typing tutors, Java, Windows 95 and C++.
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
49. The two members of this division provide advice to the Councils of the Schools and to individual institutions, with help as necessary from the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Services. The departure of our number two at Easter to run the equivalent group at Oxford, although a gratifying demonstration of the good work being done, inevitably slowed down operations until an able replacement was recruited to start work in July. New developments with which the group became involved during the year included discussions about a proposal for the delivery of courses and lectures via the Internet. A HEFCE questionnaire about the JISC Computers in Teaching initiative was completed as best possible, although the lack of central coordination in Cambridge makes it difficult to know just how much CIT is being used here. Since the passing of the IT Fund, liaison has tended to be less with School IT committees and more with School Computer Officers, especially in the arts and humanities.
50. Staff helped maintain close liaison with the University Library through regular meetings of separate policy and technical liaison groups and also organised four liaison meetings for College and two for Departmental computer support staff; all were successful, especially the two at which staff from the Administrative Computer Unit explained their plans for CAPSA and other developments. During the year Institution Liaison staff assisted in the selection process for 23 computer staff appointments in University institutions and 11 in Colleges and helped initiate several of the new appointees into the Cambridge computing scene. They also complied with requests to attend almost 80 School, Departmental and College computer committee meetings.
Statistical Annexe
N. O. WEISS
ANDREW CLIFF
M.A.H. DEMPSTER
I. M. LE M. DUQUESNAY
P. K. FOX
D. A. GOOD
N. C. HANDY
R. HANKA
M. F. HEATH
S. KEARSEY
D. H. MELLOR
A. J. R. MILNER
R. M. NEEDHAM
B. K. OMOTANI
KATE PRETTY
M. D. SAYERS
K. J. I. THORNE
CLIVE TREBILCOCK
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© University of Cambridge
Information Technology Syndicate, January 1999
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10 captures
25 Apr 2002 - 11 Jan 2005
MarAUGJan 07 200320042005
About this capture
Report of the Information Technology Syndicate on the University Computing Service for 1998-99
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
The Computing Service
Year 2000
Network Security
Resilience of Critical Computing Service Facilities
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
Cambridge University Data Network
Granta Backbone Network
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
Information Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service
User Administration
Pelican data archive service
Advanced Computing
Support services
Software Sales
Unix Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
External Hardware Maintenance
Printing and Reproduction Service
Photography & Illustration Service
Videoconferencing Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
Consultancy
Help Desk and Techlink
Training
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Retirements
Statistical Annexe
Introduction
1. This report from the Information Technology Syndicate, which develops computing policy for the University and the Colleges and supervises the University Computing Service, covers the year from August 1998 to July 1999. The printed version of the Statistical Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services; breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available at http://www.cam.ac.uk/CS/itsyndicate/AnnRep/stats98.99.html on the World Wide Web. Please note that the statistical information is not intended to be fully comprehensive, but only to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities.
Syndicate Matters
2. Professor Weiss retired as Chairman in December 1998 and was replaced by Professor Longair. Another departure during the year was that of Professor Needham, who had served on this Syndicate (and before that on the Computer Syndicate) in many capacities over many years. Mr Robinson, Director of Management Information Services in the University Offices was co-opted to improve liaison on administrative computing matters. The Technical Committee, under the chairmanship of Dr Heath, continued to produce extremely useful input on the technical aspects of a wide range of Syndicate business while also initiating useful proposals for action in other areas, including the managed PWF cluster service (see below).
3. The volume-based charges for incoming transatlantic SuperJANET traffic began on 1 August 1998 and quite early in the Michaelmas Term it became apparent both that the total use was larger than expected and that students in Colleges were responsible for a very large proportion of it. The Syndicate re-affirmed its decision to top-slice the charges for the first year but obtained approval to pass on the costs to individual institutions from 1 August 1999. In May, the JISC responded to the budgetting difficulties encountered by some other universities by deciding that for 1999-2000 each HEI should pay a fixed amount set in advance on the basis of actual use in 1998-99 (with that for 2000-01 depending in turn on actual use in 1999-2000). The Syndicate however doubted the wisdom of leaving such a long interval between the actual use and the charge made on account of it and decided that the bills to individual institutions should reflect their actual share of the total Cambridge use in each particular quarter.
4. While the official transatlantic traffic information only provides a breakdown to the level of individual institutions, reducing the traffic effectively requires action by the owners of individual computers connected to the Internet. At the prompting of the Syndicate, the Computing Service developed and distributed very widely advisory material on how to stop accessing Web material directly and start using the (free) local and national caches. The Service also developed tools for investigating unusual patterns of use at the level of individual Internet addresses and procedures for informing institutional staff so that they could give appropriate advice to the persons concerned. This policy was suspended for a time after being queried on privacy grounds but following discussions involving the Technical Committee and the Senior Tutors' Committee suitable safeguards were devised for its continuation.
5. Other issues discussed by the Syndicate included Computing Service priorities for dealing with different kinds of problems which might arise in early 2000, the security of the University Data Network and operational concerns about the resilence of critical Service facilities (all dealt with in more detail below) and also the additional resources which will be required by the Service when the rest of the Computer Laboratory moves to West Cambridge.
6. While the General Board did not adopt the Syndicate's precise proposals for adjusting the lower grade Computer Officer salary scales to make it easier to recruit good young staff, enough freedom of action was provided by other means to alleviate the main problems. In July 1999 the Syndicate proposed the establishment of a single Appointments Committee to deal with all computer staff appointments, while the reorganisation of the senior managerial grades following the introduction of Senior Lecturers is to be discussed early in 1999-2000.
The Computing Service
7. The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service include:
Necessarily University-wide services, including networks and electronic mail;
Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which are available to any member of the University who needs them but are similar to the facilities which some institutions provide in-house for their own staff and students;
Support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities ranging from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;
Advice and consultancy services including a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff and a wide range of training courses.
8. During the year, the Service was organised in five divisions, three looking after centrally-managed facilities and providing specialised technical support and two supporting users, either individually or by institution.
The Network division ran the University Data Network (CUDN) and the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), and provided support for institutional networking;
The Systems and Development division was responsible for the PWF and the Pelican archive service;
The Systems and Unix division was responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services and the provision of Unix support to individual institutions;
The User Services division had two Sections. Technical User Services was responsible for the Help Desk and the Techlink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, technical user support, the hardware maintenance service and the videoconferencing service. Information, Sales and Administration responsibilities included information provision, user administration, software sales, hardware purchasing advice, the printing service and the photography & illustration service;
The Institution Liaison division maintained contact with Heads of Department and other senior staff concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters.
9. The following table gives the estimated cost of each of the individual services provided by the Computing Service, with the 1998 figures in italics. All expenditure is included, whether funded centrally or by making cost recovery charges to end users. The latter were somewhat less heavily used this year (£1,316K in 1999 compared with £1,475K in 1998) but still accounted for 27.5% of the total.
1999 (£K)1998 (£K)ServiceStaffOtherTotal%Total%Network48541890218.9%105622.0%Network-related30420150410.5%4248.8%PWF2351093447.2%3757.8%CUS154982525.3%1944.0%Other centrally-run facilities167422094.4%1593.3%Software sales10562072515.2%76616.0%Other support services44622867414.1%65313.6%Advice & consultancy4835153411.2%54011.3%Directorate & liaison273873607.5%3607.5%Administration & overheads1251562815.9%2675.6%TOTAL2,7772,0094,785100.0%4,793100.0%
Three major issues affecting many parts of the Service are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.
Year 2000
10. During the year, the Computing Service completed the replacement of all equipment which had been identified as non-Year 2000 compliant; although this involved considerable expenditure on new CUDN routers and CUS and Hermes fileservers, substantial performance and reliability benefits were also realised. The Year 2000 Web pages intended to inform users were regularly updated with the latest information from suppliers and other sources, while staff continued to attend the Treasurer's Year 2000 Working Party and spent some time evaluating departmental responses to the questionnaire about identifying critical systems and formulating appropriate action plans. The Service also considered contingency plans for January 2000 and decided that, except as otherwise constrained by major problems such as the loss of essential services, its order of priority for dealing with requests for help would be safety and security of the GBN and CUDN, advising Techlinks, institutional networks, servers and other shared facilities and the recovery of lost data. Advice to ordinary users would be limited to problems with central facilities and could be given a low priority in the event of a support crisis.
Network Security
11. The last report drew attention to the problems which can be caused when unidentified intruders from anywhere in the world gain unauthorised access to the CUDN and the computers attached to it. During the year, the Computing Service continued to carry out regular friendly probing of all computers connected to the network, in order to identify instances of known security weaknesses and to feed back the results and recommendations for remedial action to local computer support staff. This procedure has worked very well, and a high degree of co-operation has been shown by all concerned, but the multitude of hackers and the rate at which new security loopholes are being discovered and posted on the Internet make it inevitable that some of attacks will be successful and will cause considerable disruption.
12. The worst single incident caused the CUS to be disconnected from the network for two and a half days in the middle of November while staff tracked down the cause (a known loophole, but in code which ought not to have been present in our version of the operating system). All 8,000 CUS users needed to change their passwords and in a major exercise for staff and users alike one-third of them were dealt with in the first 48 hours after service resumed. A second breach of CUS security was discovered on April 1 and also involved large numbers of enforced password changes. In June, an intruder used a new script to probe all the systems in the University and was successful in breaking into over 40 of them; if sniffer programs had also been installed to collect user passwords then it would almost certainly have been necessary to disconnect the whole of Cambridge from JANET until the mess had been sorted out. The local Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) also investigated many other attacks which only affected individual institutions or even single machines.
13. Apart from repeatedly exhorting the managers of all the machines on CUDN to make sure that they are running the latest secure versions of system software, and regularly inspecting Web sites where the hackers post the latest loophole information, there are few precautions which the Computing Service can take without adversely impacting bona fide network use. Blocking a particular internet port (except for traffic to specially registered machines) was employed in March to cut off a continuing flood of junk mail being relayed through Cambridge servers and other ports may well have to be blocked selectively in the same way in future. Fortunately, and not least because of the work going on behind the scenes to keep the misuse in check, most users still find that as far as they are concerned the advantages of using networks far outweigh the occasional difficulties.
Resilience of Critical Computing Service Facilities
14. A number of incidents brought home the extent to which thousands of people throughout the University now rely very heavily indeed on the CUDN, electronic mail and similar services for their day-to-day work. Losing CUS for three days in November (due to hacking) badly affected those users who still relied on it for email, while the subsequent increased use of the Hermes mail store showed up a file server software problem which required several weekend file copying and redistribution sessions to maintain service until the whole server could be replaced. The CUDN's good reliability record was spoilt when a router fault at power-up after scheduled work on the electricity supply in February shut down the whole network for most of a day and left some institutions disconnected for almost three days.
15. The Computing Service and the IT Syndicate looked very closely at how to improve matters and concluded that there was no real shortage of equipment funds (indeed the CUDN fault was harder to deal with because it happened halfway through the installation of improved router equipment, when the network was temporarily in a rather non-standard state). The main problem was a shortage of posts which meant that staff with the expertise to design resilient systems and to put things right quickly when they went wrong were spread much too thinly (typically only one per service). As a result of strong representations on this issue, three additional posts have been provided and more are likely to be requested in due course.
16. Finally, the early summer months were punctuated by a series of power outages for reasons ranging from scheduled work at the electricity substation through thunderstorms to careless cleaners. Detailed equipment and procedural changes have been made in response to individual incidents, but a more general solution is proving elusive. There are very real practical difficulties which seem to rule out installing on the crowded New Museums site an uninterruptible power supply and diesel generator with the capacity to maintain indefinitely enough of the network and network-related services to be worthwhile. Instead various alternatives are under active consideration with the intention of having something in place by the summer of 2000.
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
17. During the year, Cambridge was twice been cut off the network for extended periods (of 16 and 42 hours); UKERNA have been asked not only to ensure that this does not happen again but also to change the design of the network so that when the link to London goes down it does not also cut access between the University and local institutions with their own SuperJANET connections such as Homerton and the Sanger Centre. During the year, the capacity of the transatlantic link was first increased to 155 Mbit/s and then doubled; this was successful in removing congestion but also caused a sharp increase in the charged transatlantic traffic. By the end of the year, the 8 Mbit/s limit on all outgoing traffic to SuperJANET was regularly being reached; while additional capacity is available it will have to be paid for.
18. Another outline bid for funding for a regional network was made under the second phase of the HEFCE Metropolitan Area Network Initiative. EastNet will link seven universities (Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire and Luton), Homerton College, the Norwich School of Art and Design and Writtle College (Chelmsford). The bid is understood to have been successful and the next steps will be the establishment of an organisation to run the network and the invitation of tenders for its installation.
Cambridge University Data Network
19. The Annex contains information on CUDN connections of various kinds at the end of 1998-99. The little used X.25 service is to be withdrawn at the end of September 1999, while the surviving asynchronous lines are only retained for special purposes. The number of ethernet connections continues to increase and 22 out of 141 are now rated at 100 Mbit/s or faster. Although the ethernet connections (at 10 or 100 Mbit/s) certainly carry the vast majority of CUDN traffic, their numbers alone are somewhat misleading because a single ethernet link may well be used to connect extensive local area networks (LANs) covering a whole building or even a whole department. A far better indicator of the continuing and explosive growth in network activity and in the number of computer systems attached to the CUDN is given by the total of Internet addresses issued for the University and Colleges; at the end of 1998-99 this was over 29,500, rather more than 50% up on the total of 18,900 at end of 1997-98.
20. The institutional ethernet links are connected to a backbone of area routers interlinked by GBN fibres. During the year, the last of the older and non Year 2000 compliant routers in this backbone were replaced, with the result that all CUDN client sites can now have 100 Mbit/s connections. Although over 2,200 people (mostly staff and graduate students) are now registered to use the charged Magpie fast modem service, no congestion has been encountered since the installation of a further 30 ports in November. By July, a service to the V.90 56 Kbit/s standard was in place (although not all users found it worked well for them) and a pilot service for access using the ISDN protocol (e.g. via BT Highway) was imminent.
21. Staff continued to put much effort into advising institutions on how to wire up buildings, establish LANs and connect them to the CUDN, although once again difficulties were encountered when departments which had located groups in accommodation on remote sites not served by the GBN, without considering either the practicality or the cost of network connectivity, nonetheless expected the Computing Service to provide a CUDN connection at extremely short notice. The reductions in CUDN charges from 1 August 1998 clearly encouraged many institutions to install 100 Mbit/s ethernet service connections or to upgrade existing 10 Mbit/s ones; most CUDN charges are down again from 1 August 1999, while Virtual Private Networks are now available (in suitable cases) for the first time.
Granta Backbone Network
22. The Computing Service continued to carry out all operations on behalf of the Granta Backbone Network Management Committee (as described in its annual report). The program of installing additional cables on congested routes where almost all the original 62.5 mm fibres were already in use was completed and restored the ability to provide links between any pair of GBN sites. Diversions were required on account of new buildings at Madingley Rise and Chemistry, the latter bringing to light duct damage which dated back several years but only showed up when staff tried to install an additional cable. While the CUDN remained the largest single user of GBN fibres, there was also a steady demand for new links for other uses.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
23. The reconfiguration of the Hermes mailstore and the installation of new equipment during the summer of 1998 produced a system which coped well with the load at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term, despite a late scare when an apparently routine system software upgrade led to severe performance problems which were only solved with a day to spare. With the (considerable) exception of the fileserver problems already mentioned, Hermes then worked well for the rest of the year, delivering a total of 150 GB of mail (compared with 77 GB in 1997-98). The number of messages increased by only 50% (showing that individual messages are getting longer) and user accesses by around 30%. Despite hese successes, the rise in demand seems unending and the present system will not scale indefinitely, so staff are already thinking about the need for a rather fundamental "under the covers" redesign.
Information Services
24. The World Wide Web search engine (web-search.cam.ac.uk) introduced in the summer of 1998 uses commercial search engine software (Ultraseek) to produce a single index of the contents of all relevant local Web servers and allows outsiders to find what they are looking for without needing to take into account the complicated internal structure of the University. It was heavily used (41 K searches in its first month), although it took users a little while to work out how to tailor their search requests to find what just they wanted without also producing a great deal of extraneous material. The following table details activity at the end of the year:
July 1999Servers, documents indexed, total searches, total data sent226, 180 K, 64K, 1.3 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world22%, 16%, 62%Originating computers: University, rest of world3.1 K, 14.3 K
25. The Information Group completed the redesign of the Computing Service Web pages to orient them around user needs rather than the Service's internal structure and expects to have a Web-based information system for the PWF ready by October 1999. More input was provided to the development of the World Wide Web server at the University Offices (including the thorny issue of the design of the UniversityÕs home page) while much general University information, including student prospectuses and Continuing Education information, continued to reside on the Service Web server. Staff also continued to provide taught courses for new and liaison meetings for all Webmasters, both being very well attended. Printed documentation was not ignored and a steady stream of new or updated material was produced, particularly that required by users of the Windows NT system now in use on the PWF.
26. During the year, requests to the Computing Service Web server (www.cam.ac.uk) totalled 29.8 M (compared to 14.5M in 1997-98), with daily peaks of over 150 K; in response, 118 GB of data (69 GB) was sent to computers in over 180 country-level domains (160). Although the rate of requests to Webmaster also increased initially, it later fell back to the same level as in 1998, presumably because of the success of the Web search engine. A pilot for a managed service to help institutions which are capable of Web authorship but lack the technical expertise to run their own Web server proved very successful and a full service will be introduced shortly. The following table compares server activity in July 1999 and 1998:
July 1999July 1998Total requests received, total data sent2.3 M, 9,928 MB1.3 M, 6,890 MB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world44%, 10%, 46%37%, 12%, 51%Originating computers: University, rest of world8.5 K, 85.7 K6.1 K, 80.0 K
27. The use of local and national cache server facilities to reduce external network usage by automatically maintaining local copies of recently referenced Web documents assumed much greater importance this year with the emphasis on keeping down transatlantic traffic charges. This is clearly demonstrated by the following data for server activity in July 1999 and 1998:
July 1999July 1998Total requests received, total data volume27.2 M, 206 GB4.8 M, 36 GB% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)44.7%, 21.7%30.8%, 15.9%Client systems, client domains4529, 1381062, 96
28. With the equipment in the enlarged local cache functioning reliably, attention focused on how the overall performance of the local and national caches compared with fetching material directly. Cambridge staff initiated some major statistical investigations which were later taken up by the JANET national cache team and traced the primary causes of some serious performance problems during early 1999 to network congestion both within JANET and on the transatlantic link rather than at the national cache itself. Some well-timed JANET upgrades removed these problems, a much-improved version of the cache software was installed and some of the national cache syatems were moved to London. Performance monitoring confirmed the significant improvements produced by these changes, which show that, at the present state of the art, caching on a large scale is no easy task. Towards the end of the year, further disc and memory upgrades were installed in the local cache systems.
29. The USENET news service provides Cambridge users with access to thousands of local and worldwide newsgroups, providing a forum for discussion and for the dissemination of information on a very wide range of topics. After last year's transfer to new and substantially more powerful hardware, the service functioned well and reliably. The following table compares the levels of activity in July 1999 and July 1998:
July 1999July 1998Monthly news server connections, proportion from the CUS160 K, 15%108 K, 18%Institutions making non-CUS connections, peak connections116, 112111, 115Total, local newsgroups12.9K, 21811.1K, 210Monthly volume, number of individual postings20.0 GB, 8.8 M16.8 GB, 7.4 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
30. By October 1998, all PCs in the three teaching rooms (i.e.the Phoenix room used primarily for training courses and the two newly refurbished rooms in the Old Music School used primarily for undergraduate teaching) were set up to run Windows NT, although half the seats in the other public areas continued to have Windows 3.1 because some of the wide range of PWF applications would not then run under NT. The need for this gradually lessened, the remaining Mond Room seats were taken out of service by December and all seats, including those in the departmental classrooms at Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics, will be running NT by October 1999. In July, the rather elderly Macintoshes in the Balfour teaching room and at Sidgwick Avenue were replaced by new G3 machines.
31. The Technical Committee working parties on Windows NT and on Novell Netware, both with members drawn from the Computing Service, departments and Colleges, continued to prove very useful for exchanging ideas and suggesting policy developments. The NT party produced a number of papers distilling the experiences of existing users for the benefit those looking to set up NT systems for various purposes, while the Netware party came up with the idea of the managed cluster service, whereby the Computing Service would undertake (for a fee) certain aspects of facilities management for personal workstation clusters in departments and Colleges. Great interest has been expressed in this and a pilot scheme involving three Colleges and two departments is under way.
32. The following table summarises the use of the PWF in terms of users and sessions for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics. The number of active users dropped slightly but the number of sessions was up by over 50%, while there was little change in the division of use between University and College registered users (the latter including all undergraduates).
Public Workstation Facility UsersSessionsUniversity3,936(44.4%)4,444(47.4%)322,718(48.1%)204,055(47.0%)Colleges4,915(55.4%)4,903(52.3%)344,816(51.4%)228,157(52.5%)External17(0.2%)20(0.2%)2,982(0.4%)1,969(0.5%)TOTAL8,868(100.0%)9,367(100.0%)670,516(100.0%)434,181(100.0%)
Central Unix Service
33. The Sun SPARCserver-based Central Unix Service is widely used by researchers throughout the University while the similar Thor teaching facility supports taught Unix-based courses, primarily in science and technology. The CUS suffered so severely from the same operating system upgrade performance problem as Hermes (see above) that it was necessary to restore the previous version of the operating system just before the start of the Michaelmas Term; had this not been the case, the major security incident in November might have been avoided. In July, a new CUS fileserver introduced for Year 2000 compliance also produced improvements in performance, capacity and support for a wider range of user accounts. The following table presents summary statistical information for the use of the CUS and Thor in 1998-99, with that for 1997-98 in italics:
Central Unix ServiceThor CPUUsersCPUUsersUniversity92.1%94.2%4,7135,38923.9%42.3%134155Colleges6.4%4.8%50442176.1%57.7%443426External1.4%0.9%5362 TOTAL100.0%100.0%5,2705,872100.0%100.0%577581
User Administration
34. As a result of previous experience, the 1998 pre-registration of new undergraduates and postgraduates and the annual Magpie re-registration exercise all went very smoothly. The need to change all CUS passwords in November stretched staff and users to their utmost (see above); fortunately the improved procedures developed as a result of this incident (including ways of checking by telephone the identity of the surprising number of users who may be abroad but still need to access the CUS) could be applied when mass password changes were required again in April. Staff also took in their stride several smaller scale password changing exercises required as a result of security breaches in individual institutions.
35. The user administration manager was also responsible for the front line investigation of almost 400 security and other incidents both on Computing Service facilities and elsewhere in the University. While most attention was obviously focused on the serious network security breaches with external origins discussed above, these took place against a steady background of other incidents including large scale junk emailings ("spam"), offensive email, pirated software and harrassment of various kinds. As a sign of the times, information about a small number of specific incidents was requested by and provided to the police and other authorities.
Pelican data archive service
36. The Pelican data archive service continued to be widely used, with particularly large amounts being stored for University Library projects, including their collection of scanned photographic data. In July 1999, the archive contained 136 GB of data (compared to 118 GB a year earlier) which was being stored for 923 different users (884). During the year, plans were made to take advantage of falling prices to move the Pelican hardware from DAT-tape and robots to large amounts of disc storage while replacing the existing Epoch hierarchical storage management software, for which maintenance support was being withdrawn, by a simpler version which would be written in-house and would maintain the existing user interface. To avoid any potential Year 2000 problems, the change will be completed by December 1999.
Advanced Computing
37. The Computing Service continued to provide the Hitachi multiple parallel processor project (which comes under a separate committee of management) with the services of a senior programmer with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Software Sales
38. Software Sales supplies members of the University and Colleges with a range of competitively priced software for personal computers and scientific workstations and also administers University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. Users can consult a Web version of the software product catalogue and send order enquiries directly from its pages. The table below summarises software sales for 1998-99, with the figures for 1997-98 in italics.
Software SalesItemsCommunications10,1049,662Graphics & drawing, statistics1,0412,734Office packages, operating systems/utilities6,0918,589Programming languages, mathematics/libraries611717Word processing, spreadsheets, databases2,2914,345Geographic, miscellaneous6091,350SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics610501TOTAL21,35727,898
39. Monthly summaries of the time taken to process a request for software and have it ready for collection by the user showed that 70-90% of items ordered were available either immediately or within a week while less than 6% were still outstanding after four weeks. Early in the year, discussions with Microsoft about site-wide agreements for the UK HE community were not altogether satisfactory although the supplier did agree to extend its Select scheme, including concurrency, for a further two years until November 2001. In July, details of the cost of site licences under latest version of Microsoft's Campus Agreement became available and some other HEIs, including Oxford, have already decided to take part. Cambridge will have to decide early in the new academic year whether or not to follow suit.
Unix Support
40. Unix Support experienced great difficulties in early 1999, when vacancies and long term sick leave left the service's manager temporarily alone in post; fortunately by May the group was back to establishment. Although the service is meant to provide general support for the managers of Unix-based computing facilities in University institutions, in practice security requirements dominated all year and when staff were not out on site restoring the operating system of machines broken in the latest attack they spent most of their time on preventative measures such as "friendly probing" or closing loopholes before the hackers could get to them. Late in the year staff produced a CD of software which allows users to log in securely to CUS, Thor and Hermes from most parts of the world; much interest has already been shown in it and the Computing Service intends to encourage use by making copies available free of charge.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
41. Computing Service staff continued to advise both individual users and institutions about personal computer systems for particular needs and where to buy them most cheaply, based on regular meetings with major suppliers and the collation of information from vendors and other sources. Hundreds of University users came to the third successful annual Demonstration Day in November to see hardware and software vendors exhibit their wares.
External Hardware Maintenance
42. The Engineering Group provides many institutions and individuals with either a full cover contract service or repairs charged on a time and materials basis. A computerised system for logging and tracking repair work was introduced and steps were taken to be able to handle warranty repairs on certain Viglen PCs bought within the University and to qualify as an official Apple repairer so that the same can be done for Macintoshes. The following tables summarise work carried out during 1998-99 with figures for 1997-98 in italics; the "other equipment" category includes over 80 monitor repairs under each heading and almost 100 laptops among the non-contract repairs.
Equipment repaired by TypeEquipment repaired by Institution ContractNon-contract ContractNon-contractIBM PC &c.;12321795175University267333359389Apple Macintosh74134130170Colleges111127136127Printers68557386External 83Other Equipment1135420591TOTAL378460503519TOTAL378460503519
Printing and Reproduction Service
43. The Xerox Docutech, the Xerox and Agfa colour machines and the new booklet making machine all continued to work reliably. In the year to July 1999 the Xerox Docutech produced a total of 1.68M impressions for the Computer Laboratory (up from 1.64M in the previous year) and 0.7M for external customers (0.9M). Colour copies totalled 16K for the Laboratory (12K) and 38K for external customers (19K).
Photography & Illustration Service
44. During its first full year as part of the Computing Service, this service processed 185K colour prints (up from 125K in the previous year), 800 black and white photographs (1,200), 10K films of transparencies (12K), 10K new or duplicate slides (10K) and over 900 posters (800). Photographs for sale were again taken at Congregations, both inside the Senate House and on the Lawn, while staff were available to take pictures for other institutions as required. A new illustration technician post was created in order to give the manager of the service more time to become familar with new developments, particularly in digital photography. New equipment puchases included a digital camera and a replacement film recorder.
Videoconferencing Service
45. In October, the Computing Service began to offer a charged videoconferencing service using the suite and equipment left behind by Audio-visual Aids. Although the equipment worked very well and early users, including the Vice-Chancellor and principal officers, were successfully connected to locations around the world, it soon became apparent that the present studio was both too small and badly located for the out-of-hours use often needed for international sessions. Approval was therefore obtained to create a larger facility in a more central location (using the same equipment); this is expected to be in use by the end of 1999.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
46. In addition to the activities described in the next two sections, TUS maintains a wide range of application software on the PWF and other Computing Service facilities. In response to the increased use of Windows NT networks throughout the University, a pilot WINS server was set up to evaluate the problems of resolution between Windows names and IP addresses; a production service is now imminent. Viruses remained high on the group's agenda and much effort was put both into increasing user awareness and into finding Web-based means to facilitate the widespead distribution of anti-virus software to users with personal computers.
47. During the year, the joint Service/Library Electronic Reference Library server was provided with a WebSpirs interface so that users could access it using an ordinary Web browser. In addition to the Medline and MathSci databases, a small number of licences were obtained for GeoBase, GeoRef, Psychit and Criminal Justice Abstracts (and more may be obtained if user institutions fund them). Medline continued to be the most widely and heavily used, with a maximum monthly connect time for the latest version of over 2,500 hours.
Consultancy
48. General user consultations on a wide range of topics are provided by staff from TUS while the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) provides a specialist service for the humanities. In addition, a member of TUS is one of the two people in the Sidgwick support team, which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Computing Service for all departments on that site. The following table summarises the time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work (including the Help Desk) for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics. The "External" heading includes both time spent responding to enquiries from outside institutions world-wide and the charged specialist work carried out by LLCC for institutions around the University.
ConsultingHoursUniversity5,141(58.5%)5,624(67.0%)Colleges1,408(16.0%)1,212(14.5%)External2,233(25.4%)1,553(18.5%)TOTAL8,782(100.0%)8,389(100.0%)
Help Desk and Techlink
49. The following table summarises Help Desk calls for 1997-98, with figures for 1997-98 in italics:
Help DeskCallsUniversity9,809(75.8%)9,461(73.6%)Colleges2,852(22.0%)2,899(22.6%)External277(2.1%)486(3.8%)TOTAL12,938(100.0%)12,846(100.0%)
While the total number of calls increased only marginally, the smooth running of most services at the beginning of the academic meant that for the first time October did not generate the largest proportion. In a continuing trend, only 32% of calls were made in person (compared with 39% in 1997-98, 45% in 1996-97), but 41% by telephone (35%, 33%) and 28% by electronic mail (26%, 22%). While a great many calls were well known and easily answered, some were complex and had to be passed on the relevant Computing Service expert; overall 83% of calls were closed within one hour, 89% within 24 hours and 91% within 48 hours. Rather less than 3% of the calls were referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff could not provide a ready answer to a question about about a non-Computing Service facility.
50. The Computing Service encourages users with problems not directly related to the use of its facilities to start by approaching the local computer staff in their own institution, and in turn provides those staff with "fast track" backup and general support by means of the TechLink scheme, which had over 240 members by July (compared to 200 a year earlier). Help Desk calls from Techlinks were 12.3% of the total (8.8% in 1997-98) but accounted for 19.3% (13.6%) of the total time spent answering calls. Many Techlinks continued to find the weekly "troubleshooting" seminars at a fairly elementary level very useful as a complement to the less frequent and more advanced workshops on new developments.
Training
51. Providing training courses on network-related and centrally-managed services and on popular applications software reduces the advice and consultancy load and enables computer equipment throughout the University to be used more effectively. The up-to-date computing and audio-visual equipment in the 25-seat Phoenix Teaching Room, opened in May 1998, was heavily used for Computing Service training courses throughout the year, while from October the similar facilities in the Old Music School were used by the Computer Laboratory and other departments for undergraduate teaching. Courses on the World Wide Web and Microsoft Office Applications were oversubscribed and repeat sessions had to be held. Web or email registrations accounted for 75% of the total and record rates for satisfaction (95%) and turnout (80%) were achieved. The following tables give a summary of statistical information on taught academic courses for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics.
