| Introduction
Distributed
Computing Environment
Campus
IT Structure
UB IT
Accounts
Electronic
Mail
Online Campus
Directory Service
World Wide
Web
Campus
Network
Internet2
Dial-in
Access
Telephones
Hardware
Platforms
Institutional
File System
Center for
Computational Research
High-tech
Classrooms
Educational
Technology Center
Students
& Computers
Campus Computing
Sites
UBiquity
Environment
CIT Help
Desk
Documentation
& Workshops
Key
Directions
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The
UB Information Technology (IT) Environment
UB has become a leader in
developing and deploying an IT environment that empowers University
members to accomplish their goals. We have been recognized as a leader
in providing the IT resources that students need by the Yahoo Internet
Life annual survey conducted by Peterson's,
and score equally well using the Educause Guide to
Evaluating IT on Campus criteria.
Our students, faculty and
staff expect and need multimedia e-mail, high speed networks, wireless
access, Web access to library resources and administrative information
& services, easy Web publishing, technical support and training,
and much more. They have diverse needs in the academic computing arena,
including support for:
- palmtops,
desktops, laptops, high performance workstations and supercomputers
- the development of instructional materials and performance
of major research tasks
- the use of common productivity packages as well as
complex special-purpose applications
Administrative computing infrastructure
and products provide the Web-based student services
(registration, financial aid information, access to grades
and degree information) our students expect, as well as the data
warehouse, UB InfoSource,
needed to provide University information to faculty and
staff.
Distributed Computing Environment
The availability of personal
computers, high performance workstations, local area networks
and access to the Internet & Web have dramatically changed
the IT environment at UB. The campus has migrated from centralized,
academic mainframe systems to distributed client-server architectures
based on Unix, Windows (2000/NT) & Novell servers and desktop
machines & high performance workstations. We have also migrated
many administrative applications from an IBM mainframe to distributed
client-server architectures as well. Web access to IT services,
information, and resources is a major component of our campus IT
strategy.
More than 95% of faculty and
staff have desktop computing technology. Many faculty have acquired
their computing technology via their research grant activity.
Students have access to computing
resources on campus through a network of public and departmental
computing labs which are housed in more than 90 different facilities
and contain more than 2000 desktop and high performance systems.
In addition, more than 90% of students have personal computers in
their living space.
Since Fall, 1999, incoming
freshmen have been advised that they will need access to a personal
computer in their on-campus or off-campus residences in order
to take advantage of innovative ways of learning and enhanced ways
of communicating with instructors and classmates. Graduate and
professional schools are currently evaluating computer ownership
requirements for their students. The School of Dental Medicine initiated
a laptop ownership requirement for incoming students in Fall 2000.
MBA students are advised that they will need to have access to
a personal computer beyond those provided in the University's
computing labs.
Campus IT
Support Structure
UB has a distributed
IT support environment with many campus units involved in IT service
delivery. The central IT organization, Computing and Information Technology
(CIT), provides the UB community with a broad range of
basic computing, telephone, and state-of-the-art networking services
and works with distributed technology partners across our campuses
to coordinate the planning and delivery of campus IT resources and
services. Campus distributed IT staff who provide direct support
to faculty and staff using technology in their instructional, research,
and administrative activities are organized into IT nodes,
in order to provide "critical masses" of local IT support providers
to schools and departments. These distributed IT staff report
to their respective deans.
A campus IT Coordinating Committee,
chaired by a Chief Information Officer (CIO), coordinates information
technology planning, funding, and implementation for the campus.
A second institution-wide planning group, the Administrative Systems Advisory
Board (ASAB), chaired by the Associate CIO, focuses on
Web-based solutions for student services and administrative systems.
Below is a description of
some of the central tools, resources and services provided by CIT.
These services and resources are significantly augmented by the resources
of the IT nodes and other units on campus, some of which are
also described below.
