ACAC Meeting of December 11, 1996
Present: David Phillips (Chair), Chip German (ITC), Michael Kubovy, Worthy Martin, Bill Pearson, Sally Reel, Bob Rood, Tim Sigmon, Martha Sites, Rip Verkerke, George Williams, Alice Howard Dial-in Access Issues ===================== Background: The impending demise of the Sprint-Link-on-Campus (SLOC) service contributed to the urgency of this issue. Multiple facets of this issue were explored during the discussion: 1. What are reasonable expectations/limits for dialin service provided by UVa/ITC -- free and unlimited (as it historically has been)? free and limited (recently true for part of the modem pool)? outsourced to a for-fee local provider (like SLOC)? 2. Who has "access rights" to the UVa-provided dialin services? This discussion prompted a review of ITC's current Accounts policies about who is eligible for an account, how long there eligibility exists, and the length/existence of "grace periods". 3. Philosophical issue of whether the whole UVa community should have the same dialin privileges (whatever they may be), or whether certain constituencies (e.g. faculty) should be treated differently (e.g. by providing them with free, unlimited dialin access)? 4. Is this a short-term problem? or a long-term one? (technology forecasts suggest it is a short-term one) A range of possible solutions was proposed: 1. UVa/ITC would provide a modem-pool which was free with time-limits -- there was discussion about what the limits should be -- a mixture of 15-minute? 30-minute? 1 hour? 2 hour? etc. 2. ITC would negotiate another arrangement (similar to SLOC) with a local ISP which would include direct connections to the UVa network. 3. ITC would offer departments the option to purchase dedicated modems for department-only use. It was noted that this works better in larger departments who can afford >1 modem to address multiple, simultaneous use issues -- and that departments with small OTPS budgets (like the Humanities) would have difficulty funding even one dedicated modem. 4. The possibility of a free, unlimited faculty-only modem pool would be pursued with the Chairs and departmental/school computing committees (in particular, Micheal Kubovy with Arts and Sciences). Tim Sigmon related other universities' recent experiences with these same issues -- many are grappling with the same problems and trying some of the same solutions. An email discussion after this meeting (Bill Pearson and Michael Kubovy) suggested that an analysis of modem usage by faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and staff would help us to make more rational recommendations about modem time-limits and allocations across time-limits. ITC Advisory Committees and Task Forces ======================================= The creation of the new task force for ITC's new Department Support program, prompted discussion about the roles and missions for various advisory groups -- and the particular roles and purpose for the ACAC -- to what degree are we (or should we be) a sounding-board and a responder to ITC? to what degree are we (or should we be) pro-active in raising issues to ITC?[an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]