Welcome to a new academic year at North Texas. All of us at the
Computing Center are committed to making your year as productive and
enjoyable as possible.
In our continuing efforts to improve your computing environment, a
number of changes have occurred over the past year. These improvements
are based on our central mission: To provide computing services that
meet your needs, and do so at a reasonable cost.
Campus-wide information systems. Over the past
year we've continued to work on improving the tools you use for
accessing information. By now, I hope most of you are familiar with our
Gopher, a system that provides easy access to a wide variety of
information on campus and around the world. Since its implementation in
June 1993, use of Gopher has increased rapidly. This July alone, there
were more than 90,000 transactions on the system
More information is constantly being added to our Gopher
system and we're always refining how it works. Last year, we added a
Windows-based Gopher that takes full advantage of the graphical features
of Windows. We also added electronic versions of the UNT graduate and
undergraduate catalogs to the system. This year, we'll continue to work
with campus and community groups to expand the information offerings on
our Gopher.
In addition to the Gopher system, we're introducing the
World Wide Web (WWW), another access avenue to the information
superhighway.
WWW provides access to pages of information through
hypertext or keyword links. That is, a highlighted keyword in one
document or page of information can be linked through this system to
related information in another document.
You view this
information with WWW clients, such as the very popular Mosaic. These
clients are software that provide ways to format and display World Wide
Web documents on a computer screen in a way that can include both text
and images.
If you're interested in learning more about the various
tools we have available for accessing and publishing electronic
information, contact Marc Thacker (thacker@unt.edu, 565-2568), our
campus-wide information system coordinator and/or take a look at the
short courses that are being offered this semester.
Networking. Many of our efforts over the past two years
have focused on expanding our networking capabilities. With most of the
major on-campus wiring projects completed, we're now concentrating on
improving access to computing resources from off-campus via telephone
lines. Two recent installations have put us well on our way to faster
and more reliable connections from off-campus a bank of new high-speed
modems (14.4 bps) and the replacement of an old terminal server.
We're also working on providing point-to-point protocol
(PPP) access from off-campus via telephone lines. PPP access will enable
you to connect directly to the Internet from home through a high-speed
modem. Essentially, this will allow your home PC to be a remote node on
our Internet backbone. The basic advantage of this type of
connection is that you'll be able to run applications, like Gopher or
Mosaic, at home using the full graphics capability of your PC or Mac.
Without PPP, your home machine can only act as a dumb terminal.
Providing dial-in access from off-campus to our Novell networks has
proven to be problematic, the main problem being that Novell networks
were designed to provide connectivity only to machines directly wired
together, not to provide cost effective remote access via telephone
lines and modems. Nevertheless, we're working to overcome these
technical obstacles so you can dial-in to our Novell networks and access
various applications that reside on the Novell servers.
Currently, we're assisting the College of Business Administration on a
pilot test as well as conducting our own pilot, with the School of
Library and Information Sciences using one of the more promising
technologies for dial-in access to Novell a Citrix application server.
We hope to have this pilot test in place by September, and if the Citrix
solution meets our expectations, we'll begin wider deployment of this
product before the start of the spring semester.
UNIX Systems. To meet the constantly increasing demand
for UNIX computing, we've added a new SUN SPARC Center 1000 to our
cluster of UNIX host machines. This new machine came with two
processors, but can be upgraded to 16 processors. The SUN SPARC
increases our UNIX capability by 35%.
We're also in the
process of implementing an automated system for creating logon IDs for
users of our UNIX systems. When in place, this system will allow any
student, faculty, or staff member of the University to request and
generate a UNIX account from any terminal or PC connected to our campus
network.
Other Projects. In addition to the improvements
described above, we're working on: an automated menued system for
accessing stu-dent information, an improved online problem notification
system, a possible upgrade of our academic mainframe system, and a
directory service that will provide a unified database for all logon IDs
on all systems as well as for E-Mail.
That's an update of what's been happening in the academic computing
environment. As we begin the new year, it's also important to look at
the challenges ahead. The nice thing about information technology is
that there never seems to be a lack of challenges to look forward to. Of
course, that's also the downside of information technology too much of a
good thing!
The challenge for us this year continues to be how best to develop
the technology and services that meet your evolving computing and
networking needs most effectively. Our strategy is to keep the computing
environment as varied and as flexible as possible so that we can take
advantage of technological improvements as quickly as they arise. We
realize, however, that technological improvements are only as good as
your ability to get up and running with them with as little hassle as
possible. With this in mind, we're striving for a seamless computing
environment where you, the user, will feel the added resource power of
new technologies without having to hassle with a bunch of new operating
procedures.
The idea of a seamless computing environment is not a new concept,
it's a vision that has been espoused by many computing professionals for
a long time. Unfortunately, it's a vision that is often misunderstood.
So, what is a seamless computing environment anyway?
Seamless basically means that although we provide information
technology services through more than one underlying system, this should
be either undetectable or irrelevant to you. It means that while we
don't expect one system to meet the needs of all users, we want to
ensure that the boundaries between systems are not impediments to their
use or the sharing of information. Of course, we realize that all our
technology strategies are subordinate to our most important goal
providing quality computing and networking services that meet your
needs. Meeting your changing computing needs with new technologies that
make your interactions with the academic computing environment as simple
and hassle-free as possible is our continuing goal. We hope that the
improvements we've made over the past year are evidence of our
commitment to you. As the 1994-95 year progresses, please feel free to
contact me with any ideas or concerns. My door is always open.
You can contact Dr. Gandel via E-mail at gandel@unt.edu (Internet), CC1:Gandel (WPO) or telephone at
565-3854.
If you have problems or questions about this server, please contact me as soon as possible. You can send mail to the following address:
WWW@unt.edu