UB IT Accounts
There are approximately
46,000 UB IT Accounts
and more than 88,000 principals in the DCE database. (The latter
includes service/host/application accounts, as well as accounts
tied to individuals.) UB IT accounts are used by students, faculty, staff,
and community partners to access a variety of resources at UB. Students
use their UB IT accounts to register for classes (Web registration),
access email on the central UB mail service, get listings of current
course schedules, get their grades, chart progress to their degrees
(degree audit), access MyUB (our student web portal), and access
the UBunix timesharing computers.
Electronic
Mail (Email)
There are more
than 35,000 subscribers to the CIT central IMAP e-mail service
. (IMAP stands for Interactive Mail Access
Protocol. IMAP e-mail mailboxes can be accessed using Mulberry, Pine,
Netscape Communicator, Outlook Express and other email programs.
CIT has a University-wide
license for the Mulberry email
program. We distribute Mulberry to students, faculty, and staff
free of charge, and offer a full range of support services: training,
consulting, documentation for Mulberry.
Many people like the convenience
of having their email accessible from the Web, since they want
to read their email anywhere, anytime that they have access to
a Web browser. UB has rolled out a Web mail client, produced by
the same vendor as Mulberry (and compatible with Mulberry's address
books and folders). Web Mail can be accessed at: http://webmail.buffalo.edu/.
Web Mail is also available from myub.buffalo.edu. Initial testing
has shown that Web Mail is slower than the desktop client, Mulberry,
and provides a subset of Mulberry's features.
Students, faculty, and staff
receive 15 Megabytes of storage space for their mail on the central
imap email servers.
Many departments and schools
provide additional e-mail services for their students, faculty,
and staff. For example, the Science and Engineering IT
node and the Computer Science and Engineering
department provide e-mail services and other resources
to their students, faculty, and staff.
Online Campus Directory (ldap) Service
Our online campus directory
service, ldap.buffalo.edu, provides
the entries of individuals and groups at UB.
World Wide
Web
UB's Gateway Web Site
The UB Gateway web
server http://www.buffalo.edu/
and campus info system server wings.buffalo.edu are
maintained by CIT. These web sites provide a browsable and searchable
front-door to the many college, school, and departmental Web servers
and sites at UB.
The Infoseek search engine
provides searching capability for the UB Gateway web site and
campus info system server and has indexed 49,612 pages at 73 campus
web server sites.
The Computing & Information
Technology (CIT) Web Site http://www.cit.buffalo.edu/
is CIT's "front door" to information. This site directs users to
IT help, news, documentation, online information resources, training
opportunities, facilities, products and services.
Student Web
Portal: MyUB
myub.buffalo.edu
is a web-based, personal portal to the online resources undergraduate
and graduate students need most.
Campus Network
Infrastructure
The campus network spans two
campuses, connecting over 100 fiber optic-attached Ethernet LANs
supporting more than 14,000 ports or connections.
The campus network has been
upgraded to a gigabit (Gbps) Ethernet backbone with 100 Megabit
(Mbps) links to buildings. Distribution to the desktop is a combination
of switched 10- and 100-Mbps Ethernet. All new installations are
100Mbps Ethernet.
The network includes interconnections
with several local, regional and national networks including
the Western New York Health Science Consortium, NYSERNet, SUNYNet,
Internet and the National Science Foundation's very high-speed
backbone network service (vBNS).
The campus Internet (I1) and
Internet2 (I2) links are OC3 POS (155Mbps).
All residence halls and UB apartments
are wired with Ethernet for Internet connectivity, providing
one data connection or port per resident. Most residence halls
and UB-owned apartments provide 100 Mbps desktop connectivity. In
addition, there are 100 "open ports" available in the University
Libraries, providing high speed network connections for faculty
and students with laptops.
Internet2:
The Next Generation Network and Applications
UB is among the more than
100 American universities participating in Internet2 as a full and
active member of this partnership of universities, government agencies
and industry to foster the development of the Internet.
Dial-in Access
UB provides more than
1150 dial-in lines
for off-campus access to UB resources and the Internet: a string
supporting the V.90 56Kbps protocols and a digital string supporting
the ISDN protocol.
Campus Wireless
Access
CIT has deployed wireless
network access in the following North and South campus locations.
