Network Managers Meeting Minutes

February 7, 2002

 

Minutes recorded by Joe Dance – send corrections or comments to dancejoe@moore.sc.edu

 

 

Ronni Wilkinson opened the meeting and:

• Expressed thanks for Michael Dollar’s work and leadership as Chair during 2001.

• Announced that nominations for Vice-Chair included Vicki Mathis and Joe Dance, and asked if there were any additional nominations; there were none.
• Voting commenced. 

 

 

Chris Brown:

• Requested that Network Managers send info or suggestions on what would make faculty more comfortable using IT, Blackboard, etc., to cmbrown@gwm.sc.edu.

 

 

Ronni Wilkinson and Brian McGowan:

• Discussed recent problems with Internet Access.
• Sprint provides a 45MB Internet connection.
• SCNet provides 50MB, over InfoAve.
• The SCNET line is shared with OIR and another organization – each organization having 50MB of bandwidth.
• OIR increased their traffic and SCNet implemented policing.
• At that point, SCNet began to drop approximately 20% of USC packets.
• Due to load balancing, USC was sending alternate packets over Sprint or SCNet.
• A request that went out over one carrier might come back over the other.
• If the return route (SCNet) dropped the packet, it made the other carrier look as though it was performing poorly.
• Once SCNet stopped policing, the problem stopped.
• Explained that some initial confusion was caused by the fact that the times listed by traceroute for each hop are not the incremental times, but the round trip times to and from the respective router – the packets involved may or may not have taken the same route as previous packets, through the previously listed routers.  This issue caused some initial confusion, given that two ISPs were being used, and that alternate packets were taking different routes initially.
• USC load balancing has also been modified - traffic for any given destination is now sent over the least cost route (lowest number of hops), according to BGP tables.
• Noted that Traceroute.org provides trace routing from their servers to specified destinations, which may be helpful at times in troubleshooting.
• Traceroute reports also revealed that someone outside USC is routing traffic over USC’s Internet connections, which requires further investigation.

 

 

Ruth Abercrombie:

• The Services Center (7-1800), Control Center (7-0297) and Communications Trouble Reporting (7-1010) have been consolidated at the CSD Helpdesk (7-1800), in the CSD Annex.
• The Helpdesk has six fulltime personnel, plus some student workers.
• Input and suggestions were requested, as to what the network managers and end users want or need from the Helpdesk; send suggestions to Ruth Abercrombie by email.
• Hours are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
• Two network managers commented that they had called recently and felt that the calls were handled very well.

 

 

Ronni Wilkinson:

• A Nessus Vulnerability Scanner has been installed, and is available to the network managers.
• It can be scheduled to perform specified scans on a recurring basis, to see if new vulnerabilities have appeared.
• A sample report of scan results was reviewed; reports provide detailed information about identified vulnerabilities, along with information about how to correct each problem, or a link to the appropriate reference.
• Network managers may request accounts to use the Nessus Vulnerability Scanner installed at CSD, to scan computers on their networks.
• A handout describing the Nessus Vulnerability Scanner was distributed.
• The handout contains the form to request a Nessus account; complete the form and return it to Ronnie.
• The request form and additional information are available at:

 

http://csintranet.csd.sc.edu/campusnetwork/Old%20Pages%202002/nessus_vulnerability_scanner.html

 

 

Ronni Wilkinson announced that Vicki Mathis was elected Vice-Chair, and concluded the meeting.