Technology News

Apple File Protocol or AFP will be shut down on Hurricane for faculty and staff home and work directories. This will be done in anticipation of an upgrade to Windows Server 2008 and this protocol is no longer supported. You will still be able to access your files using a different protocol (SMB) which is far more reliable. For assistance please contact the Faculty/Staff Help Desk via email support@evergreen.edu or via phone extension 6627 (866-6627).

Network Services will be upgrading core network hardware this weekend starting in the early afternoon on Saturday. While the upgrade is underway, each network location (including wireless services) will experience scattered service outages as Internet connectivity, network servers and building connections are moved off of the old hardware onto the new hardware. Some services and areas will take longer to restore than others. We expect the upgrade to be completed sometime Sunday afternoon. If you have questions or concerns, please contact Technical Support Services at 360-867-6227!

This is a question that just came in from a student who was interested in knowing if video chat would work on campus using some of the popular tools such as Google video chat.  The short answer is well, sorta, but it might be sporadic.

For those who care about the details, the college currently has a 45Mb/sec connection to the Internet. This connection is shared by all campus users. The basic principal we follow in managing the connection is to share equally and create the best experience possible for the majority of uses.

Even though we have a relatively small connection, it is possible to share it amongst a large number of users because most uses consist of short bursts of activity such as browsing the web. There are uses such as streaming video and file sharing, that tend to be continuous rather than short bursts of activity. If even 30 people, were doing these kinds of continuous activities, it would severely degrade the experience of the large numbers of people doing the lighter activities such as web browsing. This is the instance where we do not just share equally. Preference is given to the traffic that is bursty such as web browsing. There is also a higher priority given to traffic originating from academic spaces and faculty and staff offices. This is done to ensure that class lab activities, etc go as smoothly as possible.

For an institution our size, we have a limited connection. During the coming year we will be upgrading the connection adding another 50% or more bandwidth. It is our goal to be able to at least double the connection by the end of the 10/11 academic year.

Thanks for the initial question (it’s a good one!) and we’ll keep you posted..

Over the last couple of weeks we have been experiencing some performance problems with the student email system. The major symptom is that mailboxes are slow to initially load. This happens using web mail and outlook, on and off campus. The Network Services team has been working with the staff in Academic Computing to determine the specific circumstances and established monitoring points within the system to track down the root of the problem.