North Campus
- Public
Computing Areas
- 101 Bell Hall
- 1st Floor, Capen Undergraduate Library Cybrary
- 3rd Floor, Science & Engineering Library Cybrary
- 2nd & 4th Floors, Law Library, O'Brian Hall
- 2nd & 3rd Floors, Lockwood Library Cybraries
- Classroom Locations
- O'Brian 107, 113, 406, 706
South Campus
- 1st &
2nd floor, basement, Health Sciences Library, Abbott Hall
Visit the CIT Wireless web
site, http://www.cit.buffalo.edu/ubwireless/
for information on a suggested wireless network card, terms and
standards, and wireless security.
Telephones
Voice services are
provided through the distribution and configuration of an 8000
line Bell Atlantic Intellipath telephone system, supporting over
10,000 stations on numerous key systems.
Hardware
Platforms
CIT provides the following
central computing environments:
- Unix
Environment
- Suncluster: Unix timesharing (ubunix.acsu.buffalo.edu)
machines for the academic community
- There are many editing/word processing, database,
graphics & other software
tools and programming languages for ubunix.
- Administrative Unix machines for University business
and student service systems
- Nameservice Machines
- Web Service machines for www.buffalo.edu and wings.buffalo.edu
- Oracle Service Machines for our data warehouse,
InfoSource
- Mail Service Machines for the central mail service
described earlier
- News Service Machines
- File Service Machines
- Print Service Machines
- Ldap Machines.
- DCE Cell Machines
- Network Access & Network Service machines
- IBM Mainframe
- IBM 2003/135 Mainframe: operating system OS/390
- The majority of our business and other administrative
systems run on the IBM mainframe.
UBFS makes it possible
for students and other users to access their files from "anywhere."
That is, students can access their UBFS computer files from their
PCs in the residence halls or off-campus residences, from the computers
in the campus public computing labs, and from any other UBFS-capable
machine on campus. Anywhere-access means that students
won't have to carry a floppy disk around with them when they
move from their computers at home to the various campus labs and
their UBFS files will be backed up daily, reducing the chances that
they will lose valuable information files. Students receive 15 megabytes
of UBFS space to store their files.
The Center
for Computational Research (CCR)
The Center for
Computational Research (CCR) is one of the top 10 academic
supercomputing sites in the United States.
The mission of the CCR is
to support high performance computing research and high-end visualization.
This world-class computational
research facility provides resources to faculty and students
at UB, as well as to industrial and educational partners in Western
New York. These resources are used to solve challenging problems
in areas that include biology, medicine, meteorology, chemistry,
earthquake studies, and engineering. A number of applications in
music and the arts are in the planning stages as well. CCR currently
supports more than 80 research groups.
CCR state-of-the-art
supercomputer hardware includes
- a Silicon
Graphics Origin 3800 system, consisting of 128 processors connected
in a shared-memory architecture.
- an IBM RS/6000 SP
- a Sun Microsystems cluster consisting of 16 dual processor
Sun Blade 1000 workstations and 48 Sun Ultra 5 333MHz workstations
- a Sun Enterprise 6000 system which can handle data
warehouses with multiple terabytes of data
- High-end visualization systems from Silicon Graphics
(SGI Onyx2) and a Fakespace Systems, Inc. ImmersaDesk R2 system.
The visualizations systems create the perception of "virtual
reality" through 3-D imagery involving sight, sound, and touch.
The CCR has access via NYSERNet2000
to the major high speed communication networks referred to as
Internet2, the Next Generation Network. NYSERNet, a 622 MBPS network,
connects UB and the CCR with national and international high-speed
networks such as vBNS, Gemini 2000, and Abilene.
The New York
State Center for Engineering Design and Industrial Innovation
(NYSEDII)
The New York
State Center for Engineering Design and Industrial Innovation
(NYSCEDII) serves as a new and important resource
for the sustenance and growth of the industrial base in Western New
York, and New York State altogether. By focusing on the front-end
high technology and information intensive design of complex products
and the planning of manufacturing facilities, NYSCEDII will develop
technologies and provide services that complement other economic
development and training activities in the Region and State.