Course TypesCourse Attendance SessionsAttendances AttendancesComputing in Cambridge111715University3,3442,921Personal Computers1919350308Colleges928667Unix1214464421TOTAL4,3803,759Networking53521,055960External108171Word & Doc. Processing3836910870Spreadsheets & Databases32261,014693Statistical Computing87322215Other courses56248277TOTAL1681614,3803,759
52. While most courses for academic staff and students are free and given by Computing Service staff, a very good response was obtained to three charged courses on NT Server Administration and Novell Netware organised by the Service but given by external trainers; more courses of this kind on specialist topics are planned. The modular training courses for assistants provided with financial support from the Assistant Staff Office continued to be popular; six new Microsoft Office 1997 modules were developed and 31 half-day (39 in 1997-98) and 5 full-day (6) sessions were given during the year. Similar courses were again given on a charged basis to staff from Colleges generally, while on several occasions staff gave specially tailored versions of standard courses to staff from a particular department or College. The self-teaching courseware library, expanded by 11 new courses, was again heavily used and there was much demand for the Excel and PowerPoint work packs and C and C++ CDs.
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
53. Institution Liaison has only two staff who, with help as required from the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Services, liaise on computing matters at institution level with senior management and computer support staff. During the year, they chaired the working parties on Windows NT and Novell Netware, organised several meetings of local support staff from Departments and Colleges, maintained the close Computing Service/ University Library liaison through regular meetings of separate policy and technical groups and were involved in planning for the refurbishment of the Raised Faculty Building. In response to requests, staff attended almost 150 School, Departmental and College computer committee meetings, assisted in the selection process for 23 computer staff appointments in University institutions and 10 in Colleges and helped introduce several of the new appointees to the Cambridge computing scene. The annual survey of College student computing facilities was carried out with a much simplified questionnaire and resulted in a 100% response; having this information is very useful for those departmental staff who plan to give computer-based teaching courses.
Retirements
54. In October, Mr R A Kimpton retired after just over 50 years' service (having started straight from school in 1949) and Mr J H Loker after almost 40; the Vice-Chancellor made the presentations at their very well-attended leaving party. In July, Mrs B Bown, Mr PJ L Crofts, Mr B Landy, Mr A F O'Dell, Mr R W Perks, Mrs D Simpson and Mr K N Warner took early retirement (although most will be back part-time for a period). Almost all of them had worked for the Computing Service for well over 20 years and several had started in the pre-1970 days before the Mathematical Laboratory changed its name. In the same year that many staff took part in the EDSAC99 meeting to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the running of the first progam on the first computer in Cambridge, it was good to have Professor M V Wilkes (who himself retired as long ago as 1980) present at their leaving party to wish them well.
Statistical Annexe
M. S. LONGAIR
M.A.H. DEMPSTER
I. M. LEM DUQUESNAY
P. K. FOX
K. GLOVER
R. HANKA
M. F. HEATH
S. KEARSEY
M. M. LAVY
I. LESLIE
B. K. OMOTANI
H. PESARAN
A. D. B.POOLE
KATE PRETTY
J. RASHBASS
N. ROBINSON
M. D. SAYERS
CLIVE TREBILCOCK
P. B. WILSON
Search | Network Division | Computing Service home | University home
© University of Cambridge
Information Technology Syndicate, November 1999
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10 captures
25 Apr 2002 - 11 Jan 2005
MarAUGJan 07 200320042005
About this capture
Report of the Information Technology Syndicate on the University Computing Service for 1998-99
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
The Computing Service
Year 2000
Network Security
Resilience of Critical Computing Service Facilities
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
Cambridge University Data Network
Granta Backbone Network
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
Information Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service
User Administration
Pelican data archive service
Advanced Computing
Support services
Software Sales
Unix Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
External Hardware Maintenance
Printing and Reproduction Service
Photography & Illustration Service
Videoconferencing Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
Consultancy
Help Desk and Techlink
Training
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Retirements
Statistical Annexe
Introduction
1. This report from the Information Technology Syndicate, which develops computing policy for the University and the Colleges and supervises the University Computing Service, covers the year from August 1998 to July 1999. The printed version of the Statistical Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services; breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available at http://www.cam.ac.uk/CS/itsyndicate/AnnRep/stats98.99.html on the World Wide Web. Please note that the statistical information is not intended to be fully comprehensive, but only to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities.
Syndicate Matters
2. Professor Weiss retired as Chairman in December 1998 and was replaced by Professor Longair. Another departure during the year was that of Professor Needham, who had served on this Syndicate (and before that on the Computer Syndicate) in many capacities over many years. Mr Robinson, Director of Management Information Services in the University Offices was co-opted to improve liaison on administrative computing matters. The Technical Committee, under the chairmanship of Dr Heath, continued to produce extremely useful input on the technical aspects of a wide range of Syndicate business while also initiating useful proposals for action in other areas, including the managed PWF cluster service (see below).
3. The volume-based charges for incoming transatlantic SuperJANET traffic began on 1 August 1998 and quite early in the Michaelmas Term it became apparent both that the total use was larger than expected and that students in Colleges were responsible for a very large proportion of it. The Syndicate re-affirmed its decision to top-slice the charges for the first year but obtained approval to pass on the costs to individual institutions from 1 August 1999. In May, the JISC responded to the budgetting difficulties encountered by some other universities by deciding that for 1999-2000 each HEI should pay a fixed amount set in advance on the basis of actual use in 1998-99 (with that for 2000-01 depending in turn on actual use in 1999-2000). The Syndicate however doubted the wisdom of leaving such a long interval between the actual use and the charge made on account of it and decided that the bills to individual institutions should reflect their actual share of the total Cambridge use in each particular quarter.
4. While the official transatlantic traffic information only provides a breakdown to the level of individual institutions, reducing the traffic effectively requires action by the owners of individual computers connected to the Internet. At the prompting of the Syndicate, the Computing Service developed and distributed very widely advisory material on how to stop accessing Web material directly and start using the (free) local and national caches. The Service also developed tools for investigating unusual patterns of use at the level of individual Internet addresses and procedures for informing institutional staff so that they could give appropriate advice to the persons concerned. This policy was suspended for a time after being queried on privacy grounds but following discussions involving the Technical Committee and the Senior Tutors' Committee suitable safeguards were devised for its continuation.
5. Other issues discussed by the Syndicate included Computing Service priorities for dealing with different kinds of problems which might arise in early 2000, the security of the University Data Network and operational concerns about the resilence of critical Service facilities (all dealt with in more detail below) and also the additional resources which will be required by the Service when the rest of the Computer Laboratory moves to West Cambridge.
6. While the General Board did not adopt the Syndicate's precise proposals for adjusting the lower grade Computer Officer salary scales to make it easier to recruit good young staff, enough freedom of action was provided by other means to alleviate the main problems. In July 1999 the Syndicate proposed the establishment of a single Appointments Committee to deal with all computer staff appointments, while the reorganisation of the senior managerial grades following the introduction of Senior Lecturers is to be discussed early in 1999-2000.
The Computing Service
7. The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service include:
Necessarily University-wide services, including networks and electronic mail;
Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which are available to any member of the University who needs them but are similar to the facilities which some institutions provide in-house for their own staff and students;
Support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities ranging from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;
Advice and consultancy services including a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff and a wide range of training courses.
8. During the year, the Service was organised in five divisions, three looking after centrally-managed facilities and providing specialised technical support and two supporting users, either individually or by institution.
The Network division ran the University Data Network (CUDN) and the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), and provided support for institutional networking;
The Systems and Development division was responsible for the PWF and the Pelican archive service;
The Systems and Unix division was responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services and the provision of Unix support to individual institutions;
The User Services division had two Sections. Technical User Services was responsible for the Help Desk and the Techlink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, technical user support, the hardware maintenance service and the videoconferencing service. Information, Sales and Administration responsibilities included information provision, user administration, software sales, hardware purchasing advice, the printing service and the photography & illustration service;
The Institution Liaison division maintained contact with Heads of Department and other senior staff concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters.
9. The following table gives the estimated cost of each of the individual services provided by the Computing Service, with the 1998 figures in italics. All expenditure is included, whether funded centrally or by making cost recovery charges to end users. The latter were somewhat less heavily used this year (£1,316K in 1999 compared with £1,475K in 1998) but still accounted for 27.5% of the total.
1999 (£K)1998 (£K)ServiceStaffOtherTotal%Total%Network48541890218.9%105622.0%Network-related30420150410.5%4248.8%PWF2351093447.2%3757.8%CUS154982525.3%1944.0%Other centrally-run facilities167422094.4%1593.3%Software sales10562072515.2%76616.0%Other support services44622867414.1%65313.6%Advice & consultancy4835153411.2%54011.3%Directorate & liaison273873607.5%3607.5%Administration & overheads1251562815.9%2675.6%TOTAL2,7772,0094,785100.0%4,793100.0%
Three major issues affecting many parts of the Service are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.
Year 2000
10. During the year, the Computing Service completed the replacement of all equipment which had been identified as non-Year 2000 compliant; although this involved considerable expenditure on new CUDN routers and CUS and Hermes fileservers, substantial performance and reliability benefits were also realised. The Year 2000 Web pages intended to inform users were regularly updated with the latest information from suppliers and other sources, while staff continued to attend the Treasurer's Year 2000 Working Party and spent some time evaluating departmental responses to the questionnaire about identifying critical systems and formulating appropriate action plans. The Service also considered contingency plans for January 2000 and decided that, except as otherwise constrained by major problems such as the loss of essential services, its order of priority for dealing with requests for help would be safety and security of the GBN and CUDN, advising Techlinks, institutional networks, servers and other shared facilities and the recovery of lost data. Advice to ordinary users would be limited to problems with central facilities and could be given a low priority in the event of a support crisis.
Network Security
11. The last report drew attention to the problems which can be caused when unidentified intruders from anywhere in the world gain unauthorised access to the CUDN and the computers attached to it. During the year, the Computing Service continued to carry out regular friendly probing of all computers connected to the network, in order to identify instances of known security weaknesses and to feed back the results and recommendations for remedial action to local computer support staff. This procedure has worked very well, and a high degree of co-operation has been shown by all concerned, but the multitude of hackers and the rate at which new security loopholes are being discovered and posted on the Internet make it inevitable that some of attacks will be successful and will cause considerable disruption.
12. The worst single incident caused the CUS to be disconnected from the network for two and a half days in the middle of November while staff tracked down the cause (a known loophole, but in code which ought not to have been present in our version of the operating system). All 8,000 CUS users needed to change their passwords and in a major exercise for staff and users alike one-third of them were dealt with in the first 48 hours after service resumed. A second breach of CUS security was discovered on April 1 and also involved large numbers of enforced password changes. In June, an intruder used a new script to probe all the systems in the University and was successful in breaking into over 40 of them; if sniffer programs had also been installed to collect user passwords then it would almost certainly have been necessary to disconnect the whole of Cambridge from JANET until the mess had been sorted out. The local Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) also investigated many other attacks which only affected individual institutions or even single machines.
13. Apart from repeatedly exhorting the managers of all the machines on CUDN to make sure that they are running the latest secure versions of system software, and regularly inspecting Web sites where the hackers post the latest loophole information, there are few precautions which the Computing Service can take without adversely impacting bona fide network use. Blocking a particular internet port (except for traffic to specially registered machines) was employed in March to cut off a continuing flood of junk mail being relayed through Cambridge servers and other ports may well have to be blocked selectively in the same way in future. Fortunately, and not least because of the work going on behind the scenes to keep the misuse in check, most users still find that as far as they are concerned the advantages of using networks far outweigh the occasional difficulties.
Resilience of Critical Computing Service Facilities
14. A number of incidents brought home the extent to which thousands of people throughout the University now rely very heavily indeed on the CUDN, electronic mail and similar services for their day-to-day work. Losing CUS for three days in November (due to hacking) badly affected those users who still relied on it for email, while the subsequent increased use of the Hermes mail store showed up a file server software problem which required several weekend file copying and redistribution sessions to maintain service until the whole server could be replaced. The CUDN's good reliability record was spoilt when a router fault at power-up after scheduled work on the electricity supply in February shut down the whole network for most of a day and left some institutions disconnected for almost three days.
15. The Computing Service and the IT Syndicate looked very closely at how to improve matters and concluded that there was no real shortage of equipment funds (indeed the CUDN fault was harder to deal with because it happened halfway through the installation of improved router equipment, when the network was temporarily in a rather non-standard state). The main problem was a shortage of posts which meant that staff with the expertise to design resilient systems and to put things right quickly when they went wrong were spread much too thinly (typically only one per service). As a result of strong representations on this issue, three additional posts have been provided and more are likely to be requested in due course.
16. Finally, the early summer months were punctuated by a series of power outages for reasons ranging from scheduled work at the electricity substation through thunderstorms to careless cleaners. Detailed equipment and procedural changes have been made in response to individual incidents, but a more general solution is proving elusive. There are very real practical difficulties which seem to rule out installing on the crowded New Museums site an uninterruptible power supply and diesel generator with the capacity to maintain indefinitely enough of the network and network-related services to be worthwhile. Instead various alternatives are under active consideration with the intention of having something in place by the summer of 2000.
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
17. During the year, Cambridge was twice been cut off the network for extended periods (of 16 and 42 hours); UKERNA have been asked not only to ensure that this does not happen again but also to change the design of the network so that when the link to London goes down it does not also cut access between the University and local institutions with their own SuperJANET connections such as Homerton and the Sanger Centre. During the year, the capacity of the transatlantic link was first increased to 155 Mbit/s and then doubled; this was successful in removing congestion but also caused a sharp increase in the charged transatlantic traffic. By the end of the year, the 8 Mbit/s limit on all outgoing traffic to SuperJANET was regularly being reached; while additional capacity is available it will have to be paid for.
18. Another outline bid for funding for a regional network was made under the second phase of the HEFCE Metropolitan Area Network Initiative. EastNet will link seven universities (Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire and Luton), Homerton College, the Norwich School of Art and Design and Writtle College (Chelmsford). The bid is understood to have been successful and the next steps will be the establishment of an organisation to run the network and the invitation of tenders for its installation.
Cambridge University Data Network
19. The Annex contains information on CUDN connections of various kinds at the end of 1998-99. The little used X.25 service is to be withdrawn at the end of September 1999, while the surviving asynchronous lines are only retained for special purposes. The number of ethernet connections continues to increase and 22 out of 141 are now rated at 100 Mbit/s or faster. Although the ethernet connections (at 10 or 100 Mbit/s) certainly carry the vast majority of CUDN traffic, their numbers alone are somewhat misleading because a single ethernet link may well be used to connect extensive local area networks (LANs) covering a whole building or even a whole department. A far better indicator of the continuing and explosive growth in network activity and in the number of computer systems attached to the CUDN is given by the total of Internet addresses issued for the University and Colleges; at the end of 1998-99 this was over 29,500, rather more than 50% up on the total of 18,900 at end of 1997-98.
20. The institutional ethernet links are connected to a backbone of area routers interlinked by GBN fibres. During the year, the last of the older and non Year 2000 compliant routers in this backbone were replaced, with the result that all CUDN client sites can now have 100 Mbit/s connections. Although over 2,200 people (mostly staff and graduate students) are now registered to use the charged Magpie fast modem service, no congestion has been encountered since the installation of a further 30 ports in November. By July, a service to the V.90 56 Kbit/s standard was in place (although not all users found it worked well for them) and a pilot service for access using the ISDN protocol (e.g. via BT Highway) was imminent.
21. Staff continued to put much effort into advising institutions on how to wire up buildings, establish LANs and connect them to the CUDN, although once again difficulties were encountered when departments which had located groups in accommodation on remote sites not served by the GBN, without considering either the practicality or the cost of network connectivity, nonetheless expected the Computing Service to provide a CUDN connection at extremely short notice. The reductions in CUDN charges from 1 August 1998 clearly encouraged many institutions to install 100 Mbit/s ethernet service connections or to upgrade existing 10 Mbit/s ones; most CUDN charges are down again from 1 August 1999, while Virtual Private Networks are now available (in suitable cases) for the first time.
Granta Backbone Network
22. The Computing Service continued to carry out all operations on behalf of the Granta Backbone Network Management Committee (as described in its annual report). The program of installing additional cables on congested routes where almost all the original 62.5 mm fibres were already in use was completed and restored the ability to provide links between any pair of GBN sites. Diversions were required on account of new buildings at Madingley Rise and Chemistry, the latter bringing to light duct damage which dated back several years but only showed up when staff tried to install an additional cable. While the CUDN remained the largest single user of GBN fibres, there was also a steady demand for new links for other uses.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
23. The reconfiguration of the Hermes mailstore and the installation of new equipment during the summer of 1998 produced a system which coped well with the load at the beginning of the Michaelmas Term, despite a late scare when an apparently routine system software upgrade led to severe performance problems which were only solved with a day to spare. With the (considerable) exception of the fileserver problems already mentioned, Hermes then worked well for the rest of the year, delivering a total of 150 GB of mail (compared with 77 GB in 1997-98). The number of messages increased by only 50% (showing that individual messages are getting longer) and user accesses by around 30%. Despite hese successes, the rise in demand seems unending and the present system will not scale indefinitely, so staff are already thinking about the need for a rather fundamental "under the covers" redesign.
Information Services
24. The World Wide Web search engine (web-search.cam.ac.uk) introduced in the summer of 1998 uses commercial search engine software (Ultraseek) to produce a single index of the contents of all relevant local Web servers and allows outsiders to find what they are looking for without needing to take into account the complicated internal structure of the University. It was heavily used (41 K searches in its first month), although it took users a little while to work out how to tailor their search requests to find what just they wanted without also producing a great deal of extraneous material. The following table details activity at the end of the year:
July 1999Servers, documents indexed, total searches, total data sent226, 180 K, 64K, 1.3 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world22%, 16%, 62%Originating computers: University, rest of world3.1 K, 14.3 K
25. The Information Group completed the redesign of the Computing Service Web pages to orient them around user needs rather than the Service's internal structure and expects to have a Web-based information system for the PWF ready by October 1999. More input was provided to the development of the World Wide Web server at the University Offices (including the thorny issue of the design of the UniversityÕs home page) while much general University information, including student prospectuses and Continuing Education information, continued to reside on the Service Web server. Staff also continued to provide taught courses for new and liaison meetings for all Webmasters, both being very well attended. Printed documentation was not ignored and a steady stream of new or updated material was produced, particularly that required by users of the Windows NT system now in use on the PWF.
26. During the year, requests to the Computing Service Web server (www.cam.ac.uk) totalled 29.8 M (compared to 14.5M in 1997-98), with daily peaks of over 150 K; in response, 118 GB of data (69 GB) was sent to computers in over 180 country-level domains (160). Although the rate of requests to Webmaster also increased initially, it later fell back to the same level as in 1998, presumably because of the success of the Web search engine. A pilot for a managed service to help institutions which are capable of Web authorship but lack the technical expertise to run their own Web server proved very successful and a full service will be introduced shortly. The following table compares server activity in July 1999 and 1998:
July 1999July 1998Total requests received, total data sent2.3 M, 9,928 MB1.3 M, 6,890 MB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world44%, 10%, 46%37%, 12%, 51%Originating computers: University, rest of world8.5 K, 85.7 K6.1 K, 80.0 K
27. The use of local and national cache server facilities to reduce external network usage by automatically maintaining local copies of recently referenced Web documents assumed much greater importance this year with the emphasis on keeping down transatlantic traffic charges. This is clearly demonstrated by the following data for server activity in July 1999 and 1998:
July 1999July 1998Total requests received, total data volume27.2 M, 206 GB4.8 M, 36 GB% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)44.7%, 21.7%30.8%, 15.9%Client systems, client domains4529, 1381062, 96
28. With the equipment in the enlarged local cache functioning reliably, attention focused on how the overall performance of the local and national caches compared with fetching material directly. Cambridge staff initiated some major statistical investigations which were later taken up by the JANET national cache team and traced the primary causes of some serious performance problems during early 1999 to network congestion both within JANET and on the transatlantic link rather than at the national cache itself. Some well-timed JANET upgrades removed these problems, a much-improved version of the cache software was installed and some of the national cache syatems were moved to London. Performance monitoring confirmed the significant improvements produced by these changes, which show that, at the present state of the art, caching on a large scale is no easy task. Towards the end of the year, further disc and memory upgrades were installed in the local cache systems.
29. The USENET news service provides Cambridge users with access to thousands of local and worldwide newsgroups, providing a forum for discussion and for the dissemination of information on a very wide range of topics. After last year's transfer to new and substantially more powerful hardware, the service functioned well and reliably. The following table compares the levels of activity in July 1999 and July 1998:
July 1999July 1998Monthly news server connections, proportion from the CUS160 K, 15%108 K, 18%Institutions making non-CUS connections, peak connections116, 112111, 115Total, local newsgroups12.9K, 21811.1K, 210Monthly volume, number of individual postings20.0 GB, 8.8 M16.8 GB, 7.4 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
30. By October 1998, all PCs in the three teaching rooms (i.e.the Phoenix room used primarily for training courses and the two newly refurbished rooms in the Old Music School used primarily for undergraduate teaching) were set up to run Windows NT, although half the seats in the other public areas continued to have Windows 3.1 because some of the wide range of PWF applications would not then run under NT. The need for this gradually lessened, the remaining Mond Room seats were taken out of service by December and all seats, including those in the departmental classrooms at Chemistry, Mathematics and Physics, will be running NT by October 1999. In July, the rather elderly Macintoshes in the Balfour teaching room and at Sidgwick Avenue were replaced by new G3 machines.
31. The Technical Committee working parties on Windows NT and on Novell Netware, both with members drawn from the Computing Service, departments and Colleges, continued to prove very useful for exchanging ideas and suggesting policy developments. The NT party produced a number of papers distilling the experiences of existing users for the benefit those looking to set up NT systems for various purposes, while the Netware party came up with the idea of the managed cluster service, whereby the Computing Service would undertake (for a fee) certain aspects of facilities management for personal workstation clusters in departments and Colleges. Great interest has been expressed in this and a pilot scheme involving three Colleges and two departments is under way.
32. The following table summarises the use of the PWF in terms of users and sessions for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics. The number of active users dropped slightly but the number of sessions was up by over 50%, while there was little change in the division of use between University and College registered users (the latter including all undergraduates).
Public Workstation Facility UsersSessionsUniversity3,936(44.4%)4,444(47.4%)322,718(48.1%)204,055(47.0%)Colleges4,915(55.4%)4,903(52.3%)344,816(51.4%)228,157(52.5%)External17(0.2%)20(0.2%)2,982(0.4%)1,969(0.5%)TOTAL8,868(100.0%)9,367(100.0%)670,516(100.0%)434,181(100.0%)
Central Unix Service
33. The Sun SPARCserver-based Central Unix Service is widely used by researchers throughout the University while the similar Thor teaching facility supports taught Unix-based courses, primarily in science and technology. The CUS suffered so severely from the same operating system upgrade performance problem as Hermes (see above) that it was necessary to restore the previous version of the operating system just before the start of the Michaelmas Term; had this not been the case, the major security incident in November might have been avoided. In July, a new CUS fileserver introduced for Year 2000 compliance also produced improvements in performance, capacity and support for a wider range of user accounts. The following table presents summary statistical information for the use of the CUS and Thor in 1998-99, with that for 1997-98 in italics:
Central Unix ServiceThor CPUUsersCPUUsersUniversity92.1%94.2%4,7135,38923.9%42.3%134155Colleges6.4%4.8%50442176.1%57.7%443426External1.4%0.9%5362 TOTAL100.0%100.0%5,2705,872100.0%100.0%577581
User Administration
34. As a result of previous experience, the 1998 pre-registration of new undergraduates and postgraduates and the annual Magpie re-registration exercise all went very smoothly. The need to change all CUS passwords in November stretched staff and users to their utmost (see above); fortunately the improved procedures developed as a result of this incident (including ways of checking by telephone the identity of the surprising number of users who may be abroad but still need to access the CUS) could be applied when mass password changes were required again in April. Staff also took in their stride several smaller scale password changing exercises required as a result of security breaches in individual institutions.
35. The user administration manager was also responsible for the front line investigation of almost 400 security and other incidents both on Computing Service facilities and elsewhere in the University. While most attention was obviously focused on the serious network security breaches with external origins discussed above, these took place against a steady background of other incidents including large scale junk emailings ("spam"), offensive email, pirated software and harrassment of various kinds. As a sign of the times, information about a small number of specific incidents was requested by and provided to the police and other authorities.
Pelican data archive service
36. The Pelican data archive service continued to be widely used, with particularly large amounts being stored for University Library projects, including their collection of scanned photographic data. In July 1999, the archive contained 136 GB of data (compared to 118 GB a year earlier) which was being stored for 923 different users (884). During the year, plans were made to take advantage of falling prices to move the Pelican hardware from DAT-tape and robots to large amounts of disc storage while replacing the existing Epoch hierarchical storage management software, for which maintenance support was being withdrawn, by a simpler version which would be written in-house and would maintain the existing user interface. To avoid any potential Year 2000 problems, the change will be completed by December 1999.
Advanced Computing
37. The Computing Service continued to provide the Hitachi multiple parallel processor project (which comes under a separate committee of management) with the services of a senior programmer with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Software Sales
38. Software Sales supplies members of the University and Colleges with a range of competitively priced software for personal computers and scientific workstations and also administers University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. Users can consult a Web version of the software product catalogue and send order enquiries directly from its pages. The table below summarises software sales for 1998-99, with the figures for 1997-98 in italics.
Software SalesItemsCommunications10,1049,662Graphics & drawing, statistics1,0412,734Office packages, operating systems/utilities6,0918,589Programming languages, mathematics/libraries611717Word processing, spreadsheets, databases2,2914,345Geographic, miscellaneous6091,350SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics610501TOTAL21,35727,898
39. Monthly summaries of the time taken to process a request for software and have it ready for collection by the user showed that 70-90% of items ordered were available either immediately or within a week while less than 6% were still outstanding after four weeks. Early in the year, discussions with Microsoft about site-wide agreements for the UK HE community were not altogether satisfactory although the supplier did agree to extend its Select scheme, including concurrency, for a further two years until November 2001. In July, details of the cost of site licences under latest version of Microsoft's Campus Agreement became available and some other HEIs, including Oxford, have already decided to take part. Cambridge will have to decide early in the new academic year whether or not to follow suit.
Unix Support
40. Unix Support experienced great difficulties in early 1999, when vacancies and long term sick leave left the service's manager temporarily alone in post; fortunately by May the group was back to establishment. Although the service is meant to provide general support for the managers of Unix-based computing facilities in University institutions, in practice security requirements dominated all year and when staff were not out on site restoring the operating system of machines broken in the latest attack they spent most of their time on preventative measures such as "friendly probing" or closing loopholes before the hackers could get to them. Late in the year staff produced a CD of software which allows users to log in securely to CUS, Thor and Hermes from most parts of the world; much interest has already been shown in it and the Computing Service intends to encourage use by making copies available free of charge.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
41. Computing Service staff continued to advise both individual users and institutions about personal computer systems for particular needs and where to buy them most cheaply, based on regular meetings with major suppliers and the collation of information from vendors and other sources. Hundreds of University users came to the third successful annual Demonstration Day in November to see hardware and software vendors exhibit their wares.
External Hardware Maintenance
42. The Engineering Group provides many institutions and individuals with either a full cover contract service or repairs charged on a time and materials basis. A computerised system for logging and tracking repair work was introduced and steps were taken to be able to handle warranty repairs on certain Viglen PCs bought within the University and to qualify as an official Apple repairer so that the same can be done for Macintoshes. The following tables summarise work carried out during 1998-99 with figures for 1997-98 in italics; the "other equipment" category includes over 80 monitor repairs under each heading and almost 100 laptops among the non-contract repairs.
Equipment repaired by TypeEquipment repaired by Institution ContractNon-contract ContractNon-contractIBM PC &c.;12321795175University267333359389Apple Macintosh74134130170Colleges111127136127Printers68557386External 83Other Equipment1135420591TOTAL378460503519TOTAL378460503519
Printing and Reproduction Service
43. The Xerox Docutech, the Xerox and Agfa colour machines and the new booklet making machine all continued to work reliably. In the year to July 1999 the Xerox Docutech produced a total of 1.68M impressions for the Computer Laboratory (up from 1.64M in the previous year) and 0.7M for external customers (0.9M). Colour copies totalled 16K for the Laboratory (12K) and 38K for external customers (19K).
Photography & Illustration Service
44. During its first full year as part of the Computing Service, this service processed 185K colour prints (up from 125K in the previous year), 800 black and white photographs (1,200), 10K films of transparencies (12K), 10K new or duplicate slides (10K) and over 900 posters (800). Photographs for sale were again taken at Congregations, both inside the Senate House and on the Lawn, while staff were available to take pictures for other institutions as required. A new illustration technician post was created in order to give the manager of the service more time to become familar with new developments, particularly in digital photography. New equipment puchases included a digital camera and a replacement film recorder.
Videoconferencing Service
45. In October, the Computing Service began to offer a charged videoconferencing service using the suite and equipment left behind by Audio-visual Aids. Although the equipment worked very well and early users, including the Vice-Chancellor and principal officers, were successfully connected to locations around the world, it soon became apparent that the present studio was both too small and badly located for the out-of-hours use often needed for international sessions. Approval was therefore obtained to create a larger facility in a more central location (using the same equipment); this is expected to be in use by the end of 1999.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
46. In addition to the activities described in the next two sections, TUS maintains a wide range of application software on the PWF and other Computing Service facilities. In response to the increased use of Windows NT networks throughout the University, a pilot WINS server was set up to evaluate the problems of resolution between Windows names and IP addresses; a production service is now imminent. Viruses remained high on the group's agenda and much effort was put both into increasing user awareness and into finding Web-based means to facilitate the widespead distribution of anti-virus software to users with personal computers.
47. During the year, the joint Service/Library Electronic Reference Library server was provided with a WebSpirs interface so that users could access it using an ordinary Web browser. In addition to the Medline and MathSci databases, a small number of licences were obtained for GeoBase, GeoRef, Psychit and Criminal Justice Abstracts (and more may be obtained if user institutions fund them). Medline continued to be the most widely and heavily used, with a maximum monthly connect time for the latest version of over 2,500 hours.
Consultancy
48. General user consultations on a wide range of topics are provided by staff from TUS while the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) provides a specialist service for the humanities. In addition, a member of TUS is one of the two people in the Sidgwick support team, which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Computing Service for all departments on that site. The following table summarises the time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work (including the Help Desk) for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics. The "External" heading includes both time spent responding to enquiries from outside institutions world-wide and the charged specialist work carried out by LLCC for institutions around the University.
ConsultingHoursUniversity5,141(58.5%)5,624(67.0%)Colleges1,408(16.0%)1,212(14.5%)External2,233(25.4%)1,553(18.5%)TOTAL8,782(100.0%)8,389(100.0%)
Help Desk and Techlink
49. The following table summarises Help Desk calls for 1997-98, with figures for 1997-98 in italics:
Help DeskCallsUniversity9,809(75.8%)9,461(73.6%)Colleges2,852(22.0%)2,899(22.6%)External277(2.1%)486(3.8%)TOTAL12,938(100.0%)12,846(100.0%)
While the total number of calls increased only marginally, the smooth running of most services at the beginning of the academic meant that for the first time October did not generate the largest proportion. In a continuing trend, only 32% of calls were made in person (compared with 39% in 1997-98, 45% in 1996-97), but 41% by telephone (35%, 33%) and 28% by electronic mail (26%, 22%). While a great many calls were well known and easily answered, some were complex and had to be passed on the relevant Computing Service expert; overall 83% of calls were closed within one hour, 89% within 24 hours and 91% within 48 hours. Rather less than 3% of the calls were referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff could not provide a ready answer to a question about about a non-Computing Service facility.
