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CITES > project status > campus network upgrade > announcements and presentations > February 2007 news briefs

Campus Network Upgrade Project
News Briefs No. 8 -- February 2007

 

I. Construction milestones and kick-off meetings

Construction starts:
1101 St. Mary’s Road – started January 8, 2007.
Agricultural Engineering Sciences – started January 8, 2007.
Art & Design Building – started December 21, 2006.
English Building – started October 29, 2006.
Harding Band Building – started December 29, 2006.
Huff Hall (wireless & CER) – started December 29, 2006.
Loomis Laboratory (wireless) – started January 8, 2007.
Mumford Hall (wireless) – started November 8, 2006.
Veterinary Medicine Basic Sciences Building – started November 25, 2006.

Construction on-going:
Animal Sciences Lab – started August 21, 2006.
Illini Hall – started August 21, 2006.
Foreign Language Building – started January 23, 2006.
Main Library – started April 4, 2006.
Music Building – started March 8, 2006.
Surveying Building – started August 27, 2006.

Construction completed:
Foellinger Auditorium – completed January 11, 2007.
Gregory Hall – completed January 16, 2007.
Ice Arena – completed January 02, 2007.
Law Building – completed October 04, 2006.
Transportation Building – completed January 24, 2007.
University High School – completed October 02, 2006.

For more scheduling information, please see the Campus Network Upgrade Project Status Table.

II. Guestnet and UI Public Wireless (beta) services launched

Two major advances in the campus wireless service were introduced this fall semester: Guestnet and UI Public Wireless (beta).

With Guestnet, students, faculty, and staff can sponsor guests to connect to UIUCnet, the campus-wide computing network. Sponsored guest accounts allow the user to connect to the Internet via any one of four major campus network services: UIUCnet Wireless, UIUCnet Quick Connect, UIUCnet Virtual Private Network (VPN), and UIUCnet Walkup services.

With UI Public Wireless (beta), campus visitors can connect to the Internet at one of four locations:

• Alice Campbell Alumni Center, 601 S. Lincoln Ave., Urbana, Ill.
• Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, 500 S. Goodwin Ave., Urbana, Ill.
• Veterinary Medicine Teaching Hospital, College of Veterinary Medicine, 1008 West Hazelwood Dr., Urbana, Ill.
• Willard Airport, 11 Airport Road, Savoy, Ill.

UI Public Wireless is bandwidth-restricted and limits access to academic resources. Users are able to send and receive web-based email of any type (e.g., Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail), surf the Internet, and instant message with friends.

For security purposes, all UI Public Wireless users must provide contact details and a valid, working email address. For Guestnet users, a personal account sponsor takes responsibility for the network activity of his or her guest(s). All sponsors and guests must adhere to the University’s Policy on Appropriate Use of Computers and Network Systems. The CITES Security Office reserves the right to cancel not only a guest user’s account but also the sponsor’s ability to create guest accounts if it determines there are recurring problems with that sponsor’s guest accounts.

UI Public Wireless is scheduled to launch as a full service in March 2007.

III. Media coverage
The Campus Network Upgrade Project was featured in one news story, and Guestnet was featured in two:

1.) "CITES lets UIN holders sponsor guests" from The Daily Illini, October 16, 2006.

2. “Guest online account services expanded” from Inside Illinois, November 2, 2006.

3.) “Hotspots to improve UI wireless capability” from The Daily Illini, November 30, 2006

Please see the Announcements and Presentations section of the Campus Network Upgrade Project website for the latest information about the project.

IV. PC Magazine names Illinois 6th most wired campus

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign makes the grade as one of the nation’s most connected campuses, ranking as the sixth "most connected, plugged-in, and high-tech campus in the country," according to PC Magazine's recent survey of the "Top 20 Wired Colleges.”

“It’s a great honor for the university, although I don’t think anyone who knows anything about Illinois would be the least bit surprised,” said Interim CIO Paula Kaufman. “You can’t fire up a web browser without thinking about the rich tradition of computing excellence that’s been produced by this campus."

According to the article, the “Top 20 Wired Colleges” honors “colleges with the most comprehensive—in terms of size, scope and quality—computing and technology offerings.”

“As the birthplace of the parallel super-computer, the Web browser, and the world’s fastest transistor, Illinois certainly meets and exceeds those criteria,” Kaufman said.

To select the honorees, PC Magazine and The Princeton Review surveyed college administrators, focusing on three main areas of technology: Academics, Student Resources, and Infrastructure. Over 240 schools of The Princeton Review’s Best 361 Colleges completed the questionnaire last summer, making Illinois’s sixth-place ranking that much more impressive, according to Kaufman.

“The rankings are a reflection not only of our present excellence, but also the fact that we stand on the shoulders of technological giants at Illinois,” Kaufman said. “Computing wouldn’t be computing as we know it without the contributions of our graduates.”

Read the complete article and rankings here.