NYSCEDII has three missions:
- Basic
Research
- Education and Training
- Industrial Outreach
The infrastructure consists
of the following:
- Virtual
Reality Hardware
- a Mechdyne Surround-Screen Visualization Environment
(SSVR) which represents the state-of-the art in visual hardware
systems. The 4-wall version of this facility (completed in
Spring, 2001) provides a means to rapidly prototype new product
and process design concepts in an immersive, virtual environment.
- a Moog 6 D-O-F Electric Motion Platform, coupled
with an immersive visualization capability, which provides
an immediate benefit to transportation industries (aircraft,
automotive, construction equipment, etc.) involved in product
design and training, as well as the location-based entertainment
industry.
- a Fakespace RAVE passive stereo module (exp. April,
2001) which enables large groups to participate simultaneously
in a design process or an industrial training workshop.
- Computational Infrastructure
- the SGI Rack ONYX-2 system which is the world's
most powerful visualization engine, which can simultaneously
process 3-D graphics, imaging, and video data in real time.
Components of the infrastructure include:
- SGI Origin-3000 system (exp. Spring, 2001)
- SGI multi-processor Octane workstations
- SGI O2 workstations
- SUN Ultra 80 multi-processor workstations
- SUN Ultra 60 workstations
- Macintosh G4 Cube
- Digital Image Processing facilities
- Numerous visual and haptic accessories
- Support Hardware and VR Development Laboratories: A
haptic technologies laboratory is necessary to investigate multi-sensory
interactions in high end visual environments such as touch,
and sound. Hardware such as data gloves and head mounted displays,
3-D wands and navigational hardware, and additional sensing hardware
are available. A video editing facility enables industrial partners
to feed company specific multimedia data into the hardware facilities.
High-tech Multimedia Classrooms
UB has more
than 50 state-of-the-art, high-tech,
multimedia classrooms, located on the North and
South Campuses. In addition, all of UB's classrooms are wired
for Internet access.
Educational Technology Center (ETC)
The Educational
Technology Center opened its doors to faculty
in the Spring 1999 semester. "Its aim is to help faculty and
instructors to design instructional technology applications and
to develop web-based and multimedia courses, primarily for undergraduates."
The ETC offers workshops free of charge to faculty and other instructors.
UBLearns:
Blackboard Course Management System
Blackboard is the commercially-available
course management system chosen by UB to enhance traditional
courses and provide online courses. Blackboard provides tools
to enhance student-student and faculty-student communication,
as well as to allow students to test their learning via online
testing. In the Fall 2001 semester more than 300 courses were available
via UBLearns. The enterprise version of Blackboard has been rolled
out for Spring, 2002.
Students
& Computers
The July 2001
Freshmen Orientation Survey of Incoming Freshmen indicated that prior
to their arrival for studies at UB:
- 96% of
incoming freshmen had computers in their homes
- 94% of incoming freshmen had Internet access in their
homes
- 69% used their computers to read email daily; 93%
at least once a week
- 55% used their computers to access Web pages daily;
89% at least once a week
- 76% had taken a computer course in high school
- 28% had taken a half-year course
- 23% had taken a one-year course
- 25% had taken more than a one-year course
- Incoming students reported that they have a solid background
in the use of computer-related software:
- 93% used the Internet/Web to find information at
least once a week
- 99% used word processing software at least once
a week
- 76% felt that they had very strong skills using
the computer for academic work
- The preferred methods for learning more about computing
were:
- 44% exploring on own
- 24% via instructor-led workshops
- 22% from family and friends
The 2001-2002
Student Computing Experiences Survey Mid-year Snapshot
found that
- 91% of
all UB students (undergraduates and graduate students) have
their own computer in their Residence Hall Room, campus apartment, or
off-campus home.
- 95% of students agree or strongly agree that: Computer
technology and resources are very important to my academic and
professional success.
- 85% agree or strongly agree that: Using a computer
increases my communication with faculty.
- 81% agree or strongly agree that: Using a computer
increases my communication with other students.
- 93% of UB students have an email account with an ISP
such as AOL or Adelphia OR a free email provider such as Yahoo,
in addition to their free UB email account and ISP service.