50. The Computing Service encourages users with problems not directly related to the use of its facilities to start by approaching the local computer staff in their own institution, and in turn provides those staff with "fast track" backup and general support by means of the TechLink scheme, which had over 240 members by July (compared to 200 a year earlier). Help Desk calls from Techlinks were 12.3% of the total (8.8% in 1997-98) but accounted for 19.3% (13.6%) of the total time spent answering calls. Many Techlinks continued to find the weekly "troubleshooting" seminars at a fairly elementary level very useful as a complement to the less frequent and more advanced workshops on new developments.
Training
51. Providing training courses on network-related and centrally-managed services and on popular applications software reduces the advice and consultancy load and enables computer equipment throughout the University to be used more effectively. The up-to-date computing and audio-visual equipment in the 25-seat Phoenix Teaching Room, opened in May 1998, was heavily used for Computing Service training courses throughout the year, while from October the similar facilities in the Old Music School were used by the Computer Laboratory and other departments for undergraduate teaching. Courses on the World Wide Web and Microsoft Office Applications were oversubscribed and repeat sessions had to be held. Web or email registrations accounted for 75% of the total and record rates for satisfaction (95%) and turnout (80%) were achieved. The following tables give a summary of statistical information on taught academic courses for 1998-99, with figures for 1997-98 in italics.
Course TypesCourse Attendance SessionsAttendances AttendancesComputing in Cambridge111715University3,3442,921Personal Computers1919350308Colleges928667Unix1214464421TOTAL4,3803,759Networking53521,055960External108171Word & Doc. Processing3836910870Spreadsheets & Databases32261,014693Statistical Computing87322215Other courses56248277TOTAL1681614,3803,759
52. While most courses for academic staff and students are free and given by Computing Service staff, a very good response was obtained to three charged courses on NT Server Administration and Novell Netware organised by the Service but given by external trainers; more courses of this kind on specialist topics are planned. The modular training courses for assistants provided with financial support from the Assistant Staff Office continued to be popular; six new Microsoft Office 1997 modules were developed and 31 half-day (39 in 1997-98) and 5 full-day (6) sessions were given during the year. Similar courses were again given on a charged basis to staff from Colleges generally, while on several occasions staff gave specially tailored versions of standard courses to staff from a particular department or College. The self-teaching courseware library, expanded by 11 new courses, was again heavily used and there was much demand for the Excel and PowerPoint work packs and C and C++ CDs.
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
53. Institution Liaison has only two staff who, with help as required from the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Services, liaise on computing matters at institution level with senior management and computer support staff. During the year, they chaired the working parties on Windows NT and Novell Netware, organised several meetings of local support staff from Departments and Colleges, maintained the close Computing Service/ University Library liaison through regular meetings of separate policy and technical groups and were involved in planning for the refurbishment of the Raised Faculty Building. In response to requests, staff attended almost 150 School, Departmental and College computer committee meetings, assisted in the selection process for 23 computer staff appointments in University institutions and 10 in Colleges and helped introduce several of the new appointees to the Cambridge computing scene. The annual survey of College student computing facilities was carried out with a much simplified questionnaire and resulted in a 100% response; having this information is very useful for those departmental staff who plan to give computer-based teaching courses.
Retirements
54. In October, Mr R A Kimpton retired after just over 50 years' service (having started straight from school in 1949) and Mr J H Loker after almost 40; the Vice-Chancellor made the presentations at their very well-attended leaving party. In July, Mrs B Bown, Mr PJ L Crofts, Mr B Landy, Mr A F O'Dell, Mr R W Perks, Mrs D Simpson and Mr K N Warner took early retirement (although most will be back part-time for a period). Almost all of them had worked for the Computing Service for well over 20 years and several had started in the pre-1970 days before the Mathematical Laboratory changed its name. In the same year that many staff took part in the EDSAC99 meeting to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the running of the first progam on the first computer in Cambridge, it was good to have Professor M V Wilkes (who himself retired as long ago as 1980) present at their leaving party to wish them well.
Statistical Annexe
M. S. LONGAIR
M.A.H. DEMPSTER
I. M. LEM DUQUESNAY
P. K. FOX
K. GLOVER
R. HANKA
M. F. HEATH
S. KEARSEY
M. M. LAVY
I. LESLIE
B. K. OMOTANI
H. PESARAN
A. D. B.POOLE
KATE PRETTY
J. RASHBASS
N. ROBINSON
M. D. SAYERS
CLIVE TREBILCOCK
P. B. WILSON
Search | Network Division | Computing Service home | University home
© University of Cambridge
Information Technology Syndicate, November 1999
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14 captures
11 Feb 2001 - 13 Mar 2006
MarAUGNov 07 200320042006
About this capture
Report of the Information Technology Syndicate
on the University Computing Service for 1999-2000
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
The Computing Service
Charged Network Traffic and JANET Bandwidth
EastNet
Managed Cluster Service
Videoconferencing Service
Data Protection Act 1998
Network Security
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
Cambridge University Data Network
Granta Backbone Network
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
Information Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service
User Administration
Pelican data archive service
Advanced Computing
Support services
Software Sales
External Hardware Maintenance
Printing and Reproduction Service
Photography & Illustration Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
Consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink
Training
Unix Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Statistical Annexe
Introduction
1. This report from the Information Technology Syndicate, which develops computing policy for the University and the Colleges and supervises the University Computing Service, covers the year from August 1999 to July 2000. The printed version of the Statistical Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services but breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/itsyndicate/annrep/stats99.00.html. Please note that the statistical information is not intended to be fully comprehensive but only to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities.
Syndicate Matters
2. The Syndicate continued to function well and effectively under the chairmanship of Professor Longair, while as chairman of the Technical Committee Dr Heath ensured that it continued to provide extremely useful input on a wide range of issues. Professor Handy, who had served on the Syndicate since its establishment in 1991 (and before that on the Computer Syndicate) resigned during the Long Vacation. Towards the end of the year, in order to provide improved liaison on financial issues, the College representation was changed from three persons appointed by the Senior Tutors' Committee to two appointed by that Committee and one appointed by the Bursars' Committee.
3. Issues discussed by the Syndicate and dealt with in more detail later in this report included charged network traffic, outgoing JANET bandwidth, the EastNET regional network, the Managed Cluster Service and the videoconferencing service. The Syndicate also discussed and agreed an updated version of the University Software Policy, new guidelines on the use of bulk email and changes to the existing guidelines to cover the downloading from the Web of copyright material such as digitally formatted versions of music or films. Reports were also received on the lifetime email service being offered to graduates by the Development Office with the support of the Management Information Services Division of the University Offices.
4. The Syndicate returned on several occasions to the difficulties of recruiting good young computer support staff and concluded that, although the greater freedom now permitted within the present scales on appointment and promotion had gone some way towards solving the worst of the immediate problems, it was essential that the new Director of Personnel should lose no time in proceeding with his planned major review of Computer Officer salaries as a whole. And while the Syndicate was pleased to see the central bodies accept its proposals for a single Appointments Committee for all graduate computer staff appointments, considerable concern was expressed about the delay in their implementation.
5. In the summer of 2001, the academic side of the Computer Laboratory is scheduled to move to West Cambridge, taking the name with it but leaving the Computing Service behind; before then, it will be necessary for the University both to agree the necessary changes to Ordinances and to re-allocate the accommodation which will be released on the New Museums Site. In this context, the Syndicate discussed and approved proposals for the changes to Ordinances and also agreed to support the Computing Service bid for additional space, which includes moving the undergraduate teaching rooms from the Old Music School to a more convenient location next to existing Service accommodation, making an additional computer room and using the top floors of the Austin Building for offices for Service staff relocated from parts of the building being vacated by the Laboratory as a whole, for relieving the present extreme shortage of office accommodation generally and to replace the existing common room.
The Computing Service
6. The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service include:
Necessarily University-wide services, including networks and electronic mail;
Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which provide any member of the University who needs them with access to facilities of a kind which institutions often provide in-house for their own staff and students;
Support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities ranging from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;
Advice and consultancy services including a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff and a wide range of training courses.
7. During the year, the staff and facilities of the former Systems and Development division were divided between the Network and Systems and Unix divisions, while Technical User Support and User Services became separate divisions in their own right. This produced a Computing Service made up of five divisions, two managing central facilities and providing specialised technical support and three supporting users, either individually or by institution.
The Network division is responsible for the University Data Network (CUDN), the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), support for institutional networking, the PWF and the Managed Cluster Service;
The Systems and Unix division is responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services, Unix support to individual institutions and the Pelican archive service;
The Technical User Support division is responsible for the Help Desk and the Techlink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, general technical user support and the Hardware Maintenance and Videoconferencing services.
The User Services division is responsible for information provision, user administration, Software Sales, hardware purchasing advice and the Printing and Photography & Illustration services;
The Institution Liaison division maintains contact concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters with Heads of Department, other senior managers and local computer support staff.
8. The following table summarises the estimated cost of various types of service provided by the Computing Service, distinguishing central funding (UEF and equipment grant) from costs met by charging users (with combined 1999 figures in italics). The cost recovery services account for £1.58M (30% of the total) compared with £1.32M in 1999 and £1.47M in 1998.
2000 (£K) Centrally FundedCost Rec'yCombined TotalServiceStaffOtherTotal%20001999Network4887356015.3%360920902Network-related34712046712.8%30497504PWF22816639410.7% 394344CUS & Thor147882356.4% 235252Other centrally-run facilities219102296.2%18248209Software sales860862.3%750836725Other charged support services290123028.2%421722534Advice & consultancy6155066618.2% 666674Directorate & liaison28711139810.9% 398360Administration & overheads1771513278.9% 327281TOTAL2,8857803,665100.0%1,57852434785
Some of the major developments during the year are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.
Charged Network Traffic and JANET Bandwidth
9. From August 1999, individual institutions were charged for their share of the cost of the incoming transatlantic SuperJANET traffic. Total traffic increased by over 70% on the previous year, but, because the JISC charges for individual HEIs had been fixed on the basis of usage in 1998-99, the largest cost to any individual Cambridge institution (all the top four and seven of the top ten being Colleges) was only £6,300. The same charging mechanism has been retained for 2000-01, although with a rather smaller charge for Cambridge as a whole.
10. Although a number of Colleges have asked to be supplied with a breakdown of transatlantic charges to the level of individual users, the Computing Service is not able to do this. The amount paid to JANET for providing the institutional breakdown is already quite large and increasing the number of IP address ranges ("buckets") from a few hundreds to tens of thousands would make the cost prohibitive. And although the Service's snapshot monitoring software could be developed to produce reliable breakdowns of all incoming (or outgoing) JANET traffic, this would not solve the problem of assigning transatlantic traffic costs accurately to individuals because the actual routes taken by international network transfers are sufficiently unpredictable to produce significant uncertainty about exactly which parts of the total data arriving in Cambridge actually formed part of the charged traffic.
11. The general increase in network traffic also caused problems when the 8 Mbps limit on outgoing traffic from the CUDN into JANET began to be exceeded, sometimes for hours at a time. (There was typically twice as much incoming traffic, but JANET only places controls on transfers into the network.) Investigation showed that the extra traffic was largely due to new types of student recreational computing, including transfers of MP3 music files and DVD films. The use of Napster and similar products, which automatically compile indexes of files on individual workstations logged on to them and then encourage individual users to download the files they want direct from another user's machine, was a particular worry, both because of the amount of bandwidth taken up and because of the potential for widespread breach of copyright, which had already led to court actions against some US universities.
12. The Napster problem received much publicity in the student press, while Computing Service and local computer support staff put considerable effort into identifying the originators of particularly large transfers and either persuading them to change their ways or taking away their CUDN connection. In addition, a small amount of additional JANET bandwidth was purchased for a period including the Easter Term. Although these measures dealt successfully with the immediate problem, the IT Syndicate was sufficiently concerned about the longer term impact on networking to refer the issue to the Senior Tutors' and Bursars' Committees.
EastNet
13. As the result of a successful bid for funding under the second phase of the HEFCE Metropolitan Area Network Initiative, during the latter half of the year procurement was in progress for a regional network to be known as EastNet. This will together link seven universities (Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire and Luton) plus Homerton and Writtle College (Chelmsford), will be owned by the Association of Universities in the Eastern Region and will have its JANET connection at Cambridge (in the Computing Service). The network is expected to be in service by the end of March 2001 and, together with SuperJANET IV, should increase the total bandwidth to and from Cambridge by a factor approaching two orders of magnitude.
Managed Cluster Service
14. The Managed Cluster Service (MCS) enables institutions to reduce the running costs of their general-access computer rooms by having the Computing Service install and manage both the Novell NetWare servers and software for the individual PCs and Macintoshes. This software consists of the standard PWF classroom software with optional additional applications by mutual agreement; the Service installs it, but the institution meets all licence costs and both procures and pays for any necessary hardware. A detailed service definition which includes these and all other Service and institutional responsibilities was drawn up in collaboration with the early user institutions and approved by the Syndicate. The Service makes an annual charge to institutions using the MCS; the amount depends on the cluster size and the income is primarily used to fund additional staff to run the service.
15. A very successful pilot scheme involving Downing, Newnham, Peterhouse, Land Economy and Veterinary Medicine started in the summer of 1999. By September 2000, the older PWF clusters in Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, the Computer Laboratory and the Clinical School (some established as long ago as 1989) had been brought into the scheme, and further clusters added at St Catharine's, Archaeology, Social and Political Sciences, Fitzwilliam, Gonville and Caius and Queens' and a large Arts and Humanities installation in four departments on the Sidgwick Site. Since several other institutions are already interested in joining, the future rate of growth of the MCS seems to be limited only by the considerable load which taking new institutions on board places on the relevant Service staff.
Videoconferencing Service
16. Soon after the launch of this service in October 1998, it become apparent that the studio in the Old Examination Hall was both too small (at most four to six people) and badly located for the out-of-hours use often needed for international sessions. Fortunately, it was possible to construct a larger facility (taking up to 25 people) next to the security control room in the Cockcroft Building and the service moved there at Christmas 1999, using the old video equipment but adding a capability for handling both ISDN2 and ISDN6 calls. The new room greatly stimulated demand and was used for 71 sessions (138 hours) between January and July, whereas in the previous 19 months the old room had only been used 49 times (82 hours).
17. Call destinations included the UK, seven other European countries, the USA and seven more countries world-wide. The service was used by Millennium Mathematics Project to allow Cambridge lecturers to set tasks to school pupils in London and South Africa and receive the results at later sessions and by the Board of Continuing Education to record a set of 12 lectures in Criminology for presentation in Russia. More common uses included PhD vivas, student interviews and research group meetings, while the Personnel Division booked a whole day for a staff recruitment, with some interviewees appearing in person and others by videoconference.
Data Protection Act 1998
18. This Act came into force on 1 March, although most existing computing activities have a transitional exemption until October 2001. The Computing Service supplied a member of a working party which reported to Council in July on the general implications of the Act and also set up an internal task force to discuss both what actions were required and how to advise users. The new Act covers all personal data on computers and also that in many manual files, but most Service uses of personal data were already covered by the 1984 Act. The main need for change arises because putting personal data on the World Wide Web now effectively requires the explicit consent of the data subject. Arrangements have therefore been put in hand to ensure that from October 2001 the Service's Web-based look-up system will only supply email addresses for those users who have already given the relevant permission.
Network Security
19. Previous reports have emphasised the problems caused when unidentified intruders from anywhere in the world succeed in gaining unauthorised access to the CUDN and the computers attached to it. During the year, Computing Service staff continued the regular friendly probing of all computers connected to the network, to identify instances of known security weaknesses and to feed back the results and recommendations for remedial action to local computer support staff. When this system was demonstrated to other universities at a security conference, much interest was shown in it and the Unix Support team subsequently received Technology Applications Programme funding to develop the software and make it easier to transfer to other sites.
20. While there were many "unfriendly" probes, none succeeded in causing a major security breach on a main Computing Service system. Incoming traffic was blocked on several ports which had been heavily used for probing, with exceptions being made for particular host destinations with a valid need. Thanks to the vigilance of the local Computer Emergency Response Team, advance warnings from JANET-CERT and other sources, and fast footwork by the email team and other Service staff, few University users were troubled either by the probing or by the "LoveBug" virus and its successors which received so much publicity in May and June. To keep up this satisfactory state of affairs, it is essential that not only the CERT but everyone involved in systems management for machines connected to the CUDN should not drop their guard and should keep their software up to date.
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
21. At the beginning of the year, the design of the connection to JANET was changed so that when the main JANET link to London goes down it does not also cut access between the University and local institutions with their own JANET connections, such as Homerton and the Sanger Centre. Two lengthy periods of downtime in December and January were due to human error by Cable and Wireless staff and produced a letter of apology from UKERNA, while the effects of a number of similar but shorter outages in June were ameliorated because the use of an independent 64 Kbps ISDN link was successful in maintaining an email service.
Cambridge University Data Network
22. The Annex contains details of numbers of CUDN connections at the end of the year. The withdrawal of the last asynchronous and X.25 connections in October left a network made up mostly of ethernet connections at 100 Mbps or more (fast) or 10 Mbps or less (slow). During the year, the number of fast lines increased from 22 to 48 while that of the slow ones fell from 119 to 94. By themselves, these numbers give little idea of the overall size and complexity of the CUDN, because the end user equipment is connected via extensive local area networks (LANs) covering a whole building or even a whole department. A better indicator of size is the total of Internet addresses issued for the University and Colleges, which was 36,500 at the end of 1999-2000 (compared with 29,500 in 1998-99 and 18,900 in 1997-98). Although not all the addresses are used for networked personal computers, the total clearly reflects the near ubiquity of these machines at all levels and in all parts of the University and the Colleges.
23. The institutional ethernet links are connected to a backbone network of area routers interlinked by GBN fibres. During the year much effort was put into increasing CUDN resilience and making it easier to track down faults by simplifying the structure of the backbone, replacing some older equipment and providing at least two paths to each area router. Unfortunately, the need to respond to the continuing demand for higher bandwidth, as evinced by the installation of a pilot Gigabit ethernet (1000 Mbps) link between the New Museums and Downing sites, tends to run counter to these good intentions. Meanwhile, the ability to use Virtual LAN techniques with the new routers enabled the Managed Cluster Service to connect remote clusters to the central site by means of a "logical backbone" rather than IP tunnelling.
24. During the year, Network Support staff provided advice to individual institutions on over 170 occasions (covering topics such as how to wire up buildings, establish LANs and connect them to the CUDN) while the Network Installation team carried out or supervised over 30 new or upgraded fast ethernet connections, several relocations and temporary connections, optical fibre installation work at 25 sites and copper wiring at over 40. While total Magpie registrations were slightly down at 2,100, the V.90 56 Kbps service settled down and an ISDN service was introduced. In a continuing programme of avoiding congestion, 30 more fast lines were added in November and a further 30 (making 120 in all) are due by October 2000.
Granta Backbone Network
25. Network staff again handled all operational matters for the GBN Management Committee. In a year dominated by building projects, the new Mathematics building at Clarkson Road was provided with three GBN connections (for the CUDN, security and a private link to Mill Lane), new ducts and cables were installed outside the footprint of a new building at St Edmunds and negotiations continued about a new route for the installation of cables into Chemistry once the Unilever building work has been completed. At West Cambridge, long term plans were agreed for the provision of separate GBN nodes for each of its individual sub-sites, while in the short term the widening of the access road required the diversion and re-routing of all the existing GBN cables in that area. Finally, after many years of waiting, a GBN connection is to be installed at Homerton as part of the EastNet project.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
26 During the year, the Hermes mailstore delivered over twice the volume of mail as in 1998-99 (320 GB compared with 150 GB), although there were only 50% more individual messages. In June, two Sun E220R systems were installed to provide extra processing power for the two years or so left before the ever-increasing load will necessitate major changes to the underlying structure of Hermes. Although the rash of email viruses in May required considerable expenditure of staff and machine resources on detecting and filtering them, thanks to the recruitment of a second member of staff at the start of the year, it was still possible to introduce some locally written software for automatic transparent indexing within Hermes mail folders and this substantially improved overall performance, especially for larger folders.
Information Services
27. Following the release of the Web-based help system for the PWF in October, the Information Group reviewed the printed documentation and decided to publish fewer leaflets on paper and more only on the Web. New subjects included advice on email attachments, on the construction of email lists and on how, when (and when not) to use bulk email in an acceptable manner. Advantage was taken of the opportunity to use reserve Computing Service funds to recruit an additional person to work on documentation. In addition to dealing with over 1,000 enquiries to Webmaster each quarter, the Technical Librarians reorganised the staff library and set up user libraries for the new Managed Cluster Service installations.
28. The Computing Service Web server continued to hold updated versions of much general University material, including the undergraduate prospectus, items from Continuing Education and information (now including pictures) about our museums and collections, although the postgraduate prospectus was transferred to the server at the University Offices. Service staff continued to provide input to the University Web Site Steering Committee and to organise useful and well attended courses and meetings for local Webmasters. The Web search engine which produces a single index of the contents of all relevant local servers so that material can be found without reference to the internal structure of the University was again heavily used, especially as the information providers learnt how to present their data in ways which make user searches easier. The following table compares use in July in 2000 and 1999:
July 2000July 1999Servers, documents indexed269, 267 K226, 180 KTotal searches, data sent,90 K, 1.8 GB64 K, 1.3 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world22%, 15%, 63%22%, 16%, 62%Originating computers: University, rest of world4.4 K, 21.1 K3.1 K, 14.3 K
29. During the year, requests to the main Computing Service Web site (www.cam.ac.uk) came from over 180 country-level domains and totalled 49.1 M (compared to 29.8 M in 1998-99), with a daily peak of 216 K. The server hosted pages for over 150 University societies, while 25 bodies took advantage of the separate managed Web service server for those institutions which are capable of authoring pages but do not need to run their own server. The following table compares main server activity during July in 2000 and 1999:
July 2000July 1999Total requests received, total data sent3.7 M, 17.0 GB2.3 M, 9.7 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world42%, 10%, 48%44%, 10%, 46%Originating computers: University, rest of world10.7 K, 118.0 K8.5 K, 85.7 K
30. Local and national cache server facilities aim to reduce external network use by automatically maintaining copies of recently referenced Web documents. The local cache continued to work well, and in February support was added for the Web Proxy Auto-discovery Protocol (WPAD). This provides an automated way for web browsers to locate and use the cache and, despite some problems with current browser implementations, increased the number of client systems by over 1,000. The table compares cache activity for July in 2000 and 1999:
July 2000July 1999Total requests received, total data volume61.8 M, 465 GB27.2 M, 206 GB% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)48.3%, 19.3%44.7%, 21.7%Client systems, client domains6652, 1504529, 138
In October, the build up of load caused problems with the national cache. To provide local users with an acceptable service, Computing Service staff continuously monitored the situation and disabled Cambridge use of the national cache at times of particularly bad performance (although fetching more material directly increased the charged transatlantic traffic). Making large-scale caches work well is still a rather black art, and the enhancement efforts of the national cache team were not wholly successful until well into the Lent Term.
32. The USENET news service continued to function well and reliably and, by giving Cambridge users access to thousands of local and world-wide news groups, was able to disseminate information on, and provide a forum for the discussion of, a very wide range of topics. The following table compares the levels of activity during July in 2000 and 1999:
July 2000July 1999News server connections: monthly total, peak rate232 K, 164160 K, 112Total, local newsgroups13.7 K, 22912.9 K, 218Monthly volume, number of individual postings19.1 GB, 9.2 M20.0 GB, 8.8 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
33. Although the Managed Cluster Service (see above) stole the limelight, the Small Systems Group (including those new staff financed from MCS income) and Operations Group were also kept busy maintaining and updating the underlying PWF system. The policy of rolling out a new basic NT image each quarter generally went very well, although a tiresome (and fairly common world-wide) problem with broken user NT roaming profiles required them to be automatically scanned for and mended nightly. New PCs were installed in the Phoenix Teaching Room and User Area and the old (but still very useful) systems were reused for application servers and seats at the Oriental Studies Basement cluster. New equipment was also purchased for the user filestore, tape backup and systems/applications software maintenance.
34. It became very evident during 1999 that the part of the Long Vacation which is available for major PWF enhancements is shrinking as more institutions use their clusters for taught courses during September, so that in future more of the work must be done at a different time. In another attempt to ease the same problem, course givers planning to use new or updated PWF application software were required to submit formal requests well in advance. During the year separate pilot projects for possible Windows Terminal Servers and Novell Netware 5 implementations were started but when each ran into unexpected problems it was decided to defer any further work and transfer the resources temporarily to the Managed Cluster Service. The following table summarises PWF users and sessions for 1999-2000, with figures for 1998-99 in italics. (N.B. The College registered users include all undergraduates.)
Public Workstation Facility UsersSessionsUniversity4,530(51.1%)3,936(44.4%)409,275(50.0%)322,718(48.1%)Colleges4,300(48.5%)4,915(55.4%)405,681(49.5%)344,816(51.4%)External27(0.3%)17(0.2%)4,401(0.5%)2,982(0.4%)TOTAL8,857(100.0%)8,868(100.0%)819,537(100.0%)670,516(100.0%)
Central Unix Service
35. The Central Unix Service is widely used by researchers throughout the University while the related Thor facility supports (primarily science and technology) Unix-based taught courses. By replacing its two rather obsolete SPARCserver 1000s with three Sun E220R systems the CUS processing power was increased by several times, to more what one might expect of a system with over 4,000 users, while the installation of a new fileserver backup device made it possible to significantly increase disc space quotas on the fileservers installed in the previous year. Although the main Thor system was not changed, a pilot project was started to provide Linux on the Computer Science PWF cluster (with the possibility of extension to other clusters in due course). The following table presents summary statistical information for the use of the CUS and Thor in 1999-2000, with that for 1998-99 in italics:
Central Unix ServiceThor CPUUsersCPUUsersUniversity90.5%92.1%3,7154,71315.7%23.9%112134Colleges8.8%6.4%42850484.3%76.1%351443External0.7%1.4%4953 TOTAL100.0%100.0%4,1925,270100.0%100.0%463577
User Administration
36. In August and September 1999, the pre-registrations of new postgraduates (3,500) and undergraduates (also 3,500) were each completed successfully within days. Later in the year, electronic data feeds were also used to reduce the administrative load of students staying on for a further degree, of postgraduate cancellations and of International Summer School registrations. Staff greatly appreciated the lack of any need for bulk password changes. The User Administration manager served on the Student Data Model Working Party.
37. Although there were no major security breaches on central systems (see above), over 500 security and other incidents were reported (well up on 1998-99). All were investigated as potential security problems (about 10% turned out to be false alarms) and reports were passed on to JANET-CERT when appropriate. The external probing was mixed with many incidents originating nearer to home, including "spam" (unwanted bulk emails, including ill-targeted recruitment attempts by external companies), offensive and harassing email, and "warez" (sites selling pirated software). Several guilty students had their email accounts suspended (and were usually very indignant at the need to come in to the Computing Service to have them restored).
Pelican data archive service
38. In December, transferring the Pelican data archive service from robot-driven tapes to a farm of discs went extremely smoothly, with essentially no interruption to normal service; the tape robot is still in use for handling backup. A welcome side effect of the change is that retrievals are quicker because there is no need to wait for tape loading and repositioning. The Service continued to be widely used, especially by the University Library for projects including the storage of scanned photographic data. By July 2000, the archive was storing 166 GB of data (compared to 136 GB a year earlier) for 949 different users (923).
Advanced Computing
39. The Hitachi multiple parallel processor project comes under a separate committee of management, but the Computing Service has continued to provide it with the services of a senior programmer with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Software Sales
40. Software Sales supplies members of the University with competitively priced software through CHEST (Combined HE Software Team) or other deals and administers University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. Users can consult a Web version of the software product catalogue and send order enquiries directly from its pages. The table below summarises sales for 1999-2000, with the figures for 1998-99 in italics.
Software SalesItems Communications598850Graphics & drawing, statistics2,6261,041Office packages, operating systems/utilities7,7026,091Programming languages, mathematics/libraries698611Word processing, spreadsheets, databases2,3072,291Geographic, miscellaneous1,169609SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics556610TOTAL15,65612,103
41. In November, the Syndicate considered the relative costs and risks of obtaining site licences under Microsoft's Campus Agreement or continuing with their Select scheme (which is due to end in November 2001), and decided (like most Russell Group universities) to delay taking any firm decision. The Computing Service felt it must take part in the new 5-year CHEST deal for NAG products, not only to save money on new purchases but also to legitimise the many copies already in use, mostly in scientific departments; after some discussion, the relevant Schools all agreed to contribute a share of the annual cost. The total number of items supplied increased significantly, while from October onwards, major staff changes and the consequent training needs adversely affected the rate of dealing with user orders. However by Easter 2000, normal service had been resumed with 70 to 90 % of ordered items being supplied either immediately or within a week and 95 to 99% within four weeks.
External Hardware Maintenance
42. The Engineering Group provides institutions and individuals with either a full cover contract service or repairs charged on a time and materials basis. Successful warranty repairs were carried out on Viglen and Avantek PC systems and the group achieved Apple's "Self-Service Organisation" status, thereby gaining recognition as official repairers for Macintosh equipment throughout the University (including warranty repairs) and obtaining improved access to technical information and spare parts. The following tables summarise the work carried out during 1999-2000, with figures for 1998-99 in italics; although there was little change as regards contract repairs, the number of non-contract repairs went up by over 60% (and within that total the number of laptop repairs increased by over 260%).
Equipment repaired by Type ContractNon-contractIBM PC &c.12512315295Apple Macintosh5574157130Printers736812673Laptops9425997Other equipment117109136108TOTAL379378830503Equipment repaired by Institution ContractNon-contractUniversity258267571359Colleges121111251136External 88TOTAL379378830503
Printing and Reproduction Service
43. The Xerox Docutech, the Xerox and Agfa colour machines and the booklet making machine all worked reliably, but total use continued to decline (which will impact planning for after the Computer Laboratory moves out). During the year, the Docutech service produced a total of 0.75M impressions for the Computing Service (down from 0.9M in 1998-99), 0.72M for the Computer Laboratory (0.78M) and 0.52M for external customers (0.73M). Colour copy totals were: Service 12K (13K); Laboratory 1K (3K); external customers 13.5K (38K).
