Over my past few years as a student I have had the tolerance to put up with the network and computer services provided by my University. I’ll draw your attention to the word tolerance. The computers are severely out of date – I understand budgets don’t stretch to state of the art machines nor would I expect that, but Pentium 4′s with 512MB RAM? That coupled with the networking software which they run, plus windows XP and a suite of desktop adverts (Why this resource hog is necessary I have no idea) it doesn’t make for the most fun or even usable student computing experience.
Over the last six months, however, I have been able to experience the network infrastructure from the perspective of a member of staff. And to my surprise, it’s actually worse.
We are still plagued with old, Fujitsu Siemens boxes which feature somewhere in the region of 2.8GHz processors and if you are lucky, 1GB of RAM. Hard Drive capacity extends as far as 40GB.
The wireless infrastructure isn’t too much better. Yes, there is a large coverage area but speeds range from slow to slower (maxing out at about 512kbps) and the authentication to get onto the network is crazy – windows requires a client to be downloaded and installed while OSX requires complicated 802.1x profile creation and installation of certificates, which the average user really isn’t going to know how to do.
On top of this, Gods help you if you try and plug a laptop into a network port. I mean, static IP’s are really good and extremely functional but trying to get one is ridiculously complicated. Forms have to be filled out, paper forms which take about 2 days to be processed and even then, the lack of a Standard Software build for staff computers means that someone has to be dispatched to installed all the required software onto the computer in question. Which is highly inefficient when you have 4 people each needing their computer sorted out. Quick builds can take as little as 30minutes and can be run simultaneously from CD’s or even a network repository.
Finally Novell. The clients here use NetWare and honestly it causes more trouble than its worth. It actually slows the computers down. I (thankfully) took some initiative and built my own PC for work, and just swapped the hard drive from the work machine. However, I have it partitioned with a standard build of windows XP with no Novell and the difference in speed is really quite unbelievable. Logging on with NetWare takes a good 2 minutes compared with the 20-30 secs of normal windows XP.
Perhaps I’m spoiled after working for Intel which has a seamless, efficient, yet highly secure network and a great IT department supporting them but this just really seems like a bad way to do things.
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One comment
Having worked at a university IT dept I completely agree with you, however as a student of a university I take full responsiblity for my computing experience and make sure I provide myself with the tools needed (Laptop, software, etc). I understand this isn’t an option for some due to financial constraints but if you are going to college, a laptop really is a necessity.
As for the outdated software/hardware combo – the school should address this and the CIO/CTO should be aware. If he isn’t planning on doing anything about it than their is a problem and somoene should lose their job over it.