Campus Computing News

By Dr. Maurice Leatherbury, Senior Director of Academic Computing

Dial-up with 56K Modems

The Networking and Communications Services department of the Computing Center has upgraded the software on many of our dialup ports to support the recently-ratified V.90 standard for modems. That standard, although designed for modems that are sold as "56K" modems, specifies that a maximum of 53 thousand bits per second is possible on standard phone lines. You may not (probably will not!) be able to get a full 53Kbps connection, but you're likely to see a higher speed than you're used to seeing if you have a V.90-capable modem. If you have a modem that supports the older "KFlex" protocol, you'll still be able to connect at the higher speeds afforded by that protocol. Of course, if you're really addicted to speed, we do offer ISDN connections at true 64Kbps for single lines and 128Kbps for dual lines.

As of the end of September, 1999, the following is our configurations of dialup lines and the protocols they support:

Denton	Premium -- 212 lines (V.90 & 64K or 128k ISDN)**
	General -- 47 lines (V.34 & 64k ISDN)
DFW	Premium -- 47 lines (V.90 & 64 or 128k ISDN)* **
	General -- 23 lines (V.90 & 64k ISDN)*

*ISDN and 56k services are not available to Fort Worth residents.

**We restrict Premium lines to seven subscriptions per line to prevent busy signals, so the Denton Premium service can support 1,484 subscribers at this time.

Microsoft CDs Now Available for Employee Purchase

Employees of the University (including student workers) can now obtain the following Microsoft software packages in the UNT Bookstore under our recently-implemented Microsoft Campus Agreement:

• Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 Workstation operating upgrades (one CD each)

• Office 2000 Professional (two CD's)

• Office 98 for the Macintosh (one CD)

• Office 97 (one CD, by special order in the Bookstore)

• FrontPage 2000 (two CD's), FrontPage for the Mac (one CD)

• FrontPage 98 for Windows (one CD, by special order)

• Visual Studio Professional (five CD's)

• Microsoft Press Office Step by Step for Office 2000 (one CD, but won't be released until some time in the near future)

You can purchase the distribution CD's in the trade book section of the UNT Bookstore for $7.00 per CD plus tax. The details of your rights and responsibilities under the Agreement can be found at: http://www.unt.edu/dcsmt/campusagreement.htm (you are required to sign a copy of that form when you purchase any of the CD's.)

Documentation and technical assistance on the products are not part of the Campus Agreement, so you'll need to purchase books on how to use the products separately (there are numerous ones on most of these packages for all levels of expertise.)

Year 2000 Compliance Checking Software Being Investigated

The Computing Center is investigating software packages that purport to check other software packages for Year 2000 compliance. The goal of the investigation is to select and purchase a product or several products that will assist the campus in identifying potential problems with desktop application software packages that are now in use. The products that we're looking at perform such tasks as checking whether a particular package has been certified by its manufacturer as being Y2K compliant, checking whether data formats in various types of files are potential problems, and even checking whether date values in some data fields could cause erroneous calculations. For example, one package claims to check whether two-digit or four-digit dates are entered into Excel spreadsheets. Sandy Burke (extension 3856) is spearheading the investigation of the various checking products and the results of the evaluation will be published in various fora when we feel confident that the best product(s) have been selected. Computer users on campus will be notified by their network managers when the checking packages are ready for use.