Photography & Illustration Service
44. The overall volume of work this year was very similar to 1998-99. The service dealt with 8,800 rolls of E6 film, produced 166,000 colour prints, 10,800 computer generated, 5,000 duplicate and 400 diazo slides and made up 3,700 more slides from artwork supplied by customers, while over 1,000 posters were produced (up from 900 in 1998-99) and display boards were loaned out on a number of occasions. Staff continued to take photographs at Congregations, both inside the Senate House and on the Lawn, and were very happy to have the intensity of the General Admission work reduced by being spread over three days rather than two. Some specialist photographic work was also undertaken. A high speed 35 mm film scanner and a replacement mounting and encapsulating machine were purchased.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
45. Technical User Services (TUS) staff operate the Consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink services (see below) and also maintain a wide range of application software on the PWF and other Computing Service facilities. At the start of the year, the pilot WINS server for Microsoft name lookup was converted into a production service. The Windows NT support service for PCs was formally announced in October and made good progress until its leader resigned in April; recruiting a direct replacement proved very difficult and the eventual solution involved much closer integration between this service and the Help Desk. With the help of the Small Systems group, a two-day workshop on Windows NT and ZENworks was organised for the benefit of those local computer staff planning to roll out NT workstation at their institution.
46. Dealing with viruses, distributing anti-virus software via the Web and otherwise, and increasing user awareness of the need to install it and keep it up to date continued to be major activities, especially given the replacement of Dr Solomon's AntiVirus Toolkit by VirusScan and Virex from April and the appearance of the "LoveBug" virus and its variants in May and June. The joint Computing Service/Library Electronic Reference Library system was moved to a larger Sun E250 system and an experimental Z39.50 interface was provided. Three new databases (EconLit, ATLA Religion and The Philosopher's Index) were added to the existing six (Medline, Mathsci, GeoBase, Georef, PsycLit and Criminal Justice Abstracts). Once again, Medline was by far the most widely and heavily used, although the largest monthly connect time for the latest version was only 2,200 hours compared with 2,500 in 1998-99.
Consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink
47. Staff from TUS give general user consultations on a wide range of topics while the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) provides a specialist service for the humanities; TUS also provides a member of the support team which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Computing Service for the whole of the Sidgwick site. The following table summarises the time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work (including the Help Desk) for 1999-2000, with 1998-99 figures in italics. The "External" heading includes both charged specialist work carried out by LLCC for University institutions and the time spent by other staff responding to enquiries from outside institutions world-wide.
ConsultingHours University4,166(60.3%)5,141(58.5%)Colleges1,260(18.2%)1,408(16.0%)External1,482(21.5%)2,223(25.4%)TOTAL6,908(100.0%)8,782(100.0%)
48. The following table summarises Help Desk calls for 1999-2000, with 1998-99 figures in italics:
Help DeskCalls University7,142(71.2%)9,809(75.8%)Colleges2,565(25.6%)2,852(22.0%)External319(3.2%)277(2.1%)TOTAL10,026(100.0%)12,938(100.0%)
There seem to be three reasons for the significantly reduced activity compared to the previous year: the success of the policy of encouraging users to direct their initial enquiries to local computer support staff rather than to the Help Desk, the lack this year of the need for advisory activity associated with serious security breaches and, towards the end of the year, the need for many local staff to concentrate on the introduction of the CAPSA accounting system, which has its own Help Desk manned by the Management Information Services Division.
49. Only 32% of calls were made in person, with 39% by telephone and 29% by email; a significantly different pattern from 1996-97, when the corresponding figures were 45%, 33% and 22%. Over 80% of calls were closed within 1 hour and over 90% with two days while, as in 1998-99, some 3% of the calls were referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff could not provide a ready answer to a question about a non-Computing Service facility. At quieter times, and as a welcome change, the technicians who man the Help Desk began to assist with user training courses, documentation and fault report investigation for PC Support.
50. As a quid pro quo for the Computing Service policy of directing users towards their local computer support staff, the Techlink scheme provides those staff with "fast track" backup and general support. The scheme remains very popular, and had over 260 members in July (240 in July 1999), who were responsible for 13.4% of all Help Desk calls (12.3% in 1998-99) and, because their questions tend to be more difficult, for 21.8% (19.3%) of the total time spent answering calls. By popular demand, the previous year's weekly programme of fairly elementary "troubleshooting" seminars was repeated during the Michaelmas and Lent terms.
Training
51. Providing training courses on central services and popular applications software reduces the advice and consultancy load and enables computer equipment throughout the University to be used more effectively. In October, so many courses became full even allowing for standby places that the Web booking system had to be changed to reject attempts to register for oversubscribed sessions. Some courses were moved to a larger venue and some repeat sessions were delivered; HTML was particularly popular and its introductory course was given five times in the term. Demand remained high all year, almost all bookings were made remotely (mostly via the Web but with some by email), turnout rates approached 80% and exit surveys showed over 90% of customers to be satisfied with the courses as given. For Michaelmas 2000, all relevant courses are being rewritten to use Microsoft Office 2000. The table summarises course information for 1999-2000, with 1998-99 figures in italics.
Course Types SessionsAttendancesPersonal Computers1719291350Unix1412858464Networking58531,3631,055Word & Doc. Processing4138826910Spreadsheets & Databases34321,0641,014Statistical Computing78282322Other courses46252265TOTAL1751684,9364,380Course Attendance AttendancesUniversity3,6863,344Colleges1,087928External163108TOTAL4,9364,380
52. In September and March, our Dr Hazel, author of the widely used Exim email software, gave two very successful one-day workshops which attracted a total of over 200 participants from academic and commercial institutions, both in the UK and abroad. In the Long Vacation 2000, three fully-subscribed charged courses on Windows NT (one on server administration and two on security) were given by an outside trainer. The modular training courses provided for assistant staff with financial support from the Personnel Division remained popular, although numbers fell slightly to 176 people at 23 sessions (compared with 243 at 27 in 1998-99). The corresponding figures for the similar courses given on a charged basis to staff from Colleges were 167 people at 18 sessions (220 at 25). Loans and sales from the self-teaching courseware library continued to increase, with the most popular products being those on keyboard skills, creating Web pages, Microsoft Access and C.
Unix Support
53. With a full complement of staff throughout this year and rather less need to spend time on closing security loopholes or rescuing users with hacked systems, the group was able to support new developments such as the managed Web server service and the Computer Science Linux service (for both see above). The group also developed, and gave on three separate occasions, a week long hands-on course in Linux System Administration. There was very great demand for this course and it was greatly appreciated by the local computer support staff who attended it. The course also enabled the Unix Support staff to get over a great deal of useful information at one go rather than in many individual one-on-one sessions.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
54.This service advises both individual users and institutions about personal computer systems for particular needs and where to buy them most cheaply, using vendor information and the feedback obtained from regular meetings with the major suppliers. In November, at the fourth Demonstration Day, hundreds of University users again crowded into the Small Examination Hall to see a wide range of hardware and software vendors exhibit their wares.
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
55. The two staff of this division liaise on computing matters at institution level with senior management and computer support staff, calling on assistance from the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Services as required. During the year, QAA assessors began to place increasing emphasis on IT resources for student learning and, at the request of the General Board officer arranging their visits, Institution Liaison staff began to assist both by attending the Learning Resources meeting with each team and by arranging for Small Systems staff to show one or more of the assessors around the central PWF classrooms. These steps seem to have been very worthwhile as since they started few QAA visits have resulted in the award of anything other than maximum marks. In both this and other contexts, the division's annual survey of College student computing facilities, which is repeated each Easter Term and again achieved a 100% response rate, is proving to be extremely valuable.
56. Institution Liaison organise both the very popular meetings of departmental and College computer staff and regular meetings to discuss matters of mutual interest between the Computing Service and the Library and, starting this year, between the Service and the Management Information Services Division. Other meetings which were attended by staff dealt with subjects as diverse as the final stages of the Year 2000 Working Party, therefurbishment of the Raised Faculty Building, the selection of the Library's replacement automation system, IT facilities at the new Betty and Gordon Moore Library and what EMBS should recommend about energy saving to personal computer users. During the year, they also fitted in over 140 visits by request to individual University institutions and 100 to Colleges, assisted institutions with staff selection on 25 occasions and helped with the induction of more than a dozen new staff into the idiosyncrasies of Cambridge and the local computing scene.
M. S. LONGAIR Chairman
S. J. BARTON
D. E. DETMER
I. M. LEM. DUQUESNAY
P. K. FOX
R. GLEN
K. GLOVER
R. HANKA
M. F. HEATH
S. KEARSEY
M. M. LAVY
I. LESLIE
B. K. OMOTANI
A. D. B. POOLE
KATE PRETTY
J. RASHBASS
N. ROBINSON
M. D. SAYERS
P. B. WILSON
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© University of Cambridge Computing Service, December 2000
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14 captures
11 Feb 2001 - 13 Mar 2006
MarAUGNov 07 200320042006
About this capture
Report of the Information Technology Syndicate
on the University Computing Service for 1999-2000
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
The Computing Service
Charged Network Traffic and JANET Bandwidth
EastNet
Managed Cluster Service
Videoconferencing Service
Data Protection Act 1998
Network Security
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
Cambridge University Data Network
Granta Backbone Network
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
Information Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service
User Administration
Pelican data archive service
Advanced Computing
Support services
Software Sales
External Hardware Maintenance
Printing and Reproduction Service
Photography & Illustration Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
Consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink
Training
Unix Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Statistical Annexe
Introduction
1. This report from the Information Technology Syndicate, which develops computing policy for the University and the Colleges and supervises the University Computing Service, covers the year from August 1999 to July 2000. The printed version of the Statistical Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services but breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/itsyndicate/annrep/stats99.00.html. Please note that the statistical information is not intended to be fully comprehensive but only to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities.
Syndicate Matters
2. The Syndicate continued to function well and effectively under the chairmanship of Professor Longair, while as chairman of the Technical Committee Dr Heath ensured that it continued to provide extremely useful input on a wide range of issues. Professor Handy, who had served on the Syndicate since its establishment in 1991 (and before that on the Computer Syndicate) resigned during the Long Vacation. Towards the end of the year, in order to provide improved liaison on financial issues, the College representation was changed from three persons appointed by the Senior Tutors' Committee to two appointed by that Committee and one appointed by the Bursars' Committee.
3. Issues discussed by the Syndicate and dealt with in more detail later in this report included charged network traffic, outgoing JANET bandwidth, the EastNET regional network, the Managed Cluster Service and the videoconferencing service. The Syndicate also discussed and agreed an updated version of the University Software Policy, new guidelines on the use of bulk email and changes to the existing guidelines to cover the downloading from the Web of copyright material such as digitally formatted versions of music or films. Reports were also received on the lifetime email service being offered to graduates by the Development Office with the support of the Management Information Services Division of the University Offices.
4. The Syndicate returned on several occasions to the difficulties of recruiting good young computer support staff and concluded that, although the greater freedom now permitted within the present scales on appointment and promotion had gone some way towards solving the worst of the immediate problems, it was essential that the new Director of Personnel should lose no time in proceeding with his planned major review of Computer Officer salaries as a whole. And while the Syndicate was pleased to see the central bodies accept its proposals for a single Appointments Committee for all graduate computer staff appointments, considerable concern was expressed about the delay in their implementation.
5. In the summer of 2001, the academic side of the Computer Laboratory is scheduled to move to West Cambridge, taking the name with it but leaving the Computing Service behind; before then, it will be necessary for the University both to agree the necessary changes to Ordinances and to re-allocate the accommodation which will be released on the New Museums Site. In this context, the Syndicate discussed and approved proposals for the changes to Ordinances and also agreed to support the Computing Service bid for additional space, which includes moving the undergraduate teaching rooms from the Old Music School to a more convenient location next to existing Service accommodation, making an additional computer room and using the top floors of the Austin Building for offices for Service staff relocated from parts of the building being vacated by the Laboratory as a whole, for relieving the present extreme shortage of office accommodation generally and to replace the existing common room.
The Computing Service
6. The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service include:
Necessarily University-wide services, including networks and electronic mail;
Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which provide any member of the University who needs them with access to facilities of a kind which institutions often provide in-house for their own staff and students;
Support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities ranging from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;
Advice and consultancy services including a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff and a wide range of training courses.
7. During the year, the staff and facilities of the former Systems and Development division were divided between the Network and Systems and Unix divisions, while Technical User Support and User Services became separate divisions in their own right. This produced a Computing Service made up of five divisions, two managing central facilities and providing specialised technical support and three supporting users, either individually or by institution.
The Network division is responsible for the University Data Network (CUDN), the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), support for institutional networking, the PWF and the Managed Cluster Service;
The Systems and Unix division is responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services, Unix support to individual institutions and the Pelican archive service;
The Technical User Support division is responsible for the Help Desk and the Techlink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, general technical user support and the Hardware Maintenance and Videoconferencing services.
The User Services division is responsible for information provision, user administration, Software Sales, hardware purchasing advice and the Printing and Photography & Illustration services;
The Institution Liaison division maintains contact concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters with Heads of Department, other senior managers and local computer support staff.
8. The following table summarises the estimated cost of various types of service provided by the Computing Service, distinguishing central funding (UEF and equipment grant) from costs met by charging users (with combined 1999 figures in italics). The cost recovery services account for £1.58M (30% of the total) compared with £1.32M in 1999 and £1.47M in 1998.
2000 (£K) Centrally FundedCost Rec'yCombined TotalServiceStaffOtherTotal%20001999Network4887356015.3%360920902Network-related34712046712.8%30497504PWF22816639410.7% 394344CUS & Thor147882356.4% 235252Other centrally-run facilities219102296.2%18248209Software sales860862.3%750836725Other charged support services290123028.2%421722534Advice & consultancy6155066618.2% 666674Directorate & liaison28711139810.9% 398360Administration & overheads1771513278.9% 327281TOTAL2,8857803,665100.0%1,57852434785
Some of the major developments during the year are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.
Charged Network Traffic and JANET Bandwidth
9. From August 1999, individual institutions were charged for their share of the cost of the incoming transatlantic SuperJANET traffic. Total traffic increased by over 70% on the previous year, but, because the JISC charges for individual HEIs had been fixed on the basis of usage in 1998-99, the largest cost to any individual Cambridge institution (all the top four and seven of the top ten being Colleges) was only £6,300. The same charging mechanism has been retained for 2000-01, although with a rather smaller charge for Cambridge as a whole.
10. Although a number of Colleges have asked to be supplied with a breakdown of transatlantic charges to the level of individual users, the Computing Service is not able to do this. The amount paid to JANET for providing the institutional breakdown is already quite large and increasing the number of IP address ranges ("buckets") from a few hundreds to tens of thousands would make the cost prohibitive. And although the Service's snapshot monitoring software could be developed to produce reliable breakdowns of all incoming (or outgoing) JANET traffic, this would not solve the problem of assigning transatlantic traffic costs accurately to individuals because the actual routes taken by international network transfers are sufficiently unpredictable to produce significant uncertainty about exactly which parts of the total data arriving in Cambridge actually formed part of the charged traffic.
11. The general increase in network traffic also caused problems when the 8 Mbps limit on outgoing traffic from the CUDN into JANET began to be exceeded, sometimes for hours at a time. (There was typically twice as much incoming traffic, but JANET only places controls on transfers into the network.) Investigation showed that the extra traffic was largely due to new types of student recreational computing, including transfers of MP3 music files and DVD films. The use of Napster and similar products, which automatically compile indexes of files on individual workstations logged on to them and then encourage individual users to download the files they want direct from another user's machine, was a particular worry, both because of the amount of bandwidth taken up and because of the potential for widespread breach of copyright, which had already led to court actions against some US universities.
12. The Napster problem received much publicity in the student press, while Computing Service and local computer support staff put considerable effort into identifying the originators of particularly large transfers and either persuading them to change their ways or taking away their CUDN connection. In addition, a small amount of additional JANET bandwidth was purchased for a period including the Easter Term. Although these measures dealt successfully with the immediate problem, the IT Syndicate was sufficiently concerned about the longer term impact on networking to refer the issue to the Senior Tutors' and Bursars' Committees.
EastNet
13. As the result of a successful bid for funding under the second phase of the HEFCE Metropolitan Area Network Initiative, during the latter half of the year procurement was in progress for a regional network to be known as EastNet. This will together link seven universities (Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire and Luton) plus Homerton and Writtle College (Chelmsford), will be owned by the Association of Universities in the Eastern Region and will have its JANET connection at Cambridge (in the Computing Service). The network is expected to be in service by the end of March 2001 and, together with SuperJANET IV, should increase the total bandwidth to and from Cambridge by a factor approaching two orders of magnitude.
Managed Cluster Service
14. The Managed Cluster Service (MCS) enables institutions to reduce the running costs of their general-access computer rooms by having the Computing Service install and manage both the Novell NetWare servers and software for the individual PCs and Macintoshes. This software consists of the standard PWF classroom software with optional additional applications by mutual agreement; the Service installs it, but the institution meets all licence costs and both procures and pays for any necessary hardware. A detailed service definition which includes these and all other Service and institutional responsibilities was drawn up in collaboration with the early user institutions and approved by the Syndicate. The Service makes an annual charge to institutions using the MCS; the amount depends on the cluster size and the income is primarily used to fund additional staff to run the service.
15. A very successful pilot scheme involving Downing, Newnham, Peterhouse, Land Economy and Veterinary Medicine started in the summer of 1999. By September 2000, the older PWF clusters in Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, the Computer Laboratory and the Clinical School (some established as long ago as 1989) had been brought into the scheme, and further clusters added at St Catharine's, Archaeology, Social and Political Sciences, Fitzwilliam, Gonville and Caius and Queens' and a large Arts and Humanities installation in four departments on the Sidgwick Site. Since several other institutions are already interested in joining, the future rate of growth of the MCS seems to be limited only by the considerable load which taking new institutions on board places on the relevant Service staff.
Videoconferencing Service
16. Soon after the launch of this service in October 1998, it become apparent that the studio in the Old Examination Hall was both too small (at most four to six people) and badly located for the out-of-hours use often needed for international sessions. Fortunately, it was possible to construct a larger facility (taking up to 25 people) next to the security control room in the Cockcroft Building and the service moved there at Christmas 1999, using the old video equipment but adding a capability for handling both ISDN2 and ISDN6 calls. The new room greatly stimulated demand and was used for 71 sessions (138 hours) between January and July, whereas in the previous 19 months the old room had only been used 49 times (82 hours).
17. Call destinations included the UK, seven other European countries, the USA and seven more countries world-wide. The service was used by Millennium Mathematics Project to allow Cambridge lecturers to set tasks to school pupils in London and South Africa and receive the results at later sessions and by the Board of Continuing Education to record a set of 12 lectures in Criminology for presentation in Russia. More common uses included PhD vivas, student interviews and research group meetings, while the Personnel Division booked a whole day for a staff recruitment, with some interviewees appearing in person and others by videoconference.
Data Protection Act 1998
18. This Act came into force on 1 March, although most existing computing activities have a transitional exemption until October 2001. The Computing Service supplied a member of a working party which reported to Council in July on the general implications of the Act and also set up an internal task force to discuss both what actions were required and how to advise users. The new Act covers all personal data on computers and also that in many manual files, but most Service uses of personal data were already covered by the 1984 Act. The main need for change arises because putting personal data on the World Wide Web now effectively requires the explicit consent of the data subject. Arrangements have therefore been put in hand to ensure that from October 2001 the Service's Web-based look-up system will only supply email addresses for those users who have already given the relevant permission.
Network Security
19. Previous reports have emphasised the problems caused when unidentified intruders from anywhere in the world succeed in gaining unauthorised access to the CUDN and the computers attached to it. During the year, Computing Service staff continued the regular friendly probing of all computers connected to the network, to identify instances of known security weaknesses and to feed back the results and recommendations for remedial action to local computer support staff. When this system was demonstrated to other universities at a security conference, much interest was shown in it and the Unix Support team subsequently received Technology Applications Programme funding to develop the software and make it easier to transfer to other sites.
20. While there were many "unfriendly" probes, none succeeded in causing a major security breach on a main Computing Service system. Incoming traffic was blocked on several ports which had been heavily used for probing, with exceptions being made for particular host destinations with a valid need. Thanks to the vigilance of the local Computer Emergency Response Team, advance warnings from JANET-CERT and other sources, and fast footwork by the email team and other Service staff, few University users were troubled either by the probing or by the "LoveBug" virus and its successors which received so much publicity in May and June. To keep up this satisfactory state of affairs, it is essential that not only the CERT but everyone involved in systems management for machines connected to the CUDN should not drop their guard and should keep their software up to date.
Network
JANET and SuperJANET
21. At the beginning of the year, the design of the connection to JANET was changed so that when the main JANET link to London goes down it does not also cut access between the University and local institutions with their own JANET connections, such as Homerton and the Sanger Centre. Two lengthy periods of downtime in December and January were due to human error by Cable and Wireless staff and produced a letter of apology from UKERNA, while the effects of a number of similar but shorter outages in June were ameliorated because the use of an independent 64 Kbps ISDN link was successful in maintaining an email service.
Cambridge University Data Network
22. The Annex contains details of numbers of CUDN connections at the end of the year. The withdrawal of the last asynchronous and X.25 connections in October left a network made up mostly of ethernet connections at 100 Mbps or more (fast) or 10 Mbps or less (slow). During the year, the number of fast lines increased from 22 to 48 while that of the slow ones fell from 119 to 94. By themselves, these numbers give little idea of the overall size and complexity of the CUDN, because the end user equipment is connected via extensive local area networks (LANs) covering a whole building or even a whole department. A better indicator of size is the total of Internet addresses issued for the University and Colleges, which was 36,500 at the end of 1999-2000 (compared with 29,500 in 1998-99 and 18,900 in 1997-98). Although not all the addresses are used for networked personal computers, the total clearly reflects the near ubiquity of these machines at all levels and in all parts of the University and the Colleges.
23. The institutional ethernet links are connected to a backbone network of area routers interlinked by GBN fibres. During the year much effort was put into increasing CUDN resilience and making it easier to track down faults by simplifying the structure of the backbone, replacing some older equipment and providing at least two paths to each area router. Unfortunately, the need to respond to the continuing demand for higher bandwidth, as evinced by the installation of a pilot Gigabit ethernet (1000 Mbps) link between the New Museums and Downing sites, tends to run counter to these good intentions. Meanwhile, the ability to use Virtual LAN techniques with the new routers enabled the Managed Cluster Service to connect remote clusters to the central site by means of a "logical backbone" rather than IP tunnelling.
24. During the year, Network Support staff provided advice to individual institutions on over 170 occasions (covering topics such as how to wire up buildings, establish LANs and connect them to the CUDN) while the Network Installation team carried out or supervised over 30 new or upgraded fast ethernet connections, several relocations and temporary connections, optical fibre installation work at 25 sites and copper wiring at over 40. While total Magpie registrations were slightly down at 2,100, the V.90 56 Kbps service settled down and an ISDN service was introduced. In a continuing programme of avoiding congestion, 30 more fast lines were added in November and a further 30 (making 120 in all) are due by October 2000.
Granta Backbone Network
25. Network staff again handled all operational matters for the GBN Management Committee. In a year dominated by building projects, the new Mathematics building at Clarkson Road was provided with three GBN connections (for the CUDN, security and a private link to Mill Lane), new ducts and cables were installed outside the footprint of a new building at St Edmunds and negotiations continued about a new route for the installation of cables into Chemistry once the Unilever building work has been completed. At West Cambridge, long term plans were agreed for the provision of separate GBN nodes for each of its individual sub-sites, while in the short term the widening of the access road required the diversion and re-routing of all the existing GBN cables in that area. Finally, after many years of waiting, a GBN connection is to be installed at Homerton as part of the EastNet project.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
26 During the year, the Hermes mailstore delivered over twice the volume of mail as in 1998-99 (320 GB compared with 150 GB), although there were only 50% more individual messages. In June, two Sun E220R systems were installed to provide extra processing power for the two years or so left before the ever-increasing load will necessitate major changes to the underlying structure of Hermes. Although the rash of email viruses in May required considerable expenditure of staff and machine resources on detecting and filtering them, thanks to the recruitment of a second member of staff at the start of the year, it was still possible to introduce some locally written software for automatic transparent indexing within Hermes mail folders and this substantially improved overall performance, especially for larger folders.
Information Services
27. Following the release of the Web-based help system for the PWF in October, the Information Group reviewed the printed documentation and decided to publish fewer leaflets on paper and more only on the Web. New subjects included advice on email attachments, on the construction of email lists and on how, when (and when not) to use bulk email in an acceptable manner. Advantage was taken of the opportunity to use reserve Computing Service funds to recruit an additional person to work on documentation. In addition to dealing with over 1,000 enquiries to Webmaster each quarter, the Technical Librarians reorganised the staff library and set up user libraries for the new Managed Cluster Service installations.
28. The Computing Service Web server continued to hold updated versions of much general University material, including the undergraduate prospectus, items from Continuing Education and information (now including pictures) about our museums and collections, although the postgraduate prospectus was transferred to the server at the University Offices. Service staff continued to provide input to the University Web Site Steering Committee and to organise useful and well attended courses and meetings for local Webmasters. The Web search engine which produces a single index of the contents of all relevant local servers so that material can be found without reference to the internal structure of the University was again heavily used, especially as the information providers learnt how to present their data in ways which make user searches easier. The following table compares use in July in 2000 and 1999:
July 2000July 1999Servers, documents indexed269, 267 K226, 180 KTotal searches, data sent,90 K, 1.8 GB64 K, 1.3 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world22%, 15%, 63%22%, 16%, 62%Originating computers: University, rest of world4.4 K, 21.1 K3.1 K, 14.3 K
29. During the year, requests to the main Computing Service Web site (www.cam.ac.uk) came from over 180 country-level domains and totalled 49.1 M (compared to 29.8 M in 1998-99), with a daily peak of 216 K. The server hosted pages for over 150 University societies, while 25 bodies took advantage of the separate managed Web service server for those institutions which are capable of authoring pages but do not need to run their own server. The following table compares main server activity during July in 2000 and 1999:
July 2000July 1999Total requests received, total data sent3.7 M, 17.0 GB2.3 M, 9.7 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world42%, 10%, 48%44%, 10%, 46%Originating computers: University, rest of world10.7 K, 118.0 K8.5 K, 85.7 K
30. Local and national cache server facilities aim to reduce external network use by automatically maintaining copies of recently referenced Web documents. The local cache continued to work well, and in February support was added for the Web Proxy Auto-discovery Protocol (WPAD). This provides an automated way for web browsers to locate and use the cache and, despite some problems with current browser implementations, increased the number of client systems by over 1,000. The table compares cache activity for July in 2000 and 1999:
July 2000July 1999Total requests received, total data volume61.8 M, 465 GB27.2 M, 206 GB% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)48.3%, 19.3%44.7%, 21.7%Client systems, client domains6652, 1504529, 138
In October, the build up of load caused problems with the national cache. To provide local users with an acceptable service, Computing Service staff continuously monitored the situation and disabled Cambridge use of the national cache at times of particularly bad performance (although fetching more material directly increased the charged transatlantic traffic). Making large-scale caches work well is still a rather black art, and the enhancement efforts of the national cache team were not wholly successful until well into the Lent Term.
32. The USENET news service continued to function well and reliably and, by giving Cambridge users access to thousands of local and world-wide news groups, was able to disseminate information on, and provide a forum for the discussion of, a very wide range of topics. The following table compares the levels of activity during July in 2000 and 1999:
July 2000July 1999News server connections: monthly total, peak rate232 K, 164160 K, 112Total, local newsgroups13.7 K, 22912.9 K, 218Monthly volume, number of individual postings19.1 GB, 9.2 M20.0 GB, 8.8 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
33. Although the Managed Cluster Service (see above) stole the limelight, the Small Systems Group (including those new staff financed from MCS income) and Operations Group were also kept busy maintaining and updating the underlying PWF system. The policy of rolling out a new basic NT image each quarter generally went very well, although a tiresome (and fairly common world-wide) problem with broken user NT roaming profiles required them to be automatically scanned for and mended nightly. New PCs were installed in the Phoenix Teaching Room and User Area and the old (but still very useful) systems were reused for application servers and seats at the Oriental Studies Basement cluster. New equipment was also purchased for the user filestore, tape backup and systems/applications software maintenance.
34. It became very evident during 1999 that the part of the Long Vacation which is available for major PWF enhancements is shrinking as more institutions use their clusters for taught courses during September, so that in future more of the work must be done at a different time. In another attempt to ease the same problem, course givers planning to use new or updated PWF application software were required to submit formal requests well in advance. During the year separate pilot projects for possible Windows Terminal Servers and Novell Netware 5 implementations were started but when each ran into unexpected problems it was decided to defer any further work and transfer the resources temporarily to the Managed Cluster Service. The following table summarises PWF users and sessions for 1999-2000, with figures for 1998-99 in italics. (N.B. The College registered users include all undergraduates.)
Public Workstation Facility UsersSessionsUniversity4,530(51.1%)3,936(44.4%)409,275(50.0%)322,718(48.1%)Colleges4,300(48.5%)4,915(55.4%)405,681(49.5%)344,816(51.4%)External27(0.3%)17(0.2%)4,401(0.5%)2,982(0.4%)TOTAL8,857(100.0%)8,868(100.0%)819,537(100.0%)670,516(100.0%)
Central Unix Service
35. The Central Unix Service is widely used by researchers throughout the University while the related Thor facility supports (primarily science and technology) Unix-based taught courses. By replacing its two rather obsolete SPARCserver 1000s with three Sun E220R systems the CUS processing power was increased by several times, to more what one might expect of a system with over 4,000 users, while the installation of a new fileserver backup device made it possible to significantly increase disc space quotas on the fileservers installed in the previous year. Although the main Thor system was not changed, a pilot project was started to provide Linux on the Computer Science PWF cluster (with the possibility of extension to other clusters in due course). The following table presents summary statistical information for the use of the CUS and Thor in 1999-2000, with that for 1998-99 in italics:
Central Unix ServiceThor CPUUsersCPUUsersUniversity90.5%92.1%3,7154,71315.7%23.9%112134Colleges8.8%6.4%42850484.3%76.1%351443External0.7%1.4%4953 TOTAL100.0%100.0%4,1925,270100.0%100.0%463577
User Administration
36. In August and September 1999, the pre-registrations of new postgraduates (3,500) and undergraduates (also 3,500) were each completed successfully within days. Later in the year, electronic data feeds were also used to reduce the administrative load of students staying on for a further degree, of postgraduate cancellations and of International Summer School registrations. Staff greatly appreciated the lack of any need for bulk password changes. The User Administration manager served on the Student Data Model Working Party.
37. Although there were no major security breaches on central systems (see above), over 500 security and other incidents were reported (well up on 1998-99). All were investigated as potential security problems (about 10% turned out to be false alarms) and reports were passed on to JANET-CERT when appropriate. The external probing was mixed with many incidents originating nearer to home, including "spam" (unwanted bulk emails, including ill-targeted recruitment attempts by external companies), offensive and harassing email, and "warez" (sites selling pirated software). Several guilty students had their email accounts suspended (and were usually very indignant at the need to come in to the Computing Service to have them restored).
Pelican data archive service
38. In December, transferring the Pelican data archive service from robot-driven tapes to a farm of discs went extremely smoothly, with essentially no interruption to normal service; the tape robot is still in use for handling backup. A welcome side effect of the change is that retrievals are quicker because there is no need to wait for tape loading and repositioning. The Service continued to be widely used, especially by the University Library for projects including the storage of scanned photographic data. By July 2000, the archive was storing 166 GB of data (compared to 136 GB a year earlier) for 949 different users (923).
Advanced Computing
39. The Hitachi multiple parallel processor project comes under a separate committee of management, but the Computing Service has continued to provide it with the services of a senior programmer with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Software Sales
40. Software Sales supplies members of the University with competitively priced software through CHEST (Combined HE Software Team) or other deals and administers University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. Users can consult a Web version of the software product catalogue and send order enquiries directly from its pages. The table below summarises sales for 1999-2000, with the figures for 1998-99 in italics.
