1. Approval of Minutes
2. Announcements
3. Establishment of a Special Committee to Address Course Management Systems
4. Administration of MP3 Traffic on ResNet
5. Deployment of DHCP on the Campus
6. I-drive Distributed File System
7. AFS Distributed File System

Excused: Randy Moory, Marilyn Sharrow, and Paul Singh.

Absent: Matt Bishop, Cristina González, Lamar Heystek, Dorothea Howe, Jennifer Ramesh, and Peter Jay Salzman.

Guests: Tracy Bennett, Wes Hardaker, Pat Kava, and Kevin Rhodes.

Staff to the Council: Ian Blake and Babette Schmitt.

The meeting started at 2:15 p.m.

1. Approval of Minutes

   Chair Matthews asked for comments from the Council regarding the minutes from the September meeting. The minutes were approved as submitted.

    
   

2. Announcements

   Chair Matthews introduced and welcomed three new members to the Council: Robert Ono, Campus Security Coordinator; Remington Stone, student; and Angela Cheer, Professor of Mathematics and CAPBR representative.

   Robert Ono started in his new position as Campus Security Coordinator on October 2. Robert was the Corporate Information Security Specialist for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). He has over 12 years of experience developing and implementing information security policies, standards and programs.

    
   

3. Establishment of a Special Committee to Address Course Management Systems

   Chair Matthews proposed the creation of a special committee to consider issues surrounding the integration of a course management system with My UCDavis, the student and faculty portal. The committee would be charged with investigating such issues as which course management system (including WebCT) should be recommended for campus use, as well as scalability, security, and support issues.

   Council members emphasized the urgent need for a recommendation, pointing out that some faculty members have already expressed great interest in such a tool. The sooner the Council makes a recommendation, the better for the faculty and students.

   Action: Council should proceed with the creation of a Special Committee on Course Management Systems.

    
   

4. Administration of MP3 Traffic on ResNet

   Kevin Rhodes provided an update on MP3 traffic on the residence hall network. Drawing on recent statistics, Kevin reported that a large portion of the total bandwidth available campuswide is used by dorm residents for downloading and sharing MP3 music files. A number of legal, ethical, and network management issues were identified, including the following:

   • Costs: The campus is charged for Internet traffic, based in part on the number of data packets transmitted on the commercial Internet. The downloading and sharing of MP3 music files generate a great deal of data packets, which translates into increasing costs to the campus. In an effort to curb these costs, during the last academic year, the decision was made to limit the total aggregate bandwidth available to dorm residents.

   • Accommodating students' academic and educational needs: While the bandwidth available to ResNet residents was reduced last year, the number of MP3 music files sent across the network did not go down, in effect saturating ResNet and preventing many students from using the Internet for academic or research purposes. (We've seen a fair number of complaints from residence hall occupants in the last few weeks.)

   • Agreements with commercial entities, such as Tandem, which further complicate the situation.

   Council members pointed out the need to educate students on network traffic issues. Remington Stone suggested that one possible solution might be to educate students about the impact of MP3 traffic on others, emphasizing that it's not "cool" to prevent others from doing homework and research. Tracy Bennett indicated that Student Housing has already taken awareness steps, including through a letter sent to all residents last week. Developing conduct policies, defining appropriate use of the residence hall network would also help educate dorm residents.

    
   

5. Deployment of DHCP on the Campus

   Kevin Rhodes provided an update on the DHCP project scheduled for campuswide deployment in late November. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is a mechanism which will enable laptop users to plug into the campus network from a variety of locations without having to manually reconfigure their TCP/IP settings.

   Using DHCP requires a one-time registration of the laptop's network card hardware address. This can be done in one of two ways: through the Mothra Web site, or through departmental system administrators, especially for DHCP servers maintained by campus departments.

   Richard Plant noted that it is currently impossible to access the campus software distribution "jukebox" via DHCP. Wes Hardaker indicated that IT is working on a solution to this problem through distributed authentication.

   Instructors can already use either DHCP or static IP addresses from the 40 general assignment classrooms. Chair Matthews stressed the importance of developing clear communications and instructions for faculty so the registration process and DHCP use are as easy, straightforward, and user-friendly as possible. Alternatives to DHCP-based authentication include Kerberos-based authentication, which is already used with many computing systems (including MyUCDavis). This might be easier for users. This alternative should be investigated further.

    
   

6. I-drive Distributed File System
   Handout: Student Web-Drives for Online File-Sharing (PowerPoint presentation) (10/16/00)

   I-drive is one of two ITF projects to establish a distributed file system for the campus. Both projects have completed preliminary pilots.

   Pat Kava reported on the status of the i-drive project.

   • Implementing an i-drive file sharing system on campus would provide 50MB of space per account and enable faculty and students to remotely access files, among other things.

   • A pilot was run last Winter and Spring quarters with the Law School, the Graduate School of Management, and student residence halls. A total of 479 accounts were created. Students and faculty used i-drive primarily for posting resumes and class assignments. Survey results indicate participants found i-drive easy to use for remote-file access and file-sharing.

   • A number of campuses have already rolled out i-drive, including three UC campuses (UCB, UCI, and UCLA).

   Issues for the Council's consideration include:
   • Policy issues: There is no official UC Davis policy governing the development, content, and use of student Web pages.

   • Cost issues: I-drive would cost a total of $40,000 for the first two years (the contract can be terminated at any point); network costs could be high as i-drive files would travel the commercial Internet.

   The main issue is not one of costs, but whether we should provide student Web space when no policy governing personal Web pages is in place on campus. (The UC Davis i-drive Web site can be accessed at http://idrive.ucdavis.edu.)

    
   

7. AFS Distributed File System
   Handout: Distributed File/Web Space Pilot Project Plan (PDF) (10/16/00)

   Wes Hardaker reported on the AFS project, the second distributed file system ITF project. Like i-drive, the AFS distributed file system makes it possible to access files from almost anywhere (e.g., labs, offices, home). AFS's main objective is to enable the sharing of files for academic purposes.

   • AFS works on PCs, Macintoshes, and UNIX systems; it does not require any special software. The project team has developed a number of AFS tools, including secure access, access control, homework submission, and account name search tools.

   • A pilot was run with 3 ECS classes in Winter and Spring quarters. 173 students were involved; they used course Web pages with both restricted and unrestricted content. The feedback was very positive.

   • AFS is already used with major campus administrative computing systems (e.g., Banner and DaFIS) as well as the MyUCDavis portal. Some faculty and campus departments are also using AFS.

   • The project team is proposing a second pilot for Winter and Spring 2001 with 3 different types of classes (Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and English)

   (The AFS project plan can be accessed at http://afs.ucdavis.edu/services/.)

   Action: More discussion of these two distributed file system projects is needed. Both will be on next month's agenda.