August, 2002 Network Nuggets

1. Introducing CITES Express Email

CITES is pleased to announce the inception of its new CITES Express Email service. Incoming Fall 2002 students are the first group on the Urbana campus to have accounts on the Express Email server.

What is CITES Express Email?

CITES Express Email is a state-of-the-art email server, with secure web, IMAP, and POP access. (In fact, we require all Express Email connections to be secure.) Express Email represents a major step forward in the email service CITES provides to the Urbana campus.

Express Email's advantages are:

• More robust web access to CITES Express Email (includes quota checking, mail forwarding, message filtering, vacation auto-responses, and mailbox sharing)
  
• Larger account quotas (15 MB quota per student account verses the 10MB we have been able to provide for accounts on the student cluster)
  
• More cost-effective operation and management of the overall campus email service

2. Patch cables for Category 6 infrastructures

Installation of Category 6 wiring in UIUC campus buildings is now becoming more frequent. To best meet and exceed TIA and other standards for Category 6 installations, it is recommended that you use a matched channel, which includes specific brands of in-wall cable, jacks/patch panels, and patch cables. After extensive research and testing, CITES has chosen Ortronics Clarity6 as our preferred solution. By utilizing the Clarity6 system, we will get the best possible performance out of our Category 6 cable plant.

As with Category 5 Networking, the CITES Network Design Office has selected approved vendors for Category 6 patch cables. These cables have been selected to meet our performance and quality standards. We have standardized on these cables for a number of reasons:

• The TIA/EIA standards for Category 6 do not make any requirements for the performance characteristics of patch cables. Therefore, even though the cable may say “Category 6”, the performance characteristics can be much, much worse. By utilizing the standard cables, we ensure a quality network connection end-to-end.
  
• A channel’s performance is only as good as its worst performing component. Some “Category 6” patch cables have been seen to use cable that only meets DRAFT Category 6 performance characteristics; others have been seen to use Category 6 cable, but the RJ-45 connectors are only rated for Category 5, or in some cases, even category 3!
  
• Selecting a patch cable designed explicitly to work with our Category 6 infrastructures allow us to match impedances and other characteristics of the fixed in-wall cable plant. By doing this, we are often able to exceed minimum Category 6 standards, creating the best possible end-to-end network connection. This, in turn, means that your investment in new cable will last as long as possible.

3. Equipment Clarification to Section 8 of the UIUCnet Acceptable Use Policy

As some of you are probably aware, the Campus adopted the UIUCnet Acceptable Use Policy, under the name "Interim Policy on Appropriate Use of Computers and Network Systems at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign" some time ago. You can find it on the web at this URL:

http://www.admin.uiuc.edu/cam/CAM/viii/viii-1.1.html
As some of you are probably also aware, Section 8 (Network Design) states:


CITES is responsible for the design or approval of departmental local area networks (LANs) that are connected to the campus network and their connections to the campus backbone. The following subsections document policies and procedures relevant to these areas. The term LAN as used here refers to the routers, switches, repeaters, cabling and patch panels, but excludes servers and other computers.

For years the Network Design Office (NDO) has been the group providing approvals for LANs, and the designers passed on to each network administrator what is allowed and what is not allowed when they connected their building to the network. However, as network administrators change, that information has not always been communicated, nor did the new network administrators know they needed to check with the NDO to find out. Also, a number of network administrators have been asking for a more formal document that they can use to help educate their users and staff about what needed approval.

The NDO now has an official CITES guideline to clarify what does need approval and what does not. This will be updated as new technologies come along. The document is called the "Clarification of Section 8 wording about LAN Equipment" and can be found either linked off the main NDO web site, or at this URL:

http://www-commeng.cso.uiuc.edu/groups/ndo/sec8clarify.html

Please pass this information along to anyone that you think should be aware of the policy, and/or needs to know what equipment is considered LAN equipment under the policy.

4. NAS Training Video Available

Due to interest in our training classes, we have released the first of many videos soon to be published on the web. You can view our most recent release at:

http://opcenter.cites.uiuc.edu/nas/video/

Aaron Brown spoke on April 22 about upgrading the operating system software running on the campus switches. He also covered some of the issues related to upgrading them. Upcoming videos include IP Video Conferencing, Net 101, & Sites Public Labs.

5. Cool Tools

The Cool Tool of the Month is IEEE’s MAC address to OUI/company_id search engine. Simply type in the first three octets of a MAC address and the search engine will return the manufacturer’s name and address.

http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/index.shtml