Software SalesItems Communications598850Graphics & drawing, statistics2,6261,041Office packages, operating systems/utilities7,7026,091Programming languages, mathematics/libraries698611Word processing, spreadsheets, databases2,3072,291Geographic, miscellaneous1,169609SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics556610TOTAL15,65612,103
41. In November, the Syndicate considered the relative costs and risks of obtaining site licences under Microsoft's Campus Agreement or continuing with their Select scheme (which is due to end in November 2001), and decided (like most Russell Group universities) to delay taking any firm decision. The Computing Service felt it must take part in the new 5-year CHEST deal for NAG products, not only to save money on new purchases but also to legitimise the many copies already in use, mostly in scientific departments; after some discussion, the relevant Schools all agreed to contribute a share of the annual cost. The total number of items supplied increased significantly, while from October onwards, major staff changes and the consequent training needs adversely affected the rate of dealing with user orders. However by Easter 2000, normal service had been resumed with 70 to 90 % of ordered items being supplied either immediately or within a week and 95 to 99% within four weeks.
External Hardware Maintenance
42. The Engineering Group provides institutions and individuals with either a full cover contract service or repairs charged on a time and materials basis. Successful warranty repairs were carried out on Viglen and Avantek PC systems and the group achieved Apple's "Self-Service Organisation" status, thereby gaining recognition as official repairers for Macintosh equipment throughout the University (including warranty repairs) and obtaining improved access to technical information and spare parts. The following tables summarise the work carried out during 1999-2000, with figures for 1998-99 in italics; although there was little change as regards contract repairs, the number of non-contract repairs went up by over 60% (and within that total the number of laptop repairs increased by over 260%).
Equipment repaired by Type ContractNon-contractIBM PC &c.12512315295Apple Macintosh5574157130Printers736812673Laptops9425997Other equipment117109136108TOTAL379378830503Equipment repaired by Institution ContractNon-contractUniversity258267571359Colleges121111251136External 88TOTAL379378830503
Printing and Reproduction Service
43. The Xerox Docutech, the Xerox and Agfa colour machines and the booklet making machine all worked reliably, but total use continued to decline (which will impact planning for after the Computer Laboratory moves out). During the year, the Docutech service produced a total of 0.75M impressions for the Computing Service (down from 0.9M in 1998-99), 0.72M for the Computer Laboratory (0.78M) and 0.52M for external customers (0.73M). Colour copy totals were: Service 12K (13K); Laboratory 1K (3K); external customers 13.5K (38K).
Photography & Illustration Service
44. The overall volume of work this year was very similar to 1998-99. The service dealt with 8,800 rolls of E6 film, produced 166,000 colour prints, 10,800 computer generated, 5,000 duplicate and 400 diazo slides and made up 3,700 more slides from artwork supplied by customers, while over 1,000 posters were produced (up from 900 in 1998-99) and display boards were loaned out on a number of occasions. Staff continued to take photographs at Congregations, both inside the Senate House and on the Lawn, and were very happy to have the intensity of the General Admission work reduced by being spread over three days rather than two. Some specialist photographic work was also undertaken. A high speed 35 mm film scanner and a replacement mounting and encapsulating machine were purchased.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
45. Technical User Services (TUS) staff operate the Consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink services (see below) and also maintain a wide range of application software on the PWF and other Computing Service facilities. At the start of the year, the pilot WINS server for Microsoft name lookup was converted into a production service. The Windows NT support service for PCs was formally announced in October and made good progress until its leader resigned in April; recruiting a direct replacement proved very difficult and the eventual solution involved much closer integration between this service and the Help Desk. With the help of the Small Systems group, a two-day workshop on Windows NT and ZENworks was organised for the benefit of those local computer staff planning to roll out NT workstation at their institution.
46. Dealing with viruses, distributing anti-virus software via the Web and otherwise, and increasing user awareness of the need to install it and keep it up to date continued to be major activities, especially given the replacement of Dr Solomon's AntiVirus Toolkit by VirusScan and Virex from April and the appearance of the "LoveBug" virus and its variants in May and June. The joint Computing Service/Library Electronic Reference Library system was moved to a larger Sun E250 system and an experimental Z39.50 interface was provided. Three new databases (EconLit, ATLA Religion and The Philosopher's Index) were added to the existing six (Medline, Mathsci, GeoBase, Georef, PsycLit and Criminal Justice Abstracts). Once again, Medline was by far the most widely and heavily used, although the largest monthly connect time for the latest version was only 2,200 hours compared with 2,500 in 1998-99.
Consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink
47. Staff from TUS give general user consultations on a wide range of topics while the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) provides a specialist service for the humanities; TUS also provides a member of the support team which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Computing Service for the whole of the Sidgwick site. The following table summarises the time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work (including the Help Desk) for 1999-2000, with 1998-99 figures in italics. The "External" heading includes both charged specialist work carried out by LLCC for University institutions and the time spent by other staff responding to enquiries from outside institutions world-wide.
ConsultingHours University4,166(60.3%)5,141(58.5%)Colleges1,260(18.2%)1,408(16.0%)External1,482(21.5%)2,223(25.4%)TOTAL6,908(100.0%)8,782(100.0%)
48. The following table summarises Help Desk calls for 1999-2000, with 1998-99 figures in italics:
Help DeskCalls University7,142(71.2%)9,809(75.8%)Colleges2,565(25.6%)2,852(22.0%)External319(3.2%)277(2.1%)TOTAL10,026(100.0%)12,938(100.0%)
There seem to be three reasons for the significantly reduced activity compared to the previous year: the success of the policy of encouraging users to direct their initial enquiries to local computer support staff rather than to the Help Desk, the lack this year of the need for advisory activity associated with serious security breaches and, towards the end of the year, the need for many local staff to concentrate on the introduction of the CAPSA accounting system, which has its own Help Desk manned by the Management Information Services Division.
49. Only 32% of calls were made in person, with 39% by telephone and 29% by email; a significantly different pattern from 1996-97, when the corresponding figures were 45%, 33% and 22%. Over 80% of calls were closed within 1 hour and over 90% with two days while, as in 1998-99, some 3% of the calls were referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff could not provide a ready answer to a question about a non-Computing Service facility. At quieter times, and as a welcome change, the technicians who man the Help Desk began to assist with user training courses, documentation and fault report investigation for PC Support.
50. As a quid pro quo for the Computing Service policy of directing users towards their local computer support staff, the Techlink scheme provides those staff with "fast track" backup and general support. The scheme remains very popular, and had over 260 members in July (240 in July 1999), who were responsible for 13.4% of all Help Desk calls (12.3% in 1998-99) and, because their questions tend to be more difficult, for 21.8% (19.3%) of the total time spent answering calls. By popular demand, the previous year's weekly programme of fairly elementary "troubleshooting" seminars was repeated during the Michaelmas and Lent terms.
Training
51. Providing training courses on central services and popular applications software reduces the advice and consultancy load and enables computer equipment throughout the University to be used more effectively. In October, so many courses became full even allowing for standby places that the Web booking system had to be changed to reject attempts to register for oversubscribed sessions. Some courses were moved to a larger venue and some repeat sessions were delivered; HTML was particularly popular and its introductory course was given five times in the term. Demand remained high all year, almost all bookings were made remotely (mostly via the Web but with some by email), turnout rates approached 80% and exit surveys showed over 90% of customers to be satisfied with the courses as given. For Michaelmas 2000, all relevant courses are being rewritten to use Microsoft Office 2000. The table summarises course information for 1999-2000, with 1998-99 figures in italics.
Course Types SessionsAttendancesPersonal Computers1719291350Unix1412858464Networking58531,3631,055Word & Doc. Processing4138826910Spreadsheets & Databases34321,0641,014Statistical Computing78282322Other courses46252265TOTAL1751684,9364,380Course Attendance AttendancesUniversity3,6863,344Colleges1,087928External163108TOTAL4,9364,380
52. In September and March, our Dr Hazel, author of the widely used Exim email software, gave two very successful one-day workshops which attracted a total of over 200 participants from academic and commercial institutions, both in the UK and abroad. In the Long Vacation 2000, three fully-subscribed charged courses on Windows NT (one on server administration and two on security) were given by an outside trainer. The modular training courses provided for assistant staff with financial support from the Personnel Division remained popular, although numbers fell slightly to 176 people at 23 sessions (compared with 243 at 27 in 1998-99). The corresponding figures for the similar courses given on a charged basis to staff from Colleges were 167 people at 18 sessions (220 at 25). Loans and sales from the self-teaching courseware library continued to increase, with the most popular products being those on keyboard skills, creating Web pages, Microsoft Access and C.
Unix Support
53. With a full complement of staff throughout this year and rather less need to spend time on closing security loopholes or rescuing users with hacked systems, the group was able to support new developments such as the managed Web server service and the Computer Science Linux service (for both see above). The group also developed, and gave on three separate occasions, a week long hands-on course in Linux System Administration. There was very great demand for this course and it was greatly appreciated by the local computer support staff who attended it. The course also enabled the Unix Support staff to get over a great deal of useful information at one go rather than in many individual one-on-one sessions.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
54.This service advises both individual users and institutions about personal computer systems for particular needs and where to buy them most cheaply, using vendor information and the feedback obtained from regular meetings with the major suppliers. In November, at the fourth Demonstration Day, hundreds of University users again crowded into the Small Examination Hall to see a wide range of hardware and software vendors exhibit their wares.
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
55. The two staff of this division liaise on computing matters at institution level with senior management and computer support staff, calling on assistance from the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Services as required. During the year, QAA assessors began to place increasing emphasis on IT resources for student learning and, at the request of the General Board officer arranging their visits, Institution Liaison staff began to assist both by attending the Learning Resources meeting with each team and by arranging for Small Systems staff to show one or more of the assessors around the central PWF classrooms. These steps seem to have been very worthwhile as since they started few QAA visits have resulted in the award of anything other than maximum marks. In both this and other contexts, the division's annual survey of College student computing facilities, which is repeated each Easter Term and again achieved a 100% response rate, is proving to be extremely valuable.
56. Institution Liaison organise both the very popular meetings of departmental and College computer staff and regular meetings to discuss matters of mutual interest between the Computing Service and the Library and, starting this year, between the Service and the Management Information Services Division. Other meetings which were attended by staff dealt with subjects as diverse as the final stages of the Year 2000 Working Party, therefurbishment of the Raised Faculty Building, the selection of the Library's replacement automation system, IT facilities at the new Betty and Gordon Moore Library and what EMBS should recommend about energy saving to personal computer users. During the year, they also fitted in over 140 visits by request to individual University institutions and 100 to Colleges, assisted institutions with staff selection on 25 occasions and helped with the induction of more than a dozen new staff into the idiosyncrasies of Cambridge and the local computing scene.
M. S. LONGAIR Chairman
S. J. BARTON
D. E. DETMER
I. M. LEM. DUQUESNAY
P. K. FOX
R. GLEN
K. GLOVER
R. HANKA
M. F. HEATH
S. KEARSEY
M. M. LAVY
I. LESLIE
B. K. OMOTANI
A. D. B. POOLE
KATE PRETTY
J. RASHBASS
N. ROBINSON
M. D. SAYERS
P. B. WILSON
IT Syndicate | Search | Computing Service home | University home
© University of Cambridge Computing Service, December 2000
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Information Technology Syndicate University of Cambridge > IT Syndicate
Report of the Information Technology Syndicate
on the University Computing Service for 2000-2001
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
Separation from the Computer Laboratory
The Computing Service
EastNet and SuperJANET 4
Network Security
Managed Cluster Service
Videoconferencing Service
Data Protection Act 1998
IP Addresses
Network
Granta Backbone Network
Cambridge University Data Network Connections
Network Support
Transatlantic Traffic
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
Information Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service
User Administration
Pelican data archive service
High Performance Computing Facility
Support services
Software Sales
Managed Cluster Service
External Hardware Maintenance
Printing and Reproduction Service
Photography & Illustration Service
Videoconferencing Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
Consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink
Training
Unix Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Statistical Annexe
Introduction
1. The Information Technology Syndicate develops computing policy for the University and the Colleges and supervises the University Computing Service; this report covers the activities of the Syndicate and the Service for the year from August 2000 to July 2001. The printed version of the Statistical Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services but breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/itsyndicate/annrep/stats00.01.html. Please note that the statistical information is provided only to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities and makes no pretensions to being fully comprehensive.
Syndicate Matters
2. The IT Syndicate again functioned smoothly and effectively under the chairmanship of Professor Longair, while its Technical Committee, chaired by Dr Heath and now including a representative from the Management Information Services Division of the University Offices, continued to provide extremely valuable input to the discussion of any business with a technical dimension. Issues discussed by the Syndicate and dealt with in more detail below include the EastNet regional network, the future development of the CUDN, reducing the impact of hackers by blocking certain types of traffic, a Code of Practice for Computing Service staff dealing with personal information and plans to avoid running out of IP addresses.
3. Computer staff employment issues continued to be a major concern. At the February Syndicate meeting, the Director of Personnel, who was present with two of his senior staff, outlined the progress made since the previous summer (including agreement in principle to drop the strict age relationship for starting salaries) and future possibilities (including plans to establish a transparent reward structure based on well thought out criteria). Dr Sayers was subsequently asked to contribute to a general review of academic-related staff recruitment and retention by producing proposals for changes to Computer Officer contracts and salary scales, and most of the June meeting was given over to a detailed discussion of his draft paper, which was then modified accordingly and sent off to the Personnel Committee.
Separation from the Computer Laboratory
4. By the end of the year, the academic side of the Computer Laboratory was ready to move both itself and that name to West Cambridge, while the Computing Service remained on the New Museums Site. This physical separation of the Laboratory and the Service was preceded by the approval of a Report which formally established the Computing Service as an independent institution under the supervision of the General Board with effect from 1 January 2001, including appropriate changes to various regulations and the establishment of two new Appointments Committees for the officers in the Service.
5. During the Lent and Easter terms, the General Board re-allocated the New Museums Site accommodation being vacated by the Computer Laboratory. The Computing Service share is less than was requested (particularly in the Arup Building, where the space is to be shared with the Language Centre) but will meet all short term needs. By the end of the year, in addition to the new (and mostly HEFCE Teaching Infrastructure funded) undergraduate classrooms on Arup Floor 2, EMBS were preparing to refurbish the Hardware Support workshop and the Service's newly acquired parts of the Austin Building, including the relocation of the Common Room from Arup Floor 2. Thought was also being given to the security and access implications of needing to make the new classrooms (and adjacent Language Centre facilities) available to students around the clock. room.
The Computing Service
6. The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service include:
Services such as networks and electronic mail, which can only be provided on a University-wide basis;
Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which are available to any member of the University who needs them but provide facilities of a kind which individual institutions often supply in-house to their own staff and students;
A wide range of support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities, from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;
Advice and consultancy services which include a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff and a wide range of training courses.
7. The Computing Service is made up of five divisions; two of these manage central facilities and provide specialised technical support of various kinds while the other three which provide direct support to users, either individually or by institution.
The Network division is responsible for the University Data Network (CUDN), the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), support for institutional networking, the PWF and the Managed Cluster Service;
The Systems and Unix division is responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services, Unix support to individual institutions and the Pelican archive service;
The Technical User Support division is responsible for the Help Desk and the Techlink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, general technical user support and the Hardware Maintenance and Videoconferencing services.
The User Services division is responsible for information provision, user administration, Software Sales, hardware purchasing advice and the Printing and Photography & Illustration services;
The Institution Liaison division maintains contact concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters with Heads of Department, other senior managers and local computer support staff.
8. The following table summarises the estimated cost of various types of service provided by the Computing Service, distinguishing central funding (UEF and equipment grant) from costs met by charging users (with combined 2000 figures in italics). The cost recovery services account for £1.57M (29% of the total) compared with £1.58M in 2000 and £1.32M in 1999.
2001 (£K) Centrally FundedCost Rec'yCombined TotalServiceStaffOtherTotal%20012000Network50812062816.5%4101,038920Network-related38615053614.1%31567497PWF30014244211.6% 442394CUS & Thor144301744.6% 235252Other centrally-run facilities228102386.3%28266248Software sales10301032.7%631734836Other charged support services29002907.6%474765722Advice & consultancy6394968718.1% 687666Directorate & liaison2531133679.6% 367398Administration & overheads1821543368.8% 336327TOTAL3,0337683,801100.0%1,5745,3755,243
Some of the major developments during the year are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.
EastNet and SuperJANET 4
9. The EastNet regional network, which resulted from a successful bid for funding under the second phase of the HEFCE Metropolitan Area Network Initiative, links together seven universities (Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire and Luton) plus Homerton and Writtle College (Chelmsford). EastNet has its primary JANET connection at Cambridge (in the Computing Service) and Cambridge was also the lead site in its implementation, although ownership may be transferred to the Association of Universities in the Eastern Region. Following a procurement process during Summer 2000, ntl were awarded a contract to provide the EastNet network services, while a separate procurement for network interface equipment resulted in the use of Cisco routers supplied by Logical UK.
10. Although thrashing out the details of the contract with ntl cost the head of the Network Division much time and effort, their implementation work was completed in early April (only slightly behind schedule) and, after the installation of the routers, EastNet came into service during May. An invitation from HEFCE to bid against a £860K allocation for enhancing EastNET was used both to uprate the routers and to improve the reliability of the power supply for the equipment at Cambridge by installing an Uninterruptible Power Supply backed up by a diesel generator. A contract was negotiated with UKERNA to manage EastNet; the associated costs will be covered by counter payments in respect of UKERNA's use of EastNet to meet its contractual requirements to provide JANET connections to HEIs and FEIs in the region.
11. By the end of January, Worldcom had completed the Cambridge SuperJANET 4 node, installing new fibre cables from the Science Park to the Computing Service, where they were connected to the UKERNA Backbone Access Router. The SuperJANET 4 connection provides a total capacity of 2.5 Gbps for all the institutions in East Anglia; at 1 Gbps for both incoming and outgoing traffic the Cambridge share of this is almost two orders of magnitude more than the previous (outgoing only) limit of 12 Mbps under SuperJANET 3.
CUDN Development and Reliability Issues
12. In mid-August 2000, CUDN performance was badly degraded for several days by an intermittent fault which caused major loss of connectivity and was made more difficult to investigate by the attempts of the network's automatic reconfiguration software to respond to the constantly changing situation. The fault caused great inconvenience to Finance Division staff trying to process payroll and other vital functions using procedures which depended critically on good data communications between offices at the Old Schools and computers at the old Royal Greenwich Observatory building (although it was not responsible for most of the long delays then being encountered by other users of the newly live CAPSA project). It was the first significant CUDN failure since February 1999 and during the interim both JANET failures and planned electrical shutdowns had caused far more total loss of connectivity.
13. Following the fault, steps were taken to improve reliability of the links between the Old Schools and the RGO. A more general conclusion, reinforced by similar but much shorter failures in the Michaelmas Term, was that the intermittent faults were related to overloading on the central ATM switch. Existing plans to simplify the design of the CUDN by ceasing all use of the ATM protocol and to convert the backbone network to use Gigabit (1000 Mbps) ethernet were therefore accelerated and by July the backbone network was using IP only, with Gigabit ethernet in use on all main trunk links to the routing nodes and also on most backup ones.
14. However CUDN development never stands still and in May the University submitted a successful £1.2 M bid for its further enhancement using money from the Science Research Investment Fund (with a 25% contribution from the University). To enable the network infrastructure to support the next generation of e-science projects, the central switches and routers will be replaced by higher performance equipment which can use the full capacity of the SuperJANET 4 link and deliver Gigabit speed connections to departments. Using high-performance Cisco routers with built-in redundancy should also improve network reliability.
Network Security
15. Protecting the CUDN from hackers is a never-ending battle over constantly shifting ground. During the year, attacks became noticeably more automated, and a successful probe would immediately use its target system to attack other machines on the CUDN (or in one case to launch "denial of service" attacks against external targets, effectively paralysing the Cambridge connection to JANET). Investigating and recovering from these incidents can be very prodigal of staff time. For example, when a single insecure machine was compromised in December and used to probe the entire network for a service normally blocked at the JANET-CUDN network, the result was five more compromises, all in different institutions. Users at each institution had to reset their passwords and the overall cost of the incident was at least 30 person-days of Computing Service staff time, plus that of the local computer support staff.
16. Incoming traffic was already being blocked at the JANET-CUDN gateway (with a few exceptions for host destinations with valid needs) on several ports not much used by ordinary users but popular with hackers. However, between October and December, so many probes were observed on the ftp (file transfer protocol) port that, despite the fact that it would affect many users, it was decided to block from January 22 all incoming requests for ftp transfers in either direction. The blocking was widely advertised to users during the Christmas vacation, staff were primed to provide advice on alternative procedures and a few exceptions were made for user systems with a large need and a good security record. In the event, users adapted to the ftp blocking much more readily than was first feared and its introduction caused very much less overall disruption than if the probing had been allowed to continue unchecked.
17. For the rest of the year, external probing continued at alarming rates but the blocking kept it at bay apart from a few small and well-contained security breaches. From May, Web servers running Microsoft IIS were attacked by the Code Red worm, which became more of a threat with each month's new variant. For much of late June and July, major denial of service attacks sent vast amounts of unwanted transatlantic traffic to certain Computing Service and other cam.ac.uk addresses. Attacks on this scale caused noticeable SuperJANET degradation and after consultation between the local and JANET Computer Emergency Response Teams countermeasures were installed at the US end of the transatlantic links to limit their effect.
Data Protection Act 1998
18. Previous reports have described Computing Service plans to comply with this Act by the time the transitional exemption for existing computing activities expires in October 2001. In December, the Service produced a Code of Practice for its staff which sets out procedures for dealing with various kinds of request involving personal data. The Code takes into account not only the Data Protection Act 1998 but also other relevant recent legislation including the Human Rights Act, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and the Telecommunications Regulations 2000. After approval by the IT Syndicate, the Code of Practice was made available on the web for the benefit of University institutions and Colleges facing similar problems.
IP Addresses
19. If no changes are made to the way in which Cambridge IP (v4, 32-bit) addresses are currently allocated, they may well run out in two years or so (i.e. well before IP v6 with 64-bit addresses comes into widespread use). Following the Technical Committee's consideration of how to use the existing total Cambridge allocation more effectively (IP v4 addresses being currently in such short supply world-wide that asking for more is unlikely to succeed), the Computing Service has agreed to produce an action plan. Possible strategies include using Network Address Translation for new student users, freeing up sparsely allocated address ranges and creating a strategic reserve from addresses currently allocated to the Computer Laboratory. The practicability of connecting College rooms via an ISP rather than the CUDN while maintaining student access to appropriate cam.ac.uk facilities will also be investigated.
Network
Granta Backbone Network
20. Network division staff again handled all operational matters for the GBN Management Committee. During the year, as part of EastNet, Homerton finally obtained its long planned GBN connection. At West Cambridge, the re-routing of GBN cables to allow the access road to be widened was completed, also the GBN node in the new Computer Laboratory building. Following the completion of the Unilever Centre, cables were installed on the new GBN route into Chemistry and the re-instatement of diverted services was put in hand. Building work at New Hall necessitated a move of the GBN cabinet and cables to the opposite end of the College, although staff managed to limit downtime on the CUDN connection to a few minutes. Finally, discussions which are in progress about the re-routing of GBN ducts and cables because of separate building projects at the Sidgwick Site and at Gonville & Caius Harvey Court aim to limit overall disruption by agreeing in advance one new route across both sites.
Cambridge University Data Network Connections
21. Almost all of the network now consists of ethernet connections, either at 10 Mbps or less (slow) or at 100 Mbps or more (fast); these institutional links are connected via eight area routers to the Gigabit ethernet CUDN backbone network (see above). Uninterruptible Power Supplies were installed at two of the area routers (North and West) and when their performance has been assessed, more may follow. During the year, the number of fast connections increased from 48 to 76 while that of slow ones fell from 94 to 73 (for fuller details see the Annex). In general, each of these connections will support one or more local area networks (LANs), thereby interconnecting equipment in a whole building or even a whole department.
22. Around Easter, the first Gigabit ethernet connections to individual institutions were installed and both new connections and upgrades to this speed now appear as standard items on the CUDN price list. Virtual Private Network tunnelling products were trialled, with the aim of allowing the same secure authenticated access to CUDN services via other Internet Service Providers, as if the client were within cam.ac.uk. Total registrations for the Magpie modem service were again just over 2,000 and the existing lines and modems handled the load without congestion; most subscribers now use V.90 modems at 56 Kbps, and so notice was given that the older and slower V.34 and SLIP service will be withdrawn from April 2002.
23 While the ethernet connections data shows how the CUDN now reaches into every corner of the University and Colleges, the true size of the network is most obvious from the total of Internet addresses. This was 42,900 at the end of 2000-01 (up from 36,500, 29,500 and 18,900 in previous years), with 28,000 addresses in University institutions and 14,900 in the Colleges. The University ones were used not only for personal computers and workstations but also for many servers and other equipment while the College addresses included over 7,500 active connections in student study bedrooms. The July introduction of devolved IP address registration will allow College computer staff to deal with the Michaelmas 2001 rush without the previous need to involve Computing Service staff.
Network Support
24. During the year, Network Support staff provided advice to individual institutions on over 210 occasions (40 more than in 1999-2000); typical topics included wiring up buildings, establishing LANs and obtaining CUDN connections. The Network Installation team was just as busy as in previous years and carried out or supervised work which included 30 new fast ethernet installations or upgrades, new network equipment installations at 11 sites, optical fibre installation work at 25, copper wiring at over 30 and testing of existing cables at 5.
Transatlantic Traffic
25. Individual institutions were again charged a share of the cost of incoming transatlantic SuperJANET traffic. Total traffic was 60% more than in 1999-2000, but the overall charge to Cambridge had been fixed in advance at £113,651 (down from £132,580) and so the top charge to any individual institution (all of the top six and eight of the top ten being Colleges) was again only £6,300. The same charging mechanism will apply in 2001-02, with Cambridge as a whole paying £119,968, but major changes are expected from the following year. The Computing Service continued to supply Colleges on request with snapshot monitoring information to identify individual cases of large use, but remained unable (for reasons outlined in last year's report) to produce reliable figures for the total traffic to individual IP addresses.
26. Since in the previous year saturation of the outgoing 8 Mbps link to JANET had caused considerable concern, an increase to 12 Mbps from the start of the Michaelmas Term was purchased from UKERNA. This, combined with the use of control mechanisms to limit the impact of outgoing recreational traffic at busy times, avoided any serious problems until the greatly increased bandwidth provided by SuperJANET 4 and EastNet came on stream (see above). The control mechanisms were then removed, but the immediate effect was that increased recreational use caused outgoing traffic volumes to match or slightly exceed incoming ones, so some of the controls were reinstated.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
27. As a result of the advance integration of additional equipment, the Hermes mailstore system coped well with the usual sharp rise in demand at the start of Michaelmas 2000. The total volume of mail delivered by Hermes increased by 60% during the year (from 320 GB to 520 GB) after more than doubling in the previous one, while the number of messages increased by 15% (from 49.1 M to 56.6 M) after a 50% rise in the previous year. The number of users of Hermes rose by 1,800, from 26,100 to 27,900, although some of these were existing email users transferring over from CUS. For much of the year, staff illness and other problems limited software work to routine maintenance and local improvements to deal with increases in load but towards the end work was resumed on essential long term software developments. The first to appear is the Web interface to Hermes which, after needing to be coded specially to achieve the required scale of operation, should go into pilot service during Michaelmas 2001.
Information Services
28. For Michaelmas 2000, the data management facilities on the Computing Service web servers were improved and the pages about the Service were re-designed to direct users more effectively to the relevant electronic and paper documentation; this significantly increased the number of accesses. New material installed on the University server included the Press Office's Media Guide to Expertise (using material collected via an on-line database) and the 2002 Undergraduate Prospectus, including departmental contact information. By the end of the year Information Group staff had also completed the task of lower-casing all the urls on the server, to simplify access for both users and maintainers. The Technical Librarians dealt with 5,644 enquiries to Webmaster (32% up on the 4,267 in 1999-2000), in addition to maintaining the staff library and setting up user libraries for new Managed Cluster Service installations.
29. The server hosted pages for over 180 University societies (150 in 1999-2000), while 42 (25) bodies used the managed Web server service for institutions which can author pages but do not wish to run their own server. A pilot Web-based version of the University map was released to general approval after Systems and Unix staff had solved the technical problems of presenting a complex map on relatively low-resolution web browser screens while including features such as zoom and locate. The Information Group incorporated the map data (derived from the same base as by the University Press's paper version) and will be liaising with the Press about future updates. Staff also continued to provide input to the University Web Site Steering Committee, and to organise useful and well attended meetings of local Webmasters.
30 The Computing Service University-wide web search engine uses commercial Ultraseek software to produce a single index of the contents of all the more-or-less "official" servers within cam.ac.uk. This allows outside requests to locate material without the need to know or guess in advance which server may have it, also to make complex searches and to search within individual servers. The following table compares use in July in 2001 and July 2000:
July 2001July 2000Servers, documents indexed321, 401 K269, 267 KTotal searches, data sent,111 K, 2.2 GB90 K, 1.8 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world25%, 15%, 60%22%, 15%, 63%Originating computers: University, rest of world4.5 K, 25.5 K4.4 K, 21.1 K
31 During the year, there were 66.5 M incoming requests (compared with 49.1 M in 1999-2000) to the main Computing Service Web site (http://www.cam.ac.uk/). They came from over 190 country-level domains (180), with a daily peak of 304 K (216 K). The past expenditure of time and money on monitoring and fallback arrangements paid good dividends over the Christmas break when staff were alerted to and readily circumvented hardware failures which would otherwise have caused a major outage of information services. The following table compares main server activity during July 2001 with July 2000:
July 2001July 2000Total requests received, total data sent5.7 M, 29 GB3.7 M, 17 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world33%, 8%, 59%42%, 10%, 48%Originating computers: University, rest of world12.3 K, 150.6 K10.7 K, 118.0 K
32. The local and national Web caches reduce external network use and improve performance by automatically maintaining copies of recently referenced documents. During Michaelmas 2000 there was serious overload on the local cache server, and although some improvement was obtained from changes to the server software, new hardware with additional capacity was clearly needed. The new system uses a cluster of powerful PCs, which not only facilitates the provision of spare components and fallback capacity but also makes the system easier to build and to develop. After a phased introduction starting in late April, the system is already handling a greater load than its predecessor with much improved performance. The table summarises activity for the new cache in July 2001 and for the old in July 2000. Because one cannot distinguish individual clients in institutions which route requests to the cache via firewalls or local web caches, the client systems figures will be underestimates.
July 2001July 2000Total requests received, total data volume122 M, 830 GB61.8 M, 465 GB% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)46.4%, 18.0%48.3%, 19.3%Client systems, client domains8,559,161, 1616,652, 150
33. The Computing Service's USENET news server gives Cambridge users access to thousands of local and world-wide news groups, thereby providing them with the opportunity to disseminate information on, and to engage in the discussion of, a very wide range of topics. The following table compares the levels of activity during July 2001 and July 2000:
July 2001July 2000News server connections: monthly total, peak rate282 K, 102232 K, 164Total, local newsgroups14.4 K, 23313.7 K, 229Monthly volume, number of individual postings18.5 GB, 8.9 M19.1 GB, 9.2 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
34 The Public Workstation Facility and the Managed Cluster Service (see below) are supported by the staff of the Small Systems Group and the Operations Group, who planned and implemented two major changes during the year. First, during the Easter vacation, six of the central PWF servers were replaced by new and more powerful hardware and four were upgraded to use Novell NetWare 5.1 with the newer version of Directory Services. This worked well in general, but an unfortunate side effect caused the loss of statistical data on PWF use from 18 April until the end of July. The following table therefore compares data for the first 8.5 months of 2000-01 with (in italics) full year figures for 1999-2000. (N.B. In general, undergraduates are registered as College users and postgraduates as University ones.)
