IT @ IWU

President Wilson has recently approved funding for the University to double its Internet bandwidth. The University will be going from a single 45Mbps DS3 connection to two DS3 lines. This upgrade will give the University a total Internet connection bandwidth of 90Mbps.

This upgrade will help with increased campus use of bandwidth intensive applications such as Internet video, as well as ensure timely access to outsourced services such as the I-Share library catalog, Digital Commons @ IWU, and the Campus Event Calendar. We will continue to shape campus Internet traffic to ensure timely access to academic resources.

We are working with Sprint, the University’s internet service provider, to schedule the installation of the second DS3 line as soon as possible. We hope to have it installed before the start of the fall semester. We’ll post an update here when we have a confirmed installation time.

We’ve updated our IT Projects page with information about some of the work IT has planned for this summer. Highlighted projects include:

• Network hardware refresh / campus wireless project - phase 1
• My.IWU upgrade
• New proxy server for access to library resources
• Moodle course tools testing
• Web Content Management System upgrade
• Campus Card System upgrade
• New security camera system

For more information about these, and other technology projects, please see our projects web page.

IT staff are preparing to replace the server named “Sun” with new hardware on Friday morning, June 6. This change will take place during our normal weekly system down-time from 2am to 7am.

The server named Sun provides network storage and web site hosting for students, faculty, and staff. We do not anticipate any service disruptions from this work.

If you have questions about this maintenance, please call the IT Help Desk at (309) 556 3900.

The results are in from Illinois Wesleyan University’s TechQual+ survey of student perceptions of technology services. The radar chart to the left is from the Survey Results report. Red indicates areas needing improvement.

You can download the “2008 Student Survey Results” and the “2008 Student Survey Analysis” from the reports section of the IT website. The “Survey Results” were produced by the TechQual+ project, and explain the radar chart, the numeric ratings, and other details. The analysis compares this year’s survey to the 2007 results, and makes recommendations based on the student feedback gathered by the survey.

Thanks to the more than 200 students who responded. Winners of the drawing will be announced soon.

Tags: Survey

Each year Illinois Wesleyan University’s office of Information Technology prepares a summary report on the state of technology services at the University. The 2008 IT Summary Report looks at “accomplishments, challenges, and opportunities”.

You can download the “2008 Summary Report” from the IT Reports web page.

Illinois Wesleyan University does allow gaming on the campus network. The staff of the office of Information Technology can help resolve problems with network games as our staff time and the University’s Internet bandwidth allow.  If you are having performance problem playing a game on the campus network, please call the IT Help Desk at (309) 556 3900.

Tags: games network

There will be a number of construction projects starting on campus after commencement. Among these projects will be projects to extend the campus voice, video and data networks. The sites that will have this work include:

• The new Welcome Center
• The Presidents House
• Adams Hall will connect directly to the campus, rather than the current wireless bridge
• Harriet House will receive additional fiber optic cabling
• and the new East Street Apartments will be connected to the network

We appreciate your patience as we work to extend and improve the campus voice, video, and data networks.

We’re seeing an increasing number of takedown notices from the RIAA this semester. Generally these notices mention copyrighted songs being shared from student computers using either the gnutella (bearshare, limewire, etc.) or bittorrent protocols. When we receive such a notice, if we can identify the student computer responsible, we will take the computer off the network and refer the student to the Judicial Affairs department. Sharing copyrighted material on the campus network without permission from the copyright owner is a violation of the University’s IT Usage Policy.

So far, we have not received a “pre-litigation notice” from the RIAA requesting the name of a student for legal action. We have seen reports that the cost to settle such a lawsuit with the RIAA is running about $5000.

The University does shape network traffic to and from the campus network. Peer-to-peer traffic (such as the gnutella and bittorrent) is limited and assigned a low priority. However, since there are legal uses of such applications we do not block peer-to-peer traffic.

If you use peer-to-peer applications for file-sharing, please make sure that you have copyright permission for any file you share. For more information about copyright permssions please see the Ames Library’s Copyright Policies and Practices site.

We’ve been tracking the number of copyright infringement notices the university received for the past three academic years. The attached graph shows the number of notices the University has received by month. Note the recent increase for the Spring 2008 semester.

For the past week we have had intermittent trouble with access to the Ames Library catalog. The University hosts the library catalog on servers operated by CARLI, the Consortium for Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois.  We have done extensive troubleshooting to determine the source of the problem, and at this time the problem appears to be on CARLI’s end. We have a work-around for computers in the Ames Library, and are working with CARLI to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

We’ve begun our 2008 Techqual+ Survey of student perceptions of information technology on campus. The survey will be open for the next two weeks, and responding students will be entered in a drawing to win one of twenty $10 gift certificates from the Illinois Wesleyan University Bookstore.

This is our second time using the Techqual+ survey to assess information technology on campus. For more information about the survey, please see the Techqual+ web site.