- 92% of UB students use the public computing areas on
campus.
- 62% of UB students spend more than 10 hours/week connected
to the Internet (reading email, surfing the Web, doing coursework);
77.2% spend at least 8 to 10 hours per week.
The iConnect initiative
strongly recommends that all freshmen and transfer students bring
computers with them to UB, so that they can take advantage of innovative
ways of learning and enhanced ways of communicating with their
instructors and classmates. When students graduate from UB, they
will have acquired computing skills that will give them a competitive
edge in the 21st century workplace.
Campus Computing
Sites
Public and departmental
computing facilities continue to play a vital role on campus.
At present there are well over 2200 personal computers and workstations
in campus labs run by CIT, nodes
and departments. Many labs offer specialty software for course
work and are open 24 hours per day.
UBiquity
Computing Environment: Integrating Technologies
UBiquity is the name
of the computing environment provided to the Engineering and Natural
Sciences & Math community by Science and Engineering Node Services.
All members of the University community can use the UBiquity environment
in Bell 101.
UBiquity is designed to allow
access to a common set of computing tools including word processing,
spreadsheet, statistical, and math applications, from different
computing platforms (Sun/Unix and Windows NT workstations). It
presents users with a common "look and feel" on both platforms:
high performance Unix workstations and Windows PCs. UBiquity also
provides access to file space, where data are stored securely, backed
up regularly, and available whenever/wherever needed.
Every day faculty and students
use UBiquity infrastructure to run the shared, site-licensed
software applications needed at a comprehensive research university
that would be too costly for individuals to purchase for their
own personal computers/workstations.
CIT Help Desk
CIT Help Desk The CIT Help Desk
provides consultation on the core computing topics needed by the
University community. An estimated 20,000 "problem tickets" were
logged and resolved during the 98-99 academic year. The Help Desk
receives requests for computing assistance via phone call, walk-in
and email requests.
User Documentation
& Workshops
More than 80 reference,
step-by-step, and tutorial documents are available electronically
through the CIT documentation system on the World Wide Web at http://www.cit.buffalo.edu/documentation
Free workshops on
more than 30 topics are offered by CIT and the Libraries.
UBMicro also offers
workshops for a fee.
Key Directions
- iConnect@Buffalo:
Closing the digital divide
- UB developed the Access99 computing initiative to ensure
equitable access to computing for incoming freshmen and enhanced
teaching and learning experiences for undergraduates. UB has
seen computer ownership increase each year of the initiative.
- Each year the iConnect SNAP program has helped to close
the digital divide, providing approximately 10% of incoming
freshmen who demonstrate compelling financial need with new or
nearly new computers that meet campus standards.
- "SWAT" teams of student computer experts make "house
calls", providing just-in-time help for all students in the
residence halls.
- The Microsoft Campus License Agreement provides
the latest Microsoft Office suite of productivity software
and other products to students, faculty and staff.
Bioinformatics
Networking
- Thin Client
Computing - Citrix MetaFrame Solutions: Science and Engineering
Node Services (SENS) has been using Citrix in its UBiquity environment
for several years to support heterogeneous environments. CIT
and SENS are now partnering to use an application server model to
provide student access to needed software. Thin client computing can
reduce hardware costs by extending the life of older PCs and controlling
the costs of new hardware expenditures, as well as by reducing software
licensing costs.
Open Source Software/Linux
Pilots: Science and Engineering Node Services has been leading
a pilot project to distribute Linux (Red-Hat) and open source
software on campus and to provide PCs with Linux in public computing
areas.
Distance Learning, Videoconferencing Technology
UB has an active distance learning program with two classrooms
(Baldy, Abbott) equipped with real-time videoconferencing.
UB is also exploring the use of advanced desktop videoconferencing
technology (including Cisco's IP/TV) as a means to distribute
events, such as conferences featuring high profile speakers who
can provide information about their on-going research, to the
the desktops of UB faculty, staff and students. The potential of
this technology for telemedicine, high-grade distance learning,
and faculty collaboration is being explored.
UB's Digital
Library
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