Public Workstation Facility UsersSessionsUniversity4,329(46.1%)4,530(51.1%)237,489(37.4%)409,275(50.0%)Colleges5,016(53.4%)4,300(48.5%)395,955(62.3%)405,681(49.5%)External40(0.4%)27(0.3%)2,179(0.3%)4,401(0.5%)TOTAL9,385(100.0%)8,857(100.0%)635,623(100.0%)819,537(100.0%)
35. During the year, staff continued to roll out a new basic Windows NT image each quarter, managing the provision of multiple variants to different sites by using Zenworks Workstation objects. All PWF Macintoshes were given a new log-in program and upgraded to OS 9.1. When escaping Microsoft NETBIOS traffic caused broadcast storm problems on the CUDN, the PWF Club members installed Netware 4 tunnel blocks to contain it within each institution. Finally, after much planning and testing, the second major change took place just after the end of the year, when a one-day shutdown allowed all PWF and MCS sites to change simultaneously to a new image which uses Windows 2000 Pro rather than Windows NT.
Central Unix Service. Thor and Linux
36. The Central Unix Service continued to be widely used by researchers throughout the University, although a significant number of mail-only users moved to Hermes. The related Thor facility supports Unix-based taught courses (primarily in Physics and Computer Science, although a Geography course was included at very short notice). The table below presents summary statistical information for their use in 2000-01, with that for 1999-2000 in italics:
Central Unix ServiceThor CPUUsersCPUUsersUniversity92.3%90.5%3,1353,7158.6%15.7%66112Colleges6.9%8.8%37842891.4%84.3%402351External0.8%0.7%3849 TOTAL100.0%100.0%3,5514,192100.0%100.0%468463
37. Following the success of last year's pilot project to provide Linux on the Computer Science PWF cluster, Unix Support staff put in over eight man-months of work (at all levels from operating system modifications to applications tuning) to create PWF Linux. This will run alongside Windows and MacOS on dual-boot machines in PWF clusters (and MCS clusters which opt to include it) and can also be used on a dedicated machine to provide students with remote access (using SSH) during vacations to Unix-based PWF teaching material.
User Administration
38 During summer 2000, substantial developments were carried out to the user database. As part of the pre-registration of 7,000 new postgraduates and undergraduates for the start of Michaelmas 2000, a new Web-based facility was introduced to allow those who could establish their identity by supplying appropriate personal information remotely to be sent details of their email address in advance. Although only limited password resets were required this year, surprisingly many users were out of the country and had to prove their identity over the telephone to get their new password; arrangements have therefore been made to allow such people to nominate in advance someone with authority to act on their behalf if necessary.
39. Thanks to increased network security activity (see above), the total number of incidents requiring investigation was 733 (45% up on the 506 in 1999-2000). Many of the non-security incidents involved unwanted email (which often appeared to come from a Cambridge user but had actually been forged by an external user); another common type, especially in Michaelmas, was internal probing caused by inexperienced students with incorrectly configured machines.
Pelican data archive service
40. The new disc farm based Pelican data archive service continued to operate efficiently, with considerably faster retrieval times than the tape based system it had replaced. By the end of the year, the total data stored was 200 GB (20% up on last year's 166 GB) for 920 different users (949) and it was clear that more discs should be added very soon. Although Pelican was used to some extent by more than 80 University and College institutions, the largest users by volume continued to be the Computing Service (for backup of programs and data) and the University Library (for various projects including the storage of scanned photographic data).
High Performance Computing Facility
41. The Computing Service continued to provide the High Performance Computing Facility (which comes under a separate committee of management) with the services of one of its senior programmers who has a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Software Sales
42. Software Sales supplies members of the University with competitively priced software through CHEST (Combined HE Software Team) and other deals and administers University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. After much consideration of how best to reconcile user demands for faster ordering and delivery with the need to stay within the terms of the different licences and to ensure that users are aware of the University Software Policy, the Web software product catalogue was supplemented by a Web Ordering System. This allows users who have already signed up to the general terms and conditions to create and print order applications on-line, although the need to accompany them with a purchase order (currently only available on paper) then slows things down to the speed of the internal mail. The table below summarises sales for 2000-01, with 1999-2000 in italics.
Software SalesItems Communications751598Graphics & drawing, statistics2,2262,626Office packages, operating systems/utilities6,5107,702Programming languages, mathematics/libraries675689Word processing, spreadsheets, databases1,8262,307Geographic, miscellaneous1,7421,169SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics486556TOTAL14,21615.656
Managed Cluster Service
43. The Managed Cluster Service (MCS) enables institutions to reduce the running costs of their general-access computer rooms by paying the Computing Service to install and manage both the Novell NetWare servers and software for the PCs and Macintoshes, based on the standard PWF image (see above) with optional additional applications. The 17 MCS clusters at the start of the year (ten in departments and seven in Colleges), had increased by three (at Chemistry (Unilever Building), Selwyn and Sidney Sussex) by January 2001 and by five more (at the new Computer Laboratory, the Betty and Gordon Moore Library, Clare, Emmanuel and Trinity Hall) by September 2001. To reduce the total number of servers and hence the work involved in installing new images, these five and all future clusters will use (and share where appropriate) servers which are supplied by and located in the Computing Service.
External Hardware Maintenance
44 The Engineering Group again provided institutions and individuals with either a full cover contract service or repairs charged on a time and materials basis and also carried our warranty repairs on behalf of certain manufacturers for their University customers. The tables summarise repair work carried out during 2000-01, with figures for 1999-2000 in italics.
Equipment repaired by Type ContractNon-contractIBM PC &c.147125138152Apple Macintosh465589157Printers9773137126Laptops59192259Other equipment95117113136TOTAL390379669380Equipment repaired by Institution ContractNon-contractUniversity208258473571Colleges182121190251External 68TOTAL390379669830
Printing and Reproduction Service
45 The existing Xerox Docutech and Xerox and Agfa colour machines continued to work well. During the year, the Docutech service produced a total of 0.91 M impressions for the Computing Service (up from 0.75 M in 1999-2000), 0.81 M for the Computer Laboratory (0.72 M) and 0.60 M for external customers (0.52 M), while the colour copy totals were: Service 7 K (12K); Laboratory 1.4 K (1K); external customers 7.2 K (13.5 K). The lease on the Xerox equipment expires in December 2001 and plans are in hand to obtain replacements more suited to the reduced requirement following the departure of the Computer Laboratory.
Photography & Illustration Service
46 Although the traditional photographic activities had a rather reduced throughput of 7,300 rolls of E6 film (compared to 8,800 in 1999-2000), 133,000 colour prints (160,000), 3,300 duplicate slides (5,000) and 3,400 slides made up from artwork supplied by customers (3,700), the number of posters produced doubled from 1,000 to 2,000 and a new service to scan 35mm film into digital images on CD processed almost 300 rolls. Staff took photographs for sale at General Admission and other Congregations, both inside the Senate House and on the Lawn, and also carried specialist photographic work for departments and colleges on request. Equipment purchases included a 60" wide inkjet printer to keep pace with user requirements for larger posters, a more modern display board system for hiring out, and new digital minilab film processing equipment which will be in service by Michaelmas 2001.
Videoconferencing Service
47 The staff of this service spent much time during the year using their considerable expertise in both ISDN and IP (room and PC-based) videoconferencing to advise those University departments (such as Education, Engineering, Mathematics and the Veterinary School) which wanted to move on from extensive use of our facilities to buying their own equipment. As a result, despite an increasing overall interest in videoconferencing throughout the University, total use of the Computing Service suite for ISDN videoconferencing was only 132 hours in 72 bookings (compared with 170 hours in 87 bookings in 1999-2000.) To keep abreast of new developments, staff purchased IP desktop cameras for trial purposes and spent two weeks in July, in association with the Cambridge-MIT Project (CMI)), on successful trials of an IP/ISDN codec from Tandberg. CMI subsequently purchased four of these codecs, for the Computing Service facility and for new videoconferencing facilities in CMI, the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET) and the Judge Management Institute, while the Service team will manage the installation, training and support for all four.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Services
48. The Technical User Support division (TUS) manages and largely staffs the advice and consultancy services, including the Help Desk and Techlink (see below) and also looks after a wide range of application software on the PWF and other Computing Service facilities. At the request of the Windows Integration Group, a bookable Test Bed Facility of PC server and workstation equipment was set up to double both as a facility for learning about NT under the guidance of TUS staff and an environment in which local computer support staff may safely rehearse planned changes to their institutional systems. Although there were no major virus problems until the summer worms, staff continued to distribute McAffee VirusScan and other anti-virus software and to remind users of the need to install it and keep it up to date.
49. At the start of the year, the joint Computing Service/Library Electronic Reference Library system held 10 databases, although PsycLit was soon replaced by the larger and more frequently updated PsycInfo. Additions during the year were MLA International Bibliography (covering language, literature, linguistics and folklore) and British Nursing Index, Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature and Health Management Information Consortium (covering between them nursing, midwifery, biomedicine and health care and management). Medline was again by far the most widely and heavily used of the individual databases.
Consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink
50 TUS staff give general user consultations on a wide range of topics and provide a member of the support team which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Computing Service for the whole of the Sidgwick site, where staff from the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) also provide a specialist service for the humanities. Because of changes in recording practice, it is no longer possible to give detailed figures for staff time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work but the following table summarises Help Desk calls for 2000-01, with 1999-2000 figures in italics:
Help DeskCalls University7,103(70.6%)7.142(71,2%)Colleges2,420(24.1%)2,565(25.6%)External535(5.3%)319(3.2%)TOTAL10,058(100.0%)10,026(100.0%)
More calls were initiated by telephone (45%) than in person (28%) or by email (also 28%). Over 85% of calls were closed within 1 hour and over 90% with 24 hours while 2% of calls had to be referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff could not provide a ready answer to a question about a non-Computing Service facility.
51. In return for asking users to direct queries about non-Computing Service facilities to local computer support staff, the Service provides those staff with "fast track" backup and general support through the Techlink scheme, which had over 300 members by the end of the year (up from 260 a year earlier). Techlinks initiated 14.4% (13.4% in 1999-2000) of all Help Desk calls but, because their questions tend to be more difficult, again accounted for 21.8% of the total time spent answering calls. For Michaelmas 2000, the Service's various IT support mailing lists were rationalised into just two (departmental and College), which are now widely used not only by the Service but also by support staff seeking (and usually finding) all kinds of advice and information from their peers. The Techlink seminars given by Service staff were regularly updated to reflect current concerns and proved so popular that both the room and the day had to be changed to accommodate everyone who wanted to come to them.
Training
52. The Computing Service training courses on central services and popular applications software help reduce the advice and consultancy load and enable better use to be made of computer equipment throughout the University. Some Michaelmas Term courses were again heavily oversubscribed and additional sessions had to be arranged, although demand for the most basic courses fell off. It was clear nevertheless that some new students need IT literacy training, although additional publicity channels may be needed to reach them all. Demand for courses was high again in the Easter Term as students took their last chance to benefit from free training; the additional sessions included a 2-afternoon Introduction to Unix given at New Addenbrooke's. Exit surveys continued to report customer satisfaction rates of 90% or 95%. The table summarises course information for 2000-01, with 1999-2000 in italics.
Course Types SessionsAttendancesPersonal Computers1317194291Unix1314970858Networking46581,1831,363Spreadsheets & Databases35341,0911,064Word & Doc. Processing4241931826Statistical Computing97438282Other courses54356252TOTAL1631755,1634,936Course Attendance AttendancesUniversity4,1533,686Colleges8781,087External132163TOTAL5,1634,936
53. After the resignation of a key member of the training team, who had inter alia given all the courses for assistant staff, it was fortunately possible to recruit a well-qualified replacement at the first attempt. Well attended and received imported courses from external providers included an SPLUS introduction and two courses for Webmasters from Netskills, while in July Dr Hazel, author of the widely used Exim email software, gave a very successful two-day workshop to 86 participants (over double the original plan), including 20 from overseas. Computing Service trainers also provided a growing number of customised courses for specific groups, ranging from an Excel course for administrative staff needing to input RAE information through Powerpoint for staff from English and Windows 2000 for Jesus College to Access, SPSS and Excel courses for delegates attending a conference at Anaesthesia.
54. Total loans and sales from the self-teaching courseware library went up by 25% and a total of 212 assistant staff from University institutions attended 31 Personnel Division funded course sessions (compared to 176 and 23 in 1999-2000), although the attendance at similar courses for College staff was only 50 at 6 sessions (compared to 167 at 18).
Unix Support
55. Major projects carried out during the year included the development of PWF Linux (see above) and the completion of the JTAP funded work to develop the friendly probing software (as described in last year's report). After much development and testing of this largely unsung but complex and critical infrastructure component, the introduction of a new print spooler was achieved with only minor glitches. The week-long hands-on course on Linux System Administration was given twice and the ssh CD, which allows Unix users to log on securely from remote locations, was updated. Direct institutional support, including help to recover from security incidents, was provided to Chemistry, Lucy Cavendish, Management Information Services, Biochemistry and 20 other departments or Colleges.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
56. Using information and feedback obtained from regular contacts with major suppliers, Computing Service staff again advised individual users and institutions, either in person or via Web pages, about economic sources of personal computer systems to meet their particular needs. The Service Web pages were linked to the new site maintained by the University Purchasing Office, with which a close liaison has developed. The fifth annual November Demonstration Day again attracted hundreds of University users into the Small Examination Hall, where a wide range of hardware and software vendors were exhibiting their wares.
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
57. This division liaises on computing matters at institution level with both senior management and computer support staff, and its two staff are able to call on assistance from the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Services as required. The help given to departments facing TQA assessments included advising on the preparation of IT-related base materials, attending Learning Resources meetings and arranging for assessors to visit the central PWF classrooms. Staff also spent much time on the difficult IT resource and support issues arising out of the transfer of Homerton's teaching to the School of Education and on understanding and implementing the access control system for the Raised Faculty Building.
58. In a new development, Institution Liaison staff were asked by some institutions not only to advise on computer staff gradings and individual appointments but also to help with the appraisal of existing staff; this raised some rather more general concerns about support and personal development opportunities for computer staff which were shared with the Personnel Division. Meanwhile staff continued to organise both well attended termly meetings open to all departmental and/or College computer staff and smaller liaison meetings at which staff from the Computing Service and from the Library or Management Information Services could discuss issues of mutual interest. They also fitted in almost 150 visits by request to University institutions and 100 to Colleges, assisted with staff selection on nearly 30 occasions and helped introduce several new staff into the idiosyncrasies of computing in Cambridge.
M. S. LONGAIR Chairman
S. J. BARTON
D. E. DETMER
I. M. LEM. DUQUESNAY
P. K. FOX
R. GLEN
K. GLOVER
R. HANKA
T. R. HARRISON
M. F. HEATH
S. KEARSEY
M. M. LAVY
I. LESLIE
B. K. OMOTANI
M. D. SAYERS
P. B. WILSON
© 2002 University of Cambridge Computing Service
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Information Technology Syndicate University of Cambridge > IT Syndicate
Report of the Information Technology Syndicate
on the University Computing Service for 2001-2002
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
Accommodation and Building Work
The Computing Service
EastNet and SuperJANET 4
JANET Traffic Costs
CUDN Development
Network Security and other incidents
IP Addresses
System Administrators Charter
Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001
Network
Granta Backbone Network
Cambridge University Data Network Connections
Network Support and Network Installation
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
Information Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service, Thor and PWF Linux
User Administration
Pelican data archive service
High Performance Computing Facility
Support services
Software Sales
Managed Cluster Service
External Hardware Maintenance
Printing and Reproduction Service
Photography & Illustration Service
Videoconferencing Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Support
Help Desk and Techlink
Training
Unix Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Statistical Annexe
Introduction
1. The remit of the Information Technology Syndicate is to develop computing policy for the University and the Colleges and to supervise the University Computing Service and this Report and Statistical Annex cover the activities of the Syndicate and the Service for the year 1 August 2001 to 31 July 2002. The printed version of the Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services but breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available as PDF on the World Wide Web at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/itsyndicate/annrep/stats01.02.pdf. Please note that the statistical information is only intended to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities and makes no attempt at being fully comprehensive.
Syndicate Matters
2. Professor Longair continued to chair the IT Syndicate and Dr Heath its Technical Committee. Items on the Syndicate's agenda which concerned Computing Service activities and are therefore described in the appropriate place below included both ongoing issues such as the EastNet regional network, network security and how to avoid running out of IP addresses and also newer topics such as the enhancement of the CUDN using Science Research Infrastructure funding, recovering JANET traffic costs and adapting for use in Cambridge a draft charter for system administrators which originated from UKERNA.
3. At its November meeting, the Syndicate discussed at some length the newly published reports by Professors Shattock and Finkelstein on the implementation of CAPSA. It concluded that the case for merging the Computing Service with the Management Information Services Division (MISD) was far from proven but merited further investigation, that the recruitment of a new Director of MISD should be followed by that of additional staff to develop in-house Unix and Oracle database support teams and that more thought should be given to the future roles of the Syndicate and the Information Strategy Group in meeting the overall IT needs of the University and the Colleges, both administrative and academic.
4. On staff matters, the IT Syndicate warmly welcomed the University's adoption from June of those new and rationalised Computer Officer salary scales, including the new grade of Principal Computer Officer, which it had proposed the previous year. They noted that a proposed new contract for academic-related staff would replace the present system by open-ended appointments subject to the successful completion of a probationary period and that the EU Fixed Term Working Directive, due to come into force in July 2002, would require the Computing Service to give up using repeated fixed term appointments for staffing its cost-recovery services. The Service and the Syndicate also gave the Personnel Division detailed feedback on successive drafts of its guidelines Use of Computer Facilities in the University by Staff, laying particular emphasis on email, the security and protection of information and the desirability of quoting from or referring to existing material in the Syndicate's own guidelines.
Accommodation and Building Work
5. Starting in August 2001, the academic side of the Computer Laboratory quickly moved both itself and that name to West Cambridge, thereby clearing the way for several months of refurbishment work on those parts of the New Museums Site which were re-allocated to the Service, especially in the Austin Building. By June, over one-third of all staff were occupying newly fitted out offices, the new Common Room on Austin Floor 3 was proving particularly successful and space had been found on Austin Floor 4 for a long-requested shower facility and a first-aid room. In parallel, the old Titan Room was converted, using HEFCE Teaching Infrastructure funds, into two separate but connected 40-seater state-of-the-art teaching classrooms, mostly for undergraduate courses, replacing those in the Old Music School.
6. Other building work included the refurbishment of the Hardware Support workshops, improvements to the Photographic and Illustration Service space in the Old Examination School and the creation of a Building Services workshop on the ground floor of the Tower Infill to replace that lost when the Uninterrupted Power Supply to the main Computing Service computer room was installed (see below). Finally, after consultation with the University's insurers, plans were made to improve physical security on Arup Floor 3, which contains both the main computer room and the High Performance Computing Facility.
The Computing Service
7. The Computing Service provides the following types of facility and service:
Facilities such as networks and electronic mail, which can only be provided on a University-wide basis;
Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which provide computing resources to individual members of the University;
Centrally-managed services such as the Managed Cluster, managed Web server and managed mail domain services, which are aimed at institutions rather than individuals;
A wide range of support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities, including Software Sales, Unix Support, NT Support and the Hardware Maintenance service;
Ancillary support services such as videoconferencing, printing and photography and illustration;
Advice and consultancy services including a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff and a wide range of training courses.
8. The five operating divisions of Computing Service consist of two which manage the central facilities and provide specialised technical support and three which provide support to individual users and institutions, either directly or via local computer support staff.
The Network division is responsible for the University Data Network (CUDN), the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), support for institutional networking, the PWF and the Managed Cluster service;
The Systems and Unix division is responsible for the CUS, PWF Linux, electronic mail, web cache, news and Pelican archive services and also provides Unix support to individual institutions;
The Technical User Support division is responsible for the Help Desk, the Techlink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, general technical user support and the Hardware Support and Videoconferencing services.
The User Services division is responsible for information provision, user administration, Software Sales, hardware purchasing advice and the Printing and Photography & Illustration services;
The Institution Liaison division maintains contact concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters with Heads of Department, other senior managers and local computer support staff.
9. The following table summarises the estimated cost of providing each of the various facilities and services (with 2001 figures in italics), separating out costs met from central funding (UEF, equipment grant and SRIF) and those recovered from charges to users. Much of the increase in the centrally funded total is due to larger than usual expenditure on equipment for the GBN, CUDN and PWF. The cost recovery services total is £1.62M (26.5% of all costs), compared with £1.57M (29%) in 2001 and £1.58M (27.5%) in 2000.
2002 (£K) Centrally FundedCost Rec'yCombined TotalServiceStaffOtherTotal%20022001Network5065081,01422.5%4091,4231,038Network-related4107248210.7%27509567PWF35033268215.2% 682442CUS & Thor142261683.7% 168174Other centrally-run facilities198192174.8%29246266Software sales950952.1%649744734Managed Cluster service390390.9%139178195Other charged support services24602465.5%361607570Advice & consultancy6418472516.1% 725687Directorate & liaison33812746510.3%9474367Administration & overheads1791853648.1% 364336TOTAL3,1441,3534,497100.0%1,6236,1205,375
10. Some of the major developments during the year are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.
EastNet and SuperJANET 4
11. The EastNet regional network has its primary JANET connection in the Computing Service and serves the universities of Cambridge (including Homerton), Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire and Luton plus Writtle College (Chelmsford). After Cambridge was the lead site for implementation, ownership was to be transferred to the Association of Universities in the Eastern Region (AUEE). VAT considerations ruled this out, but AUEE are now expected to appoint a Project Officer who will, inter alia, investigate certain new developments which are wanted by the other HEIs but are of little interest to Cambridge.
12. Apart from an incident at the end of January, when 17 hours loss of connectivity on the main link to London was caused by lack of resilience due to faulty cable installation (later corrected at the supplier's expense), SuperJANET 4 performed considerably more reliably than its predecessor. In early June, two Dutch internet service providers used for international traffic went into voluntary administration, although connectivity was maintained while UKERNA urgently negotiated alternative provision. Later that month, a similar scenario was re-enacted following the serious financial problems at SuperJANET 4 service provider MCI WorldCom.
JANET Traffic Costs
13. UKERNA again billed Cambridge as a whole a pre-set amount (based on relative use in previous years) for incoming transatlantic SuperJANET traffic. Until January, they also provided the itemisation data used to recharge individual institutions for their share of the total but, following the arrival of new transatlantic links with additional bandwidth and new routers, were forced to withdraw that facility at very short notice. The bills for the second half of 2001-02 were therefore based on historic data in the form of relative traffic shares for the previous year. Although total transatlantic traffic up to the loss of itemisation was just over twice that for the same period in 2000-01, the total pre-set charge was only £120 K (£114 K in 2000-01) and the largest annual total for an individual institution £9.7 K (£6.3 K). Colleges again dominated the list of top ten paying institutions, with Engineering the only department represented.
14. Discussions continued all year about the new network charging model for HEIs, which is now expected to apply from August 2003, to be formula based and to reflect institutional size rather than actual traffic. The JISC also decided that, although the old charging regime would be retained for 2002-03, the total annual bill for all HEIs should go up by 35% (from £3.15 M in 2001-02 to £4.25 M in 2002-03, increasing the Cambridge share from £120 K to £162K), with similar rises in the total to follow in each of the next four years.
15. When the IT Syndicate considered options for recharging these costs to individual institutions in the absence of UKERNA itemisation data, the College members in particular stressed the importance of continuing to use charges based on actual traffic, although not necessarily just transatlantic traffic. Without this restriction, the Computing Service software first developed for traffic snapshots and identifying unreasonably large use could fairly easily be modified to provide comprehensive and reliable totals for both incoming and outgoing traffic to individual addresses, as measured at the JANET gateway router. So it was agreed to use the sum of these as the basis for calculating the quarterly charges starting from 1 August 2002.
CUDN Development
16. As reported last year, the Science Research Investment Fund is providing 75% funding for £1.2M of expenditure on upgrading the CUDN infrastructure to support the next generation of e-science projects. The backbone network was enhanced during June and August 2002 by installing gigabit Cisco router equipment supplied by Logical UK in an EU procurement, and it is planned to increase the backbone speed further during 2003 by adding 10 Gbps dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) equipment. An uninterruptible power supply (UPS), with generator backup, was brought into service in December to help improve the reliability of the central network equipment (and of important network-related services such as electronic mail). The installation of smaller UPSs at other backbone router sites continued and the out-of-hours emergency access arrangements for these sites were reviewed.
Network Security and other incidents
17. Maintaining network security involves an ongoing struggle to defend against constantly changing points of attack. Once the hackers discover a new vulnerability, the probes flood in and security is breached on a greater or smaller scale until the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) and other relevant Computing Service staff (from Electronic Mail, Unix Support or NT Support) can put defences in place and start to restore the hacked systems. Attacks for that particular vulnerability then fade away from a major threat to a minor nuisance but never quite disappear. For instance, the threat from the Code Red and Nimda worms was so great in the run up to Michaelmas that temporary filters were installed at the CUDN routers to block connections to new Web servers until they had been cleared by the friendly probing software. The threat lessened, the filters were removed in November and never put back, but Nimda was still being seen on a few machines each month as late as July 2002.
18. In the first half of the year, when an SSH software vulnerability was being exploited as a way to hack Unix machines, the subsequent investigation was hampered by the fact that, under friendly probing, some secure versions of SSH showed as vulnerable while other machines had been hacked but appeared to be secure, courtesy of changes made by the hacker. Windows machines were attacked from February via a vulnerability in Microsoft-SQL, while the Klez mail attachment virus infected 200 machines in April (but, thanks to the efforts of the Mail team, only 50 in May). The total number of CERT probe reports increased rapidly in the latter half of the year to a July average of 10 a day, 7 days a week but, because of the quality of the defences, the number of actual security breaches continued to average only 10 per month.
19. Thanks to the greatly increased number of probing attempts, the total number of incidents investigated during the year shot up to 2,096 (compared with 733 in 2000-01). These included both security incidents like those above and other misdemeanours including illicit software dumping, mail relay attempts and forged, political, pornographic or harassing email. The Computing Service became aware, either as a result of complaints from outside agencies or during the investigation of instances of unusually large network traffic, of an increasingly large number of computers in Colleges which were providing prima facie copyright material (usually film or music) to the internet at large; each incident was referred for action to the appropriate Senior Tutor (with a copy to the College's computer support staff).
IP Addresses
20. By the end of the year, the total number of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses in use throughout the University was almost 47,000 (compared with 42,900 and 36,500 in the two preceding years), although any slowing in the rate of growth probably owes more to the introduction of tighter allocation policies (see below) than any significant slackening in demand. After allowing for network infrastructure requirements, the remaining addresses divide roughly as 30,500 used by individual University institutions (for servers and other equipment as well as personal computers and workstations) and 15,000 used by the Colleges (including 9,200 active student study bedroom connections, 20% more than a year earlier). The devolution of most IP address registration to local support staff went very smoothly, even during the Michaelmas 2001 rush, and much reduced the demands on Computing Service staff.
21. Last year's report noted that, without changes to the way in which these IP v4 addresses were allocated, the Computing Service's basic allocation of just over 64K addresses was likely to run out within two years, whereas widespread use of IP v6 addresses was unlikely for three or four. During the year, the Computing Service introduced procedures for recovering blocks of unused addresses from individual institutions and for making new allocations more parsimoniously while Jesus College pioneered the use of private IP addresses and Network Address Translation for students and others with large numbers of devices which do not need the full range of IP protocols. For historical reasons, the Computer Laboratory and Engineering each have their own 64K IP address space and, although for technical reasons it would be very difficult to reallocate any of the Engineering addresses for general use, the Computer Laboratory agreed, subject to certain provisos, to make available for general use 32K of its addresses. With careful management, we should now be able to (just) get by.
System Administrators Charter
22. As part of their daily work, system and network administrators often need to take actions which may result in the disclosure of information held in other users' files or sent by them over communications networks; this falls within the scope of recent legislation such as the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and Telecommunications Regulations 2000, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Human Rights Act 1998. When the Head of UKERNA's CERT team produced a draft charter covering these matters, the IT Syndicate recognised its value in clarifying the rights and responsibilities of the system administrators both for themselves and for their senior management and asked the Computing Service to tailor it to the Cambridge context. The resulting paper was widely circulated both to departments and Colleges and also commended to the General Board and Council for official adoption on behalf of the University.
Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001
23. One aspect of this Act, which came into force on 1 September 2002, is to place a duty on the University to ensure that disabled students wishing to access Web-based information, e-learning or other online resources are not unjustifiably treated less favourably than other people. The Computing Service, having already taken some steps in this direction on a voluntary basis, now modified its own information resources to meet the new requirements and kept local computer support staff informed about the need to comply, both by putting the relevant information on its own Web pages and by holding a Techlink seminar on the subject.
Network
Granta Backbone Network
24. As usual, the GBN Management Committee delegated the handling of all operational matters to Network division staff. Additional cables were installed on five routes in the City centre (to provide more single and multimode fibres) and also at West Cambridge, linking the Gates Building, Turbomachinery, Astronomy and a new GBN mininode at the Temporary Catering Facility. At the Sidgwick Site, a new route from Economics to Harvey Court was agreed, ducts and cables were installed on it, existing services were moved over and the old cables removed, all ready for a July 2002 start to construction of the new English building. Plans were also made for a new route through Harvey Court and to re-route the GBN connection to New Addenbrooke's on account of the proposed new Cancer Research Centre.
Cambridge University Data Network Connections
25. The network now consists almost entirely of ethernet connections, at 10 Mbps or less (slow), at 100 Mbps (fast) or at 1000 Mbps (gigabit); these institutional links are connected via eight area routers to a gigabit ethernet CUDN backbone network (see above). During the year, the number of fast or gigabit connections increased from 76 to 98 (26 of them gigabit) while that of slow ones fell from 73 to 55 (for fuller details see the Annex). In general, each of these connections will support one or more local area networks (LANs), thereby interconnecting equipment in a whole building or even a whole department.
26. Software upgrades, configuration changes and the activation of multilayer switching all helped the CUDN to cope with the increased use of the IP multicast service by eScience projects, pending the installation of the new SRIF-funded backbone routers. In February, the CUDN interface switches in three departments were replaced after they were found to be causing data corruption and so threatening the integrity of the PWF service. After lengthy technical investigations, and concern about the effect of US export controls on the availability of "strong encryption" software, July 2002 saw the start of a pilot Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, to provide remote access to the CUDN via other Internet Service Providers. Staff also investigated joining the JANET experimental IP v6 service, to try out its end-system implementations. Magpie continued to have about 2,000 users; the older V.34 modem service was withdrawn as planned while additional lines were obtained for the V.90 56 Kbps service.
