Networking at UPEI

Ben/Suddeutsche Zeitung /Mumch

by Jim Hancock

Current status, problems and solutions, and actives plans for Networking Personal Computers on the UPEI campus.

Current Status

Most of the more than 500 terminals and microcomputers on campus are connected to the cam- pus ”network”. These connec- tions are mainly by means of "telephone” wire strung through

National

the tunnel system. It allows users to connect to the VAX com- puters and beyond the campus to NetNorth. While the exist- ing network works well for ter- minals, its relatively slow speed is of less advantage to microcom- puters for sending, receiving and printing files. What is needed is a higher speed network to connect importantly, anyone can use any

Student

Let’s have Fun!!

Wednesday, Oct 18th

Students in Canada have been working together around issues such as, funding, tuition fees, em- ployment and student aid for over 60 years. the Canadian student movement today represents hun- dreds of thousands of students at universities and colleges through- out the Canadian Federation of

Students. Celebrating over 60 years of

Canadian student movement, the University of Prince Edward Is- land Student Union will be join- ing with over 400,000 post- seondary students aross canada on October 18, 1989 as part of the Canadian Federation of Stu- dents campaign to ccelebrate Na-

tional Student Day highlighting issues affecting post-secondary students.

The UPEI Student Unio in conjunction with its CFS com- mittee and help from student saver discounters, has included a wide variety of special events throughout the day to mark this occasion. All day, Smitty’s Restaurant will be offering stu- dents 50% off all menu items, as wellas 5% all day savings at Save Easy. The day will be highlighted by the 2nd AQnnual Student Soc- cer Match where students are in- vited to play soer against var- sity teams, taking plae at 4 pm at MacAdam Field. Following the march, cake and hot choco- late, will be served at the Student

package without having to have it on their machine or ” borrowing” a copy. Of course, faculty will be able to have their own ” personal” software on their hard drive if they so choose. There are very obvious savings possible in that users will not have to upgrade to larger hard disks and fewer copies of software will need to be pur- chased because of sharing.

Day

Union Barn, by the UPEI Hockey team members. The day will fin- ish with a special film presenta- tion, “Woodstock —- the movie” followed with a wet/dry pub, fea- turing Mike Woods, with prizes drawn for participant in the day’s activities.

The events co-ordinator and CFS committee chair person, Cathy Campbell commented, “consid- ering the success of last year’s events, this year’s shall be at least equally exciting with the great line-up of activities and enthu- siasm in this event,” She also noted that the UPEI/CFS com- mittee is alway looking for stu- dent participation and interest in various activities, issues and con-

Using the Novell. network, print files can be sent over the network to a department laser printer allowing better sharing of that resource.

One of the reasons that we can now proceed with upgrad- ing the speed of the Network is the recent availability of Ether- net over twisted pair (ie tele- phone type) wiring and the de- crease in cost of Ethernet com- ponents. However, the distance that Ethernet signals can travel over twisted-pair is only about 100 metres. While this is al- right within a building, between buildings fibre-optic cable will be required to span the longer dis- tances. We are starting in the AVC building because the build- ing is wired, it is close to the Computer Centre which will help in getting the problems worked out and we have a small bud- get for the project. Planning for the rest of the campus is already under way but many hurdles re- main.

What will it cost?

Networking is not inexpen- sive but costs have and will con- tinue to drop. The cost of net- working will be offset by sav- ings in the cost of larger hard disks and software purchases as well as the availability of new ser- vices not possible with the ex- isting network. To set up the AVC network will cost about 1000per PC; interestingly, 10year ago this is how much it cost to connect a terminal to the VAX. Users will be expected to pay most

cerns with the Canadian Feder- ation of Federation of Students, and strongly urge any interested students to contat the CFS com- mittee through the UPEI Student Union.

For more information contact

the UPEI SU UPEI SU is a member of the

of this cost, mainly to cover the Ethernet card which must be in- stalled in the PC. AVC users can be connected to the Novell Net- work by sending a purchase req- uisition for $500 to the Computer Centre.

How will it work?

When you turn on your PC it will function as it always has. To run a program stored on the Network server you will issue a command to connect to the net- work and then run the program. Although a small amount of user data may be kept on the server, in general users are expected to keep their data on their own hard disk and on floppies. Programs that departments want to share can be placed on the server.

When will it be available?

By the time you read this arti- cle the Novell server for the AVC building should be installed and running. Although we have ex- perience with the Novell network in Kelley we expect faculty needs to differ from those of the micro- lab. It will no doubt take us a few months to get this AVC seg- ment of the network shaken down and problems resolved. Already we have several questions which the vendor is trying to answer for us. Your patience, as always, will make our job easier.

This is our first small step in moving toward a high-speed campus-wide network. It will eventually be part of the larger regional, national and world-wide networks that are evolving. For all of us involved with knowledge and information these are very exciting and challenging times.

Canadian Federation of Students. The Federation is Canada’ na- tional student organization and represents over 400,000 post— secondary students. The Fed- eration is concerned with the improvement of, accessibility to, and quality of post-secondary ed- ucation and quality of student

life.