Network Support and Network Installation
27. Network Support staff continued to advise individual institutions about wiring buildings, installing LANs and obtaining CUDN connections; there were again just over 200 consultations in total, equally divided between Colleges and University institutions. Although total demand was slightly down this year, the Network Installation team still carried out or supervised work which included 27 new fast or gigabit ethernet installations or upgrades (compared to 30 in 2000-01), optical fibre installation work at 27 sites (25), copper wiring at 15 (30), two new network equipment installations (11) and one test of existing cables (5). Several emergency visits were also needed to repair cable damage, including rodent damage.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
28. Although the statistical data on email in the Annex is distorted by the inadvertent loss of a month's data and the effects of the Klez email attachment virus, it is clear that there was a 30% or more rise in the overall volume of mail handled by Hermes (from 602 GB to 781 GB ignoring distortions) and that most of this was due to an increase in average message length. The number of Hermes users rose from 27,900 to 28,900, due to a combination of new users and existing email users moving over from CUS. The existing Hermes hardware coped well with the extra Michaelmas Term load while the installation of major (and somewhat overdue) software and firmware upgrades in December, which also involved considerable data reorganisation, was carefully planned and went ahead smoothly. Although systems effort was in short supply for a while after one of the two programmers moved to the Information group, the Mail group was fortunate in recruiting a well-qualified replacement at the first attempt.
29. A major new development this year was the locally written Webmail system, which allows users to send and receive electronic mail via the Internet. After a small scale pilot service during Michaelmas had provided operational experience and useful feedback on the user interface, Webmail was released for general use in the Lent Term and pronounced fully operational in July. The uptake by users increased steadily during the year, but since the initial system design had taken into account efficiency requirements, it was well able to cope. Further functional development of Webmail in 2002-03 is unlikely, as Mail group resources must soon be devoted to a serious effort to enhance the basic Hermes mailstore engine.
Information Services
30. This group ensures that all Computing Service documentation, whether on paper or on the Web, is accurate, up to date and easy to use. A revised version of last year's pilot on-line University Map was produced in September to accompany the release of the printed version by the Press and is being regularly updated. During the year, the group updated the Service's Web pages, installed the Guide to Courses, Cambridge Discovery and the Undergraduate Prospectus 2003 on the University Web server and, with help from Systems and Unix, made arrangements to allow Press Office to change the news story on the University front page without help from the group. When one of the Mail group changed to a job working partly on documentation, her first task was, appropriately, to write the helptext for the WebMail service.
31. By the end of the year, the Web server was hosting pages for 205 University societies (up from 180 in 2000-01), while 56 (42) institutions with the ability to author pages but no wish to run their own server were using the managed Web server service. Staff also continued to provide input to the University Web Site Steering Committee, to organise useful and well attended meetings of local Webmasters and to make presentations at national meetings of university information staff. The Technical Librarians dealt with 6,350 enquiries to Webmaster (12.5% more than the 5,644 in 2000-01), maintained the staff library, established user libraries for new Managed Clusters (and maintained them for existing ones) and also collected contact information for departments (in XML format, for use in several different places).
32 The commercial Ultraseek software used on the Computing Service web search engine produces a single index of the contents of all "official" servers within the cam.ac.uk domain and allows external users to locate the material they want by removing the need to know or guess in advance which server may hold it. It also facilitates complex searches and searches within individual servers. The following table compares the use in July 2002 with July 2001:
July 2002July 2001Servers, documents indexed364, 394 K321, 401 KTotal searches, data sent,143 K, 2.8 GB111 K, 2.2 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world25%, 12%, 63%25%, 15%, 60%
33. Total incoming requests to the main University Web site (http://www.cam.ac.uk/) were 112.2 M (compared to 65.5 M in 2000-01). They came from over 190 country-level domains (190), with a daily peak of 540 K (304 K). The table compares July 2002 with July 2001:
July 2002July 2001Total requests received, total data sent9.3 M, 40 GB3.7 M, 17 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world35%, 9%, 56%33%, 8%, 59%
34. The local and national Web caches automatically maintain copies of recently referenced documents with the dual aim of improving retrieval times and reducing the need for external network traffic. The increase in load at the start of Michaelmas 2001 was the first real test of the new PC-based local cache, which coped very well and averted a previously looming performance crisis. By close monitoring, the cache support team tracked down an extremely obscure problem which while not readily visible to users would have severely limited the overall performance. The table compares local cache activity in July 2002 and July 2001.
July 2002July 2001Total requests received, total data volume176 M, 1,198 GB122 M, 830 GB% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)49.3%, 20.8%46.4%, 18.0%Client systems, client domains9,678, 1628,559, 161
N.B. Because of firewalls and other local web caches the client systems figures will be underestimates.
35. Although one might expect to improve overall performance by setting the local cache to use the national cache experiments showed that this was not always true, so staff kept a close eye on the system and adjusted its settings as necessary to maintain acceptable results. The national cache is to close down in December 2002 but the Computing Service is in no doubt that it will be worthwhile to continue to develop the Cambridge cache and to promote its use.
36. Cambridge users continued to benefit from the Computing Service's USENET news server, which by giving access to thousands of local and world-wide news groups, allows them to distribute information on, and to contribute to the discussion of, a very wide range of topics. The following table compares the levels of activity during July 2002 and July 2001:
July 2002July 2001News server connections: monthly total, peak rate240 K, 117282 K, 102Total, local newsgroups14.9K, 23414.4K, 233Monthly volume, number of individual postings20.4 GB, 8.4 M18.5 GB, 8.9 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
37 Staff from the Small Systems and Operations groups continued to support both the centrally managed Public Workstation Facility and the charged Managed Cluster Service (see below) and to roll out a new basic Windows NT image each quarter. To help with their development work, a PWF test laboratory room was made as part of the office refurbishments. A count in January showed that the combined PWF and MCS clusters contained 850 PCs and 170 Macintoshes and that as many as 350 were often concurrently logged on. Because of the absence of statistical data from mid-April to end July 2001, the table below compares full year figures for 2001-02 with (in italics) those for the first 8.5 months of 2000-01.
Public Workstation Facility UsersSessionsUniversity5,976(46.2%)4,329(46.1%)379,034(35.6%)237,489(37.4%)Colleges6,901(53.4%)5,016(53.4%)683,285(64.2%)395,955(62.3%)External57(0.4%)40(0.4%)2,523(0.2%)2,179(0.3%TOTAL12,934(100.0%)9,385(100.0%)1,064,842(100.0%)635,623(100.0%)
N.B. In general, undergraduates are registered as College users and postgraduates as University ones.
38. When last summer's major changes, including the introduction of Novell NetWare 5.1 and Windows 2000 Pro, were exposed to the step change in load at the start of the academic year, the resulting problems included file corruption on the servers holding user files and a rash of "broken profiles", which had to be worked around until one of the Churchill computer staff came up with a more permanent fix. Devolved user print account administration using Pcounter was gradually introduced across the PWF, although some Colleges later restricted printing to members only. IP was used for various inter-server communications as the first stage of a planned move away from Novell's IPX-based protocols, while the arrival of two additional MCS-funded programmers allowed other staff to resume work on the proposed pilot service using Windows Terminal Server. Finally, during the Long Vacation 2002, the total disc storage capacity available for users' personal files was doubled to 280 GB.
Central Unix Service. Thor and Linux
39. With the help of routine upgrades to its systems and applications software, the Central Unix Service continued to run smoothly and to be widely used by researchers throughout the University. The rationale for (and use made of) the related Thor facility disappeared after PWF Linux (see below) was generally acclaimed as more suitable for Unix-based taught courses. After widespread user consultation, it was decided to close Thor from August 2002, with the taught courses (in Computer Science, Chemistry and Physics) moving to PWF Linux and access to other Web server facilities being provided for those courses which need them. The table below presents information on CUS and Thor usage in 2001-02, with 2000-01 in italics:
Central Unix ServiceThor CPUUsersCPUUsersUniversity91.8%92.3%2,7803,1359.2%8.6%6266Colleges7.3%6.9%33437890.8%91.4%156402External0.9%0.8%3838 TOTAL100.0%100.0%3,1523,551100.0%100.0%218468
40. Following much hard development work by the Unix Support Group, PWF Linux was available by October 2001 on all the centrally managed PWF clusters and (as a chargeable addition) on many Managed Clusters (some of which had taken up the further option of a remotely accessible Linux server). During the Michaelmas Term, various teething problems took up much support effort but were eventually overcome thanks to the help, co-operation and forbearance of the pioneer users, especially those from Physics. Although the resulting PWF Linux then proved to be extremely successful in general and much more suitable for the undergraduate taught courses than the Thor multi-user system, staff subsequently spent much of the Long Vacation 2002 working on an improved version for the new academic year.
User Administration
41. This group again handled with quiet efficiency all its regular tasks, from the mass pre-registration of incoming students and re-registration of Magpie users in September through to the Long Vacation cancellations of leavers and temporary registration of the many summer school and conference attendees who require access to computing facilities. When most new students wishing to notify their consent to be included in the University's web-based email search database used paper forms rather than a web-page, staff were left with thousands of barcodes to scan in but there was a better response to a new Web form which allowed users to apply online for additional disc space and usually obtain a same day response. The Jackdaw database, which underpins all Computing Service user account and IP address management, underwent substantial enhancement, with separation of the underlying database engine from the applications system and re-development of the interfaces used by the user administration staff.
42. During the year, Computing Service staff worked with Management Information Services and the Senior Tutors on the CamCORS online supervisions reporting project. User Administration will provide the registration mechanism and issue supervisors with passwords, starting during the Long Vacation, ready for the official launch in October 2002. The group's manager also helped produce the project definition study for the CamSIS student records database and attended a working group on the establishment of a harassment adviser network.
Pelican data archive service
43. To enable the Pelican data archive to keep pace with user requirements, a new disc system capable of holding a terabyte (1000 GB) of data was installed. Teething troubles, mainly to do with the environmental monitoring module, delayed the operational deployment of the equipment, while in August 2002 the system had to be shut down for several days when the RAID system was unable to recover from individual disc faults (apparently because some of the parity information was incorrect). However by the end of the year, Pelican was storing 250 GB of data (25% up on last year's 200 GB) for 932 different users (920) from over 80 University institutions and Colleges. The two largest institutional holdings were again those of the University Library (for scanned photographic data, experiments in electronic document storage and other projects) and the Computing Service (for backup of programs and data).
High Performance Computing Facility
44. The High Performance Computing Facility (which has a separate committee of management) continued to be housed in the Computing Service and to use the services of a senior programmer from the Service with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Software Sales
45. The Software Sales group continued to supply the University with competitively priced software through CHEST (Combined HE Software Team) and other deals and to administer University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. The CHEST Microsoft Select 4 agreement was replaced by Select 5, which runs until October 2003 and is more restrictive in that it allows no sharing of licences between machines and, in a formal tendering procedure, a new retailer was chosen to supply Select 5 licences to the University. Although order processing performance was poor from November to January because of staff changes it improved from February onwards as the new arrivals became fully trained. The table below summarises sales by product type for 2001-02, with 2000-01 in italics.
Software SalesItems Communications988751Graphics & drawing, statistics2,1592,226Office packages, operating systems/utilities7,0326,510Programming languages, mathematics/libraries2,444675Word processing, spreadsheets, databases2,9211,826Geographic, miscellaneous1,2601,74SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics482486TOTAL17,28614,216
Managed Cluster Service
46. Institutions join the Managed Cluster Service (MCS) to simplify the management of their general-access computer rooms by paying the Computing Service to support the Novell NetWare servers and the software on the individual workstations. Service staff update the software (which consists of the standard PWF image with optional additional applications) each quarter and also make regular visits to deal with problems and assess new requirements. Of the 25 MCS clusters at the start of the year (13 in Colleges and 12 in departments), 11 were using shared servers located in the Computing Service rather than hosting their own. During the Christmas Vacation the cluster at the Computer Laboratory was completed and new clusters were added at New Hall and Law. During summer 2002 new clusters were added at Geography, Robinson, St John's and Wolfson. The Modern and Medieval Languages cluster was split off from the Arts and Humanities one, nine more existing clusters converted to using shared servers located in the Service and ten added or upgraded their individual workstations.
External Hardware Maintenance
47. Engineering group staff repair equipment for institutions and individuals either as part of a full cover contract service or, more commonly, on a charged time and materials basis and also carry out warranty repairs for University customers of certain manufacturers. The tables summarise repair work carried out during 2001-02, with figures for 2000-01 in italics.
Equipment repaired by Type ContractNon-contractIBM PC &c.289147246138Apple Macintosh28469289Printers9697101137Laptops55201192Other equipment519581113TOTAL469390721669Equipment repaired by Institution ContractNon-contractUniversity309208511473Colleges160182207190External 36TOTAL469390721669
Printing and Reproduction Service
48. The end of leases on the Xerox Docutech and Afga colour machines closely coincided with the move of the Computer Laboratory (although the Computing Service will continue to produce much of their lecture course material for the time being). New equipment, with a considerably downsized capacity and consisting of one monochrome and one colour Ricoh Aficio machines, was installed in December, and has since proved very reliable. Total monochrome throughput for the year was 780 K impressions for the Computing Service (compared to 910 K in 2000-01), 790 K for the Computer Laboratory (810 K) and 470 K for external customers (600 K), while the colour copy totals were: Service 2.5 K (7K); Laboratory 1.1 K (1.4 K); external customers 5.4 K (7.2 K).
Photography & Illustration Service
49. The throughput of traditional photography recovered, with 7,900 rolls of E6 film (up from 7,300 in 2000-01) and 167 K colour prints (133 K) being processed. A total of 7,500 slides (6,700) were produced, including 4,200 from digital input, and in its second year the digital scanning service handled 780 films (260) and over 1,300 mounted slides or other items. Staff on the illustration side produced almost 1,700 posters (2,000) of which 850 were also encapsulated and undertook graphic design work for 40 institutions throughout the University. Finally, at General Admission and other Congregations staff took almost 9,000 photographs (8,300) of graduands inside the Senate House and a further 2,500 on the Lawn, while also expanding into the sale of frames for their prints and degree certificates.
Videoconferencing Service
50. Much of the use of the Computing Service facility this year has switched from ISDN to IP conferencing, mainly for cost reasons, and as the available bandwidth increases IP is expected to become the norm. The addition of projection facilities plus a PC with whiteboard, extra camera and monitor has enabled the suite to host lectures, presentations and other teaching which are transmitted simultaneously to a variety of sites (both local and remote), all of which have full interactive feedback facilities; these features have been much used and appreciated by departments working with MIT under the CMI initiative. Total suite usage during the year was 146.5 hours from 81 bookings (compared to 132 from 72 in 2000-01). In January, staff and suite participated in the British Educational Training and Technology show.
51. Issues such as the CMI initiative, the eScience AccessGrid project and a Government bid to install videoconferencing in all schools raised the profile of videoconferencing in the University and staff were kept busy providing consultancy about proposed new facilities at Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Architecture, New Addenbrookes', Applied Mathematics and the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, as well as the recently launched services at the CMI, the Judge Institute and the Centre for Applied Research into Educational Technologies. Staff also collaborated with Anglia Polytechnic University on technical issues concerning IP videoconferencing and are currently working on a project with the AccessGrid.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Support
52. Technical User Support (TUS) staff support the wide range of application software on the centrally-managed facilities, run the Computing Service/University Library Electronic Reference Library system and apply updates to its 10 widely used databases and manage and largely staff the advice and consultancy, Help Desk and Techlink services (see below). At the Sidgwick Site, TUS provides general support and is also responsible for the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC), which provides a specialist service for the humanities.
53. As more hackers targeted Windows systems, the NT Support group had to deal with the consequences of the Code Red and Nimda worms and exploitation of vulnerabilities in Microsoft SQL-Server (see above). NT Support also prepared a three-day course on upgrading from Windows NT4 to Windows 2000 and Active Directory and gave it to local computer support staff in April and again in May. TUS also installed the KeyServer use monitoring and licence count software on the PWF Macintoshes and provided Service staff with a hardware installation, hard disc backup and virus software update service for their desktop machines.
Help Desk and Techlink
54. During the year, the Help Desk logging software was successfully transferred to a more powerful Solaris system with an upgraded version of the underlying Oracle database. The table summarises Help Desk calls for 2001-02 (with 2000-01 figures in italics):
Help DeskCalls University7,455(69.8%)7,103((70.6%)Colleges2,488(23.3%)2,420(24.1%)External735(6.9%)535(5.3%)TOTAL10,678(100.0%)10,058(100.0%)
After a small drop in the previous year, the number of calls went up by 6%; the proportion of calls made by telephone (47%) continued to increase steadily, well outstripping calls in person (26%) or by email (27%). By far the most popular call topic was electronic mail. There were small rises in the proportions of calls closed within 1 hour (from 85.5% to 86.4%) and within 24 hours (from 90.9% to 91.8%); 2.1% of calls were referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff did not have a ready answer to a call about a non-Computing Service facility. The number of calls initiated by Techlinks went up by 10% (from 1,444 to 1,582) and the time spent by Computing Service staff in finding the answers by 16%, to over 900 person-hours.
55. The Techlink scheme, which provides "fast track" backup and general support to local computer support staff, seems to have stabilised at a membership around 300 and to have produced a real sense of community among support staff, who regularly using its mailing lists to seek (and usually to find) all kinds of advice and information, from their peers as well as from Computing Service staff. The Techlink seminars were very well supported and went from strength to strength, with sessions given by MISD and Library staff, other Techlinks and outside suppliers as well as Service staff. Highlights included an overview of Windows XP (on the day before its official launch), technical talks by Intel and Microsoft staff (organised by Viglen); a hands-on seminar by Apple on MacOS X and talks by Library staff on the Voyager catalogue software and by University Card staff on creating Web user interfaces using Perl.
Training
56. Computing Service training courses both help reduce the advice and consultancy load and enable users to make better use of their computers. After advertising postcards were sent out to all staff in October, the resulting increase in enquiries translated into a 5% increase in that term's attendances and the need to schedule additional courses on popular topics such as Photoshop and Unix. (Fortunately, a new and more flexible course administration database had just come into service.) For the Easter term, the popular Web page authoring courses were substantially revised, while exit surveys generally reported both positive feedback and high levels of customer satisfaction. The table below summarises academic course attendance information for 2001-02, with 2000-01 in italics. In addition, 412 assistant staff attended 44 Personnel Division funded course sessions (up from 212 and 31 in 2000-01), the self teaching courseware was as popular as ever and Service trainers again provided customised courses on request, to customers including College administrative staff, the Careers Service and History.
Course Types SessionsAttendancesPersonal Computers1513213194Unix1613915970Networking46461,0751,183Spreadsheets & Databases38351,0191,091Word & Doc. Processing48421,004931Statistical Computing1111250438Other courses55292356TOTAL1791634,7685,163Course Attendance AttendancesUniversity3,8614,153Colleges680878External227132TOTAL4,7685,163
57. In June, the fourth course on Dr Hazel's Exim Mail Transfer Agent proved the most popular yet, with 125 attendees, 17 from abroad. During the year, the Computing Service prepared to provide on-line teaching and certification for the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), which is internationally recognised as a measure of basic computing skills. A pilot scheme for staff from certain departments, part-funded by the Staff Development Office, will start in October 2002 and if all goes well will be extended to staff from October 2003; the inclusion of students will be investigated once the scheme is working smoothly.
58. The total load on the Computing Service training facilities, including a significant amount of use by some departments to give their own computing courses, went up from 436 sessions in 2000-01 to 501 in 2001-02. By August 2002, the two new 40-seater classrooms (see above) were ready for use, but since the old and unsatisfactory classrooms in the Old Music School they replace have been given up, there are still likely to be severe scheduling difficulties at popular times. In addition, a member of Unix Support, with his own experience of RSI problems, has overseen the creation and equipping of an Access Technologies room and has used it to develop and give one-to-one training on the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice software which its owners readily acknowledge to be better than their own courses.
Unix Support
59. One of the major successes of this group, the development of PWF Linux, has already been mentioned. Another is the week-long Linux System Administration course, which is given twice a year, is always popular and has now been attended by the vast majority of Unix systems administrators in the University. The group is also responsible for maintaining the friendly probing software, the Unix Support server (very heavily relied on by the Unix community, at its disc space limit and about to be replaced by a bigger system) and the managed Web server (due to be replaced by a "next generation" facility when time permits.) Finally, direct institutional support, most commonly help with recovering from security incidents, was provided to institutions including Management Information Services, Chemistry, Physics, four Colleges and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
60. Computing Service staff again maintained regular contact with major suppliers and used information and feedback from this and other sources to advise institutions and individual users, both in person and via Web pages, about economic sources of personal computer systems to suit their particular needs. Close liaison was maintained with the University Purchasing Office. At the sixth Annual Demonstration Day in November, hundreds of University users saw exhibitions and demonstrations from 18 exhibitors, featuring a wide range of hardware and software, together with ancillary equipment and services.
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
61. This division keeps in touch about computing matters at institution level with both senior management and computer support staff, its two staff being assisted as required by members of the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Services. Staff helped those departments facing the last of the old style TQA assessments with advice on the preparation of IT-related base materials, attended Learning Resources meetings and arranged for assessors to visit the central PWF classrooms. They also saw to the annual update of the table of College IT Provision for Students, which has proved so useful in this and other contexts.
62. Staff from the division accepted requests to attend computer committee or similar meetings at individual institutions (60 at Colleges and 140 at University organisations; in total one-fifth less than for 2000-01); assisted with staff selection on 30 occasions and helped introduce a dozen new staff into the idiosyncrasies of computing in Cambridge. They again organised both well attended termly meetings for all departmental and/or College computer staff and smaller liaison meetings where staff from the Computing Service and the Library or Management Information Services discussed issues of mutual interest. Finally, staff continued to chair the Windows Integration Group and attended meetings of the Syndicate's Technical Committee, the JTMC and its Technical Sub-committee and the Cambridge eScience Forum.
M. S. LONGAIR Chairman
S. J. BARTON
T. A. CARPENTER
D. E. DETMER
I. M. LEM. DUQUESNAY
P. K. FOX
R. GLEN
K. GLOVER
R. HANKA
T. R. HARRISON
M. F. HEATH
S. KEARSEY
I. LESLIE
B. K. OMOTANI
M. D. SAYERS
C. A. SHORT
P. B. WILSON
© 2002 University of Cambridge Computing Service
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Information Technology Syndicate University of Cambridge > IT Syndicate
Report of the Information Technology Syndicate
on the University Computing Service for 2002-2003
Introduction
Syndicate Matters
Accommodation and Building Work
The Computing Service
Network Security
Network
JANET and EastNet
JANET Traffic Costs
Granta Backbone Network
Cambridge University Data Network
Network Support and Network Installation
IP Addresses
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
Information and Web Services
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
Central Unix Service
User Administration
Pelican data archive service and D-Space@Cambridge CMI project
High Performance Computing Facility
Support services
Software Sales
Managed Cluster Service
External Hardware Maintenance
Printing and Reproduction Service
Photography & Illustration Service (PandIS)
Videoconferencing Service
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Support
Help Desk and Techlink
Training
Unix Support
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
Statistical Annexe (PDF)
Introduction
1. The remit of the Information Technology Syndicate is to develop computing policy for the University and the Colleges and to supervise the work of the Computing Service. This Report and Statistical Annex cover the activities of the Syndicate and the Service for the year 1 August 2002 to 31 July 2003. Although the printed version of the Annex gives only top level summaries of service use, breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/itsyndicate/annrep/stats02.03.pdf. Note that the Report only attempts to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities and so the statistical information makes no attempt at being fully comprehensive.
Syndicate Matters
2. Under Professor Longair's continuing chairmanship the IT Syndicate discussed a wide variety of issues. Those which were directly concerned with Computing Service activities and are described elsewhere in the Report included recovering JANET traffic costs, a pilot progamme for staff to obtain the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) qualification, a revised version of the document setting out staff and customer responsibilities in the operation of the Managed Cluster Service, the formal establishment of a Computing Commodity Group to carry forward the Service's purchasing advice activities and draft guidelines for computer support staff investigating allegations of child abuse and other illegal material on computers. The Technical Committee, chaired by Dr Heath, assisted these discussions with some very useful input on their more technological aspects.
3. The Syndicate also discussed using some Science Research Infrastructure Fund (SRIF) money for local networking projects to complement the earlier expenditure on general increases in University Data Network bandwidth and as a result, projects are in hand for the upgrading of network switching and routing equipment in several departments. The Syndicate approved a new set of Computer Officer Grading Criteria which took into account the rationalised salary scales introduced with effect from June 2002; these criteria are widely used to grade jobs and to advise appointing bodies throughout the University and the Colleges. The Syndicate also received the Internal Auditors report on Software Licensing and produced recommendations for inclusion in the University's response. Finally, the Syndicate welcomed reports from the Director of the Management Information Services Division on his plans for administrative computing, including the CamSIS project, and from the Chairman of the Joint Telecommunications Committee on plans to upgrade the telephone network.
Accommodation and Building Work
4. In September 2002, a Computing Service bid to use the vacant half of Arup Floor 2 for an additional teaching room and a small computer room lost out to one from Materials Science, although the teaching need was partly offset when Professor Leslie agreed that some Computer Laboratory space on Cockcroft Floor 4 might be equipped and used for courses on Sun system software. Towards the end of the year, while preparing to comply with changes in the fire regulations by replacing the halon fire suppressant system in the main computer room with an argon-based one, great difficulty was experienced in finding suitable space for the greatly increased number of gas bottles this would require and the Service is extremely grateful for permission from Materials Science to put the bottles in part of their Arup Floor 2 area.
5. The Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) for the main computer room failed to operate normally on several occasions; investigations showed that the ambient temperature in its room was high enough to seriously reduce the life of the batteries and air-conditioning was installed. The UPDS subsequently worked well and, as an example, kept central services going on a morning in February when there was a major break in the power supply to much of the city. By the end of the year, however, as the power requirements in the computer room continued to increase, the provision of significant additional UPS capacity was under investigation.
The Computing Service
6. The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service to users throughout the University and Colleges can be summarised as follows:
Facilities which can only be provided on a University-wide basis, such as networks and electronic mail;
Centrally-managed services which provide computing resources to individual members of the University, such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS);
Centrally-managed services which are aimed at institutions rather than individuals, such as the Managed Cluster, managed Web server and managed mail domain services;
Support services for a wide range of institutional and individually-owned facilities, including Software Sales, Unix Support, NT Support and the Hardware Maintenance service;
Ancillary support services including videoconferencing, printing and photography and illustration;
Advice and consultancy services which include a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the TechLink support scheme for local computer staff and a wide range of training courses.
7. The Computing Service has five operating divisions, two which manage the central facilities and give specialised technical support and three which provide more general support services to individual users and institutions, either directly or via local computer support staff.
The Network division looks after the University Data Network (CUDN), the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), support for institutional networking, the PWF and the Managed Cluster service;
The Systems and Unix division is responsible for the CUS, PWF Linux, electronic mail, and Pelican archive services, systems support for web services and Unix support to individual institutions;
The Technical User Support division has responsibilities which include the Help Desk, the TechLink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, general technical user support and the Hardware Support and Videoconferencing services.
The User Services division looks after information provision, user administration, Software Sales, hardware purchasing advice and the Printing and Photography & Illustration services;
The Institution Liaison division maintains contact concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters with Heads of Department, other senior managers and local computer support staff.
8. The following table summarises the estimated cost of providing each of the various facilities and services (with 2002 figures in italics), giving separately those costs met from central funding (UEF, equipment grant and SRIF) and those recovered from charges to users. The cost recovery services total is £1.64M (27% of all costs), compared with £1.62M (26.5%) in 2002 and £1.57M (29%) in 2001.
2003 (£K) Centrally FundedCost Rec'yCombined TotalServiceStaffOtherTotal%20032002Network5305111,04123.4%3801,4211,423Network-related43715058713.2%28615509PWF4169350911.4%509682CUS & Thor144151593.6%159168Other centrally-run facilities200202205.0%32252246Software sales990992.2%615714744Managed Cluster service2020.0%188190178Other charged support services24502455.6%388634607Advice & consultancy6924373516.5%735725Directorate & liaison37710147810.7%9487424Administration & overheads1861883748.4%374364TOTAL3,3291,1214,450100.0%1,6416,0916,120
Network Security
9. Each month, thousands of malicious probes were made against computers connected to the CUDN. However, thanks to the vigilance and speedy response of staff in many parts of the Computing Service (including the ongoing "friendly probing" programme), backed up by the continuing efforts of system managers across the University to rapidly install new system software security patches as they became available, the monthly total of machines which had been successfully hacked rarely exceeded 20 (and even in October, when there were so many new student machines around, only reached 50). This was just as well, given the disruption caused by each security breach and the support staff time needed to recover from it.
10. The Cambridge Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) first realised the scale of the probing problem in August 2002, after developing scripts to automatically extract the relevant information from the CUDN traffic summaries. The monthly probe total immediately quadrupled from 400 (based on user notifications) to 1,600 and continued to rise steadily until March 2003 when, following the announcement of a new Windows vulnerability, it doubled overnight to 7,800. The numbers then fell off slightly, but for the rest of the year the Cambridge reports to JANET-CERT were indicating over 200 probes per day. Overall, because of the new way of recording probing, the total number of probes and incidents recorded during the year was 54,786 (compared with only 2,096 in 2001-02). While the main target was consistently Microsoft services on port 445, the details changed from month to month as new worms and reports of software vulnerabilities appeared; there were fewer probes in total for Linux and other Unix systems but they still presented a significant problem.
11. Over the Christmas break, CERT observed a week-long (and thankfully unsuccessful) brute force passwords attack on MS-SQL servers, while in January the Slammer worm (with the same target) accounted for over 1,600 probes and eight successfully hacked machines. Over the Easter holiday, an attempted hack too far on CUS led CERT to discover 15 compromised Linux machines, some dating back to the previous October. Demonstrating that anything and everything connected to the CUDN may be hacked, in March CERT found an "eggdrop" case involving an unpatched Solaris machine attached to a photocopier. Finally, the relative quiet of the Long Vacation was shattered in mid-August 2003 by the appearance of the Lovsan/MSBlaster and Nachi worms, immediately followed by the Sobig.F virus. Many personal computers across the University were affected and the new virus scanning software (see below) was fully activated ahead of schedule to deal with the flood of Sobig email, finding and destroying 365,000 viral messages in 10 days (with a peak rate of 15,000 an hour).
12. The following paragraphs provide information on each of the individual facilities and services provided by the Computing Service.
Network
JANET and EastNet
13. Cambridge accesses the Joint Academic Network (JANET) via the EastNet regional network, which has its primary JANET connection in the Computing Service and also serves Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire and Luton universities and Writtle College. The only serious loss of JANET connectivity during the year was for 5.5 hours on Saturday November 2, when completely independent but contemporaneous faults brought down both branches of the resilient link to the SuperJANET core in London.
JANET Traffic Costs
14. As explained in last year's Report, the IT Syndicate had agreed to recover the 2002-03 charge to Cambridge as a whole (pre-set at £162,231) from individual institutions by means of quarterly charges similar to those for transatlantic traffic costs but based on the total of incoming and outgoing traffic of all types through the JANET gateway router. This scheme operated well; the largest yearly total for an individual institution was £11.2 K (up from £9.7 K in 2001-02 under the previous method of calculation) and the list of the top ten contributors consisted of eight Colleges plus Physics and Engineering. The new charging regime from August 2003 will be based only on the total income of each HEI. Although the total to be recovered from all institutions has increased from £4.15 M to £4.95 M, the Cambridge amount was due to fall slightly, but has been frozen at the 2002-03 level for one year in order to cap the substantial percentage rises which would have applied to some other HEIs.
15. From the start of the year, JANET traffic data for individual institutions, aggregated for various periods (daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly) and sorted by overall total, was shown on the web in same way as the transatlantic traffic data had been. From April, this was supplemented by similar data for the top 20 individual hosts within each institution. The ready availability of this information to local computer support staff greatly reduced the number of occasions on which Network Support needed to contact them about individual hosts in their institution with abnormally high levels of network traffic.
Granta Backbone Network
16. The GBN Management Committee continued to delegate all operational matters to Network division staff. Cable re-routings on account of building works were planned and/or carried out at the Addenbrooke's Hospital site, Homerton, St Catharine's and Downing playing fields and at Fenners, where the GBN routes are affected by the construction both of the University's Cricket School and new accommodation for Hughes Hall. It became clear that many current College Bursars, not having been in post when the GBN was installed, were unaware both of the corporate nature of the network and its wayleaves policy, so a page with the relevant information has been added to the GBN web site. This year's concentration on building matters should not be allowed to obscure the fact that, eleven years after its initial installation, the GBN continues, both successfully and unobtrusively, to provide for the many communications needs of an increasingly diverse and widespread University community.
Cambridge University Data Network
17. Since the completion of the installation of gigabit Cisco router equipment in August 2002, this year's SRIF networking projects have been concerned with departmental needs (see above), but plans are under way to further increase the CUDN backbone bandwidth in late 2003 by installing 10 Gbps equipment. The backbone's eight area routers connect individual institutions using either slow (10 Mbps or less), fast (100 Mbps) or gigabit (1000 Mbps) ethernet links. During the year, the gigabit connections increased from 26 to 35 and fast connections from 72 to 76, while the number of slow connections fell from 55 to 46 (for fuller details see the Annex). In general, each of these connections supports one or more local area networks (LANs) which themselves interconnect equipment in a whole building or even a whole department. As an indication of the practically universal need for network access in today's University, new connections included the Lady Mitchell Hall, CRASSH, the Disability Resource Centre and the Proctors (Greenwich House).
18. The Virtual Private Dial-up Network (VPDN) pilot service has significant technical problems, although client software for Windows 9x, NT, 2000 and XP is now working adequately. The equivalent client software for Macintosh and Unix platforms is still being sought. The VPDN router also firewalls outgoing FTP sessions, which allows high-numbered TCP ports to be blocked for security reasons without disrupting FTP data connections. The Magpie service, which continued to have around 2,000 users, moved to a new access server which supports the latest technical developments. In the way of modem services, this change brought problems for some previously trouble-free users, which had to be tracked down and fixed.
Network Support and Network Installation
19. Individual institutions were again given advice by Network Support staff about wiring buildings, installing LANs and obtaining CUDN connections; out of some 190 consultations in all (compared to 200 in 2001-02), around 70% were for University institutions. As is only to be expected given the ubiquity and maturity of the CUDN, the totals for different kinds of installation work carried out or supervised by Network staff for the Computing Service and other institutions were similar to previous years with 27 new or upgraded ethernet installations (compared to 27 in 2001-02), optical fibre installation work at 26 sites (27), copper wiring at 22 (15), 8 new network equipment installations (2) and 3 tests of existing cables (1).
IP Addresses
20. The steps already set in motion to deal with the potential shortage of 32-bit Internet Protocol (IPv4) addresses (see last year's Report) worked well, while a new mechanism, which automatically issues IPv4 addresses to institutions against requests made via a web form and records the allocations in a database, was both welcomed by local computer support staff and saved central staff effort. The Computing Service joined JANET's experimental IPv6 (64-bit addresses) service and made arrangements to allow both Service and institutional staff to try out the IPv6 software which is becoming available from suppliers without impacting the IPv4 service. By the end of the year, the total of IPv4 addresses in use throughout the University was almost 52,300 (compared with 47,000 in 2001-02), with about 34,000 (30,500) being used for equipment in individual University institutions and 16,800 (15,000) by the Colleges. While most addresses continued to be global, some 1,400 CUDN-wide private addresses were being used for equipment which only needs to be accessed from within the cam.ac.uk domain.
Network-related services
Electronic Mail
21. During the year, major software development effort, backed up by the purchase and installation of extensive PC cluster hardware, went into two projects. The first involved finding, and tailoring to local requirements, better anti-spam and anti-virus software for the mail switch. The problem of "spam" (uninvited and unwanted mass email) continues to worsen and, although now receiving attention at national and international levels, is unlikely to go away quickly. Simply blocking all mail from known spam addresses is no longer effective, so the new software uses various tests to label each message with its "spam score". Individual users may then choose a level and ask the system to reject all messages with scores above it; this allows each person to strike their own balance between being hard on spam at the cost of rejecting some wanted email or reducing that risk at the cost of accepting more spam.
22. The new software, introduced during the Easter Term, also contains a new virus scanner which aims to identify infected emails and to disinfect them where possible or delete them where not. The scanner was still being piloted when the Sobig.F virus arrived in August 2003, but was rushed into full service (and the relevant expert returned early from holiday) with the satisfactory results reported above under Network Security. The second email project is to develop new software for the Hermes mail store, since its present system cannot be scaled to cope with the expected growth in demand for more than another year or two; after good progress during the year, a pilot version of the software should be ready for testing in Michaelmas 2003. Meanwhile the locally written Webmail interface to Hermes continued to prove very popular in Cambridge and was used or trialled by several other UK universities.
23. One can sidestep the known problems with the 2001-02 email statistics (see Annex) by comparing 2000-01 with 2002-03. The overall picture is then of two-year increases of 101% in the total volume of mail handled by Hermes (from 602 GB to 1212 GB), of 42% in the number of messages (from 56.7 M to 80.3 M) and of 11% in the total number of users (from 27,900 to 31,075). On average, the number of messages per user rose by 32% (from 1,963 to 2,585), while there was a 42% rise in message length (from 1.06 KB to 1.51 KB).
Information and Web Services
24. The Information Group looks after all Computing Service documentation, both on the Web and on paper. By January, staff had updated the content of the Service's own Web pages (including the latest information on the PWF) and converted them to the University's new house style. Admissions information on the central University Web server was also updated, including the Guide to Courses, Natural Sciences Tripos specifications and Undergraduate Prospectus 2004. The Technical Librarians dealt with 12,798 messages to Webmaster on the central server (double the 6,350 in 2001-02), which included both enquiries from all over the world and a great deal of "spam"; in this context the new email filtering arrangements (see above) are welcome but must be used with care to avoid losing genuine messages.
25. In addition to continuing to organise well-attended meetings and other general support for local Webmasters, the Computing Service's Web content design expert spent much time dispensing advice about Web accessibility requirements under the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Act 2001 and also, as a member of the HERO Technical Group, investigated local technical requirements and solutions for putting TQA data on the Web.
26. A Personal Web Pages service, introduced in October 2002, allows students and other users to publish pages from their PWF filespaces and has been extended to provide group page facilities (e.g. for student project work). Customers of the Managed Web Server service, which caters for institutions willing to author web pages but not to host a server, increased from 56 to 58 during the year; replacing the current system by one with more powerful hardware and re-designed software took longer than expected but should be complete for October 2003. The Computing Service continued to host web pages for University societies and in July 2003 189 of them were using this facility (compared to 205 a year earlier).
27. When Web servers running encrypted services need digital certificates, getting them from the commercial certification authorities usually involves both cost and a good deal of administrative hassle; the Computing Service has established a service which buys certificates in bulk and arranges for them to be issued to servers within the University and related institutions with only slightly less cost but much less hassle. Towards the end of the year, work started on a pilot central web authentication server, which should allow individual web site managers to use simple access controls not requiring explicit password management while enabling users to access many client web sites by quoting a single password.
28. Incoming requests to the main University Web site (http://www.cam.ac.uk/) totalled 148 M (compared to 112 M in 2001-02), again came from over 190 country-level domains and had a daily peak of 662 K (540 K). The table compares May 2003 with May 2002 (since the May figures give a better picture of the term-time load than those previously included for July ):
www.cam.ac.uk Web serverMay 2003May 2002Total requests received, total data sent13.5 M, 61 GB11.3 M, 48 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world46%, 8%, 46%52%, 7%, 41%
29. The Computing Service web search engine uses proprietary software (Ultraseek) to produce a combined index of the contents of all "official" servers within the cam.ac.uk domain, thereby allowing external users to locate the material they want without the need to know or guess in advance which server may hold it and also facilitating complex searches and searches within individual servers. In September 2002 the software was upgraded to a much newer version with enhanced search facilities and support for a wider range of document types while in April staff finally succeeded in tracking down a very elusive bug which had caused groups of web pages to be falsely labelled as duplicates (and therefore not included in the index).
30. A potentially more serious problem with the search engine software arose in May when a new owner of Ultraseek requested a large increase in the annual maintenance charge. Although extensive negotiations produced an acceptable interim settlement for 2003-04, costs in future years may well escalate beyond what the Computing Service can afford. Alternatives to Ultraseek are being investigated but nothing suitable has been identified, putting the future of the service in some doubt. The following table compares use in May 2003 and May 2002:
Web Search EngineMay 2003May 2002Servers, documents indexed408, 386 K368, 400 KTotal searches, data sent,386 K, 5.2 GB166 K, 3.3 GB% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world38%, 10%, 52%36%, 10%, 54%
31. By automatically maintaining copies of recently referenced documents, the local Web cache aims to improve retrieval times and reduce the volume of external network traffic. With the national cache closed down and cost-recovery applying to all incoming JANET traffic (see above) arrangements had to be made to ensure that traffic through the local cache was added to the total for the appropriate institution (and not just included in the Computing Service total). To enable users to check that a web browser is properly configured to use the local cache, Service staff developed an extended version of a tool originally produced at Queens' College. The cache worked well all year and the table compares activity in May 2003 and May 2002.
Web cacheMay 2003May 2002Total requests received, total data volume460 M, 3,376 GB394 M, 2,551 GB% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)48.1%, 18,6%49.4%, 21.1%Client systems, client domains14,588, 16313,616, 161
N.B. Because of firewalls and other local web caches the client systems figures will be underestimates.
32. The Computing Service USENET news server provides Cambridge users with access to thousands of local and world-wide news groups covering a very wide range of topics. In the Michaelmas Term, after the server was found to be hosting large amounts of illegitimate (and often copyright breaching) material, the maximum size of accepted articles was set low enough to reduce this unwanted traffic while having little or no effect on genuine news postings. Later in the year, the daily volume of inbound news traffic fell by around 90% when Service staff helped identify and correct an obscure configuration problem at one of the University's peer news servers. The table compares levels of activity during May 2003 and May 2002:
News serverMay 2003May 2002News server connections: monthly total, peak rate403 K, 171595 K, 161Total, local newsgroups15.1K, 23514.9K, 234Monthly volume, number of individual postings16.8 GB, 8.2 M19.9 GB, 8.7 M
Centrally-managed services
Public Workstation Facility
33. The Computing Service's Public Workstation Facility, together with the associated charged Managed Cluster Service (see below), forms the University's main student computing facility (and is also used by significant numbers of staff). The combined PWF and MCS clusters contain around 1,200 PCs and Macintoshes, of which as many as 550 are often in use simultaneously at busy times. Staff from the Small Systems and Operations groups provide technical support including the installation of quarterly software image updates. The table compares PWF users and sessions for 2002-03 with (in italics) those for 2001-02.
Public Workstation Facility UsersSessionsUniversity7,176(45.5%)5,976(46.2%)579,510(41.1%)379,034(35.6%)Colleges8,516(54.0%)6,901(53.4%)824,878(58.6%)683,285(64.2%)External66(0.4%)57(0.4%)3,944(0.3%)2,523(0.2%)TOTAL15,758(100.0%)12,934(100.0%)1,408,332(100.0%)1,064,842(100.0%)
N.B. In general, undergraduates are registered as College users and postgraduates as University ones.
34. At the start of the year, staff were much involved in setting up the Personal Web Pages service (see above), which uses one of the PWF servers. Over Christmas, the servers which hold users' personal files were enhanced and the default filespace limit increased to 50 MB (over twice what it was a year earlier). In January an unexpected side effect of a routine Netware system enhancement caused the filestore servers to fall into a completely unresponsive state under heavy load, leaving new users unable to log-in; after three recurrences in eight days the problem was identified and the appropriate system updates applied. KeyServer was installed to monitor applications software usage on both PCs and Macintoshes and regularly produced useful statistical summaries, while PWF printer output was also closely monitored.
35. Because in any year, there is too little time available at Christmas and Easter for major PWF upgrade work, this has to be done in the Long Vacation between mid-June and mid-September, after which the facility is quite heavily used for pre-Michaelmas taught courses. So, although staff always try to fit in as much work as possible at weekends or in the scheduled "vulnerable periods" on weekday mornings and early evenings, if problems arise in July and August it may be necessary, despite the inevitable inconvenience this will cause to some University members and visitors, to re-schedule work at short notice outside these times.
36. In January, planning started for the 2003 summer upgrade. The major objectives were to upgrade the Novell NetWare 6 and Directory Service (NDS) software on the servers, to change the PWF Macs to use the System X operating system (which involved replacing the older Mac hardware) and to complete this early enough in the Long Vacation to leave time before Michaelmas to install new applications and check out the old ones. The plans suffered an early setback in mid-June, when trying to fix some oddities in the existing NDS before starting the upgrade produced first a disc race condition and then, after a mistake was made in trying to recover from that, very bad corruption of the NDS on the CENTRAL fileserver.
37. Even with expert help from Salford, recovery proved very lengthy. User service was restored after a total outage of 4.5 days, but a considerable amount of recovery work still needed completion before returning to the upgrade. Fortunately, after a great deal of very hard work by all the staff concerned, many of whom had to re-arrange holiday plans at rather short notice, the second upgrade attempt on July 19/20 went much more smoothly, as did the Macintosh work in early August and all was more or less back on schedule by mid-September.
38. The PWF Linux service, introduced in 2001-02, has continued to prove extremely successful and, since Trinity joined the MCS in December, has been available on clusters in 6 departments, 5 Colleges and 5 Computing Service locations, while four departments have used it for taught courses. In April, a new PWF Linux image including all the fixes and changes from the previous year was issued, while staff began to prepare for the next year's image.
Central Unix Service
39. Although the Thor teaching facility, having been superseded by the use of PWF Linux, was closed down in August 2002, the Central Unix Service continued to be popular with research users throughout the University and the fall in total users is thought to be mostly mail-only users transferring to Hermes. Applications packages were updated, the default user quota was increased to 40 MB and, when falling use of the Uniras graphical software suite made it hard to justify the cost, it was licensed for one further and final year while its users made other arrangements. The table shows CUS usage in 2002-03, with 2001-02 in italics:
Central Unix Service CPUUsersUniversity86.9%91.8%2,328(84.1%)2,780(88.2%)Colleges12.5%7.3%408(14.7%)334(10.6%)External0.6%0.9%31(1.1%)38(1.2%)TOTAL100.0%100.0%2,767(100.0%)3,152(100.0%)
User Administration
40. Each year, this group underpins the work of the Computing Service by expertly handling all the administrative work associated with registering thousands of new users (who may be staff, students, summer school attendees or other visitors), issuing them with resources and making subsequent changes to those allocations as required. To help them, a specially designed web-based interface to the user database was installed to replace the old character-mode Oracle forms approach. In recent years, after pre-registration for email and the PWF, the password details for all new students have been sent to them on paper via their College office, but from September 2003 the postgraduates will be able use a new system, successfully piloted in the Easter Term, to allow them to collect their passwords more quickly via a web interface.
41. Although, by the time the CamCORS online supervisions reporting system came into operation in October 2002, some 2,300 supervisors had already been registered for it, staff still had to deal with many additional registrations and other enquiries during the Michaelmas Term. Supervisor familiarity with the system improved however, and the load in the other two terms fell significantly. Some staff were also trained to issue e-science certificates on request to Cambridge users. While the User Administration manager continued her involvement with CamCORS, she also spent much time on planning for the CamSIS student records project, being a member of both the Steering Group and the Technical Special Interest Group.
Pelican data archive service and D-Space@Cambridge CMI project
42. Once a satisfactory workaround had been found for the bug which brought the system down for a week in August 2002 (see last year's Report), Pelican worked well for the rest of the year. In April its capacity was doubled (to a nominal 2 terabytes) as a matter of urgency after one of the University Library's digitisation projects caused problems because of the size of the downloads that were being made into the archive. By July 2003, Pelican was storing 539 GB of data (115% up on last year's 250 GB) for 966 different users (932) from 86 University institutions and Colleges. The University Library had by far the largest holdings (for scanned photographic data, experimental electronic document storage and other projects) followed by the Computing Service (for backup programs and data).
43. The DSpace@Cambridge project, which is being carried out by the Computing Service and the University Library, is funded by a grant from the Cambridge-MIT Institute and aims to implement in Cambridge a version of the DSpace institutional digital repository system created jointly by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard, to adapt it to local requirements and to develop its functionality as a means of preserving digital content. By the end of the year, Service staff had succeeded in procuring the necessary equipment and installing the DSpace software and were waiting for the Library to arrange for appropriate users to take part in a pilot service.
High Performance Computing Facility
44. The Computing Service continued to provide a computer room for the High Performance Computing Facility (which has a separate committee of management) as well as the services of a senior programmer with a particular interest in advanced computing systems.
Support services
Software Sales
45. As in previous years, the Software Sales team supplied the University and Colleges with competitively priced software through CHEST (Combined HE Software Team) and other deals and administered University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. Discussions with Microsoft about Campus Agreement made little progress and so licences continued to be supplied under Select 5. The table below summarises sales by product type for 2002-03, with 2001-02 in italics.
Software SalesItems Communications427988Graphics & drawing, statistics2,3882,159Office packages, operating systems/utilities6,6787,032Programming languages, mathematics/libraries2,5182,444Word processing, spreadsheets, databases2,1802,921Geographic, miscellaneous3,7611,260SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics413482TOTAL18,36517,286
Managed Cluster Service
46. The Managed Cluster Service (MCS) allows departments and Colleges to simplify the management of their general-access computer rooms by paying a fee to the Computing Service to cover access to shared Novell Netware servers, quarterly updates to the software on the individual workstations (which consists of the standard PWF image with optional additional applications) and regular site visits to deal with problems and assess new requirements. There were 30 MCS clusters at the start of the year (16 in Colleges and 14 in departments) with a total of 870 PCs and 130 Macintoshes; clusters at Trinity and Humanities and Social Sciences were added in December while King's, Christ's and Lucy Cavendish Colleges joined during July 2003. By then the last sites had given up their on-site servers in favour of shared ones located in the Computing Service. From 2003-04, the MCS fee will increase smoothly with the number of workstations, unlike the old scheme of discrete price bands where adding one machine could take the cluster total over a band boundary and cause a substantial cost increase.
External Hardware Maintenance
47. The staff of the Engineering group repair equipment for departments, Colleges and individual members of the University (either as part of a full cover contract service or, more commonly, on a charged time and materials basis) and are also authorised to make warranty repairs for University customers of Apple and several PC manufacturers. The tables summarise repair work carried out during 2002-03, with figures for 2001-02 in italics.
Equipment repaired by Type ContractNon-contractPC285289127246Apple Macintosh272811192Printers1399686101Laptops55305201Other equipment70515281TOTAL526469681721Equipment repaired by Institution ContractNon-contractUniversity273309426511Colleges250160250207External3 53TOTAL526469681721
48. There have been over 1,300 warranty repairs since the first were made three years ago, including 150 faulty Fujitsu hard disc drive replacements in Avantek machines in six months in summer 2002. The engineers also responded to an increasing demand to recover vital user data from these and other failed hard drives and helped with the reliability and performance aspects of the Computing Service evaluation of a range of new desktop PCs. In addition, the group actively assisted the Disability Resource Centre and the Careers Service with the purchase, installation and configuration of new equipment (and redeployment of the old) and took part in a pilot scheme to provide hardware and software support for small institutions without local support staff, including the Counselling Service and the Press & Publications Office.
Printing and Reproduction Service
49. The two Ricoh Aficio machines (one monochrome and one colour) which were installed in 2001-02 continued to work well, meeting all the needs of the Computing Service and also printing a significant amount of lecture course material for the Computer Laboratory. Total monochrome throughput for the year was 720 K impressions for the Computing Service (compared to 780 K in 2001-02), 805 K for the Computer Laboratory (790 K) and 432 K for external customers (470 K), while the colour copy totals were: Service 11.7 K (2.5 K); Laboratory 1.0 K (1.1 K); external customers 8.5 K (5.4 K).
Photography & Illustration Service (PandIS)
50. On the photography side, although a significant amount of digital work was undertaken traditional approaches continued to predominate. The transparency service processed 5,305 rolls of E6 film (compared to 7,900 in 2001-02) and produced 4,063 flat copy, duplicate or digital slides (7,500) while the digital scanning service handled 346 full films (780) and 2,365 mounted slides or other items (1,300). Over 400 black and white films were processed, while the colour printing service dealt with almost 5,200 films and 47,000 single item scans, producing in total 215 K prints (176 K) At General Admission and other Congregations staff took almost 8,500 photographs (9,000) of graduands inside the Senate House, held Lawn shoots for 1,250 graduates and their families and sold 1,285 print/degree certificate frames. On the illustration side, an ftp server was set up to allow clients to upload material for jobs and almost 1,400 posters (1,700) were produced in sizes from A4 to A0 of which 730 (850)were encapsulated. Finally, staff on both sides spent much time providing advice to customers.
Videoconferencing Service
51. Total use of the Computing Service videoconferencing facility was 236 hours from 138 bookings (compared to 146.5 from 81 in 2001-02), over two-thirds being for customers who preferred to use IP rather than ISDN, usually for cost reasons. New uses included the training of language teachers in Argentina, Pakistan and Malaysia (for Local Examinations) and three admissions oriented talks to sixth formers at a Devon School (Downing College), while ongoing uses included Ph.D. vivas, job interviews, distributed research collaboration meetings and grant discussions with international sponsors. As the spread of videoconferencing across the University continued, staff were kept busy advising on new facilities at the Computer Laboratory and Medical Photography and on enhancements at the Judge and Addenbrookes.
52. Computing Service staff again assisted with the CMI distance learning programme. The continuing two-way Materials and Architecture series ran alongside a new series of three-way conferences in the Lent and Easter terms between Cambridge, MIT and Singapore on Materials Science and Engineering subjects which used the facilities at the Judge and Engineering as well as those at the Service. In January, staff were involved with the live videoconferencing relay of a CMI Prestigious Lecture given by Professor Stephen Hawking at the Judge Institute to audiences across the world, including a Cambridge overflow at New Hall.
Advice and consultancy
Technical User Support
53. The main duties of the Technical User Support (TUS) division are to provide support for the wide range of applications software on the various Computing Service facilities and to manage (and largely staff) the advice and consultancy, Help Desk and TechLink services (see below). TUS also liaises closely with the User Services' Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) at the Sidgwick Site, which provides a specialist service for the humanities. TUS is responsible for operating the joint Service/University Library Electronic Reference Library (ERL) system, which allows users to access several specialist databases. During the year, the ERL system and its gateway server were upgraded to run under Solaris 8 and the latest versions of PsychInfo, Georef and Medline (again the most heavily used of the databases) were installed but CINAHL (nursing and allied health literature) was withdrawn after the Medical Library cancelled its subscription.
54. During the Christmas vacation, CERT called in the Windows Support team to deal with a PC which had been hacked via SQLserver and used to launch brute force password attacks on thousands of other machines (see above). While at that stage servers were the only targets, by Easter any Windows machine, even a student's portable, seemed to be fair game and efforts were made to increase user awareness via the TUS website and TechLink seminars. The threat from viruses persisted and Computing Service staff piloted the distribution of McAfee anti-virus software via ePolicy Orchestrator as a way of quickly getting emergency signature files to desktop machines in the event of a sudden virus outbreak. Staff also put considerable effort into the client-side development of the VPDN service (see above) and set up a Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS) server to provide University-wide access to critical Windows updates without the need for each computer to download them separately from the USA.
Help Desk and Techlink
55. In November, the results of the biennial survey of Help Desk users carried out in May 2002 revealed an overall satisfaction level of 7.8 out of 10, slightly up on the equivalent 2000 figure, together with a more detailed analysis which should lead to further improvements in the service. Overall, the number of calls fell slightly, as did the proportions made by telephone (from 47% to 44%) and in person (from 26% to 23%) but, with some encouragement, the proportion made by email increased (from 27% to 33%). Small falls in the proportion of calls closed within 1 hour (from 86.4% to 83.5%) and within 24 hours (from (91.8% to 90.4%) and in calls referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff did not have a ready answer to a call about a non-Computing Service facility (from 2.1% to 0.9%) suggest that users are asking fewer simple questions and have become more aware of when they need to contact local support staff. The table summarises Help Desk calls for 2002-03 (with 2001-02 in italics):
Help DeskCalls University7,265(69.6%)7,455(69.8%)Colleges2,733(26.2%)2,488(23.3%)External440(4.2%)735(6.9%)TOTAL10,438(100.0%)10,678(100.0%)
56. Official membership of the TechLink scheme, which provides "fast track" support to local computer support staff, continued to increase steadily; and by the end of the year included over 340 individuals. Given the increasing tendency to ask for TechLink material to be emailed to a group address (e.g. computer-officers@…) there are probably many others who also benefit from the scheme, although if no-one has told the Computing Service that a particular individual is now providing computer support and so qualifies for TechLink status then they may well not receive all the associated advantages. The number of Help Desk calls initiated by TechLinks went up by 15% (from 1,582 to 1,823) and the time spent by Service staff in finding the answers by 38% (from 900 to 1,250 person-hours).
57. Once again, the TechLink seminars held most weeks during term were a great success and copies of the presentations or handouts were made available on the Computing Service website for the benefit of those who were unable to attend. Service staff gave seminars which either introduced new facilities and services or aimed to bring new support staff up to speed about existing ones, while in others TechLinks described developments in their own institution. Some of the most popular seminars were given by outsiders, including the talk (with including demonstration of computer hacking) which was given by the Chief Security Officer of Microsoft UK and kept a packed audience's attention for well over two hours without a break.
Training
58. The Computing Service provides a wide range of training courses, which complement its advice and consultancy services and teach staff and students to use their computers more efficiently. The table shows 2002-03 course types and attendances, with 2001-02 in italics.
Course Types SessionsAttendancesPersonal Computers1315231213Unix1516727915Networking49461,0821,075Spreadsheets & Databases41381,1951,019Word & Doc. Processing49489991,004Statistical Computing1911260250Other courses55265292TOTAL1911794,7594,768Course Attendance AttendancesUniversity3,8603,861Colleges770680External129227TOTAL4,7594,768
59. The two new 40-seater Titan Teaching Rooms were heavily used and received positive feedback from both course givers and attendees. Overall, the four Computing Service teaching rooms were used for 566 sessions in 2002-03 (including 268 in which departments used the Service facilities to teach their own computing courses) compared to 501 in 2001-02; at this rate, a further room will be needed very soon. In October postcards advertising the courses were again sent out to all staff. Two-thirds of Michaelmas Term courses were over-subscribed and extra courses had to be scheduled, including two on Photoshop and a QuarkExpress course for editorial staff from The Cambridge Student. During the year, 397 assistant staff attended 48 Personnel Division funded course sessions (compared to 412 and 44 in 2001-02); while use of the self teaching courseware fell a little there were still many satisfied users.
60. During the year, three Windows 2000 and Active Directory courses were given to computer support staff (bringing the total taught on these courses over the last two years to 93), also two courses on PHP/MySQL for Webmasters, a repeat of the Linux System Administration course and two Netskills courses. In June Dr Hazel's fourth course on the Exim Mail Transfer Agent attracted 83 attendees, 17 from abroad. The one-to-one course on Dragon Naturally Speaking voice software (which is particularly useful for those suffering from RSI) continued to prove very popular and will be supplemented in 2003-04 by a more traditional classroom course. In the Lent Term, Computing Service course givers benefitted greatly from a Good Practice workshop given by a trainer from the Personnel Division.
61. In October, the Computing Service, in collaboration with the Staff Development Office, piloted arrangements for staff to obtain the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), which is an internationally recognised test of basic computing skills. Twenty-two people, from seven departments and with a wide range of job titles and previous computing experience, took part. The on-line teaching and certification mechanisms worked well and over half had qualified by the end of the year, although most found that it involved more work than they had expected. Although the second half of the pilot, due to start at Easter, had to be dropped when the staff member in charge of the scheme left to work for the Personnel Division, the Service is talking to the Staff Development Section about possible future ECDL programmes.
Unix Support
62. This service, which is aimed at the managers of Unix systems in individual institutions, is provided by the same group of staff who look after the managed Web server and PWF Linux (both discussed earlier). The support available includes a NFS server for downloading the latest versions of system software (which had to be moved to a larger system during summer 2002 to cope with the increasing load) and the week-long Linux System Administration course. Direct support to individual institutions, including help with the recovery of hacked machines, was also provided to many individual institutions across the University including the Library and the Management Information Services Division.
Support for Purchases of Personal Systems
63. Computing Service staff continued to maintain regular contact with major suppliers and to use this and other sources to provide purchasing advice to institutions and individual users, either in person or via the Service's Web pages. In November, over 2,000 people attended the Service's annual IT Exhibition, which had 29 stands featuring a wide range of hardware, software, ancillary equipment and services. At the suggestion of the Purchasing Working Group, and with the agreement of the IT Syndicate, the arrangements for providing advice were made more formal with the establishment, on a trial basis, of a Computing Commodity Group, which will be chaired by a member of the Syndicate and include representatives from the Schools and Colleges, the Service and the Central Purchasing Office.
Directorate and liaison
Institution Liaison
64. The two staff of this division (assisted where necessary by the Directorate, Network Support and Technical User Services) consult regularly about computing matters at institution level with both senior management and computer support staff. During the year, they attended almost 200 computer committee or similar meetings at individual institutions (73 at Colleges and 123 elsewhere, compared to 60 and 140 in 2001-02), gave assistance with staff selection on 14 occasions (30) and provided an overview of Cambridge computing to 20 new staff (12).
65. Institution Liaison seems to be synonymous with meetings. Staff continued to organise the termly and well-attended general meetings at which Computing Service staff and others inform departmental and College computer support staff about recent Cambridge computing developments and helped to get the independently run Colleges IT Management Group off the ground. They also arranged and attended smaller liaison meetings at which staff from the Computing Service discussed issues of mutual interest with their opposite numbers from the Library or Management Information Services, continued to chair the Windows Integration Group and attended meetings of the JTMC and its Technical Sub-committee, the IT Syndicate's Technical Committee and the Cambridge eScience Forum.
M. S. LONGAIR Chairman
S. J. BARTON
A. G. BUCKLEY
T. A. CARPENTER
D. E. DETMER
A. L. R. FINDLAY
P. K. FOX
R. GLEN
M. F. HEATH
S. KEARSEY
I. LESLIE
J. MILNER
B. K. OMOTANI
M. D. SAYERS
C. A. SHORT
R. D. H. WALKER
E. R. WALLACH
S. J. YOUNG
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