ITS Communications Corner Announcements

Today, ITS implemented a new Guest Wireless ssid to selected "public" buildings on campus that now utilize our latest standard in wireless equipment. This new ssid is called "Guest-Portal" and is capable of providing a temporary limited time authenticated guest access to the internet. Users, or administrators on their behalf, are required to request a username and password from the ITS Computer Consulting Center (CCC). Once credentials are enabled for a user, they will be valid to use in any area the Guest-Portal is available until their expiration. The procedure is that when you have a guest contact the CCC (273-5555) and we'll work with you to set them up. You, as their sponsor, will be required to maintain information about who the actual user was during that time for any CALEA concerns. The user simply launches their web browser and when prompted enters the supplied username and password. Once authenticated, the user is then placed on the guest network segment and provided the same capabilities as those that use the wired guest access.

The public areas where this Guest-Portal is currently implemented are:
UNIDome
McLeod
GBPAC
Rod Library
Maucker Union
ITTC

As ITS installs new access points in other "public" spaces, the Guest-Portal will follow.

Wednesday 3/19 between 5:30 - 7:30 am there will be a network outage while the main CBB 19 switch is upgraded. The outage includes devices in CBB server rooms 19 and 21, CBB 22, telecom switch, and UNI museum. During the switch upgrade services hosted in these rooms from the UNI network .128.x and it's vlans will be unavailable.

Some specific services affected by the outage:

AD (Active Directory) authentication
ITS file and print server
Telecom billing
Wireless (UNI-Wireless, WiFi-UNI, Guest Wireless)
Calendar
ITS Backup Server
http://www.unitix.edu
VOIP Service
ITS-NS workstations

Other colleges and divisions with servers on this switch:
AF
ESS
CNS

Problem with Guest Wireless

A problem with guest wireless accounts has been identified. Using guest accounts with end dates greater than 20 days in the future results in a wireless outage as all access points reboot. A temporary solution is to revert back to the last version of firmware on the wireless switches. There will be a brief 20-30 minute outage between 7-7:30 am on Monday, April 14th.

If you need additional assistance please contact the Computer Consulting Center (CCC) at (319) 273-5555. The CCC is located in Room 36 ITTC Building (old East Gym). Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

Tuesday, February 10th, from 6-7am the main network switch in SEC will be upgraded.

This will cause a brief network outage for HPC, SEC, SHC, H2 and WRC. This will also cause an outage for guest wired and wireless connections. These areas won't have Internet or campus network connectivity during the outage.

If you need additional assistance please contact the Computer Consulting Center (CCC) at (319) 273-5555. The CCC is located in Room 36 ITTC Building (formerly known as the East Gym). Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

Between 5:30 and 6:30 on February 19, 2009, Sunday morning, the Virtual Machines hosting the SCC and Jazz (ITS) Print servers will be relocated to Gilchrist Hall. Other affected end-user services will include wireless authentication and SPSS license manager services.

If you need additional assistance please contact the Computer Consulting Center (CCC) at (319) 273-5555. The CCC is located in Room 36 ITTC Building (formerly known as the East Gym). Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

Monday, February 23, 2009 from 5-6am Wireless networking will be down for an upgrade. No wireless connectivity will be available during this time. This upgrade will also include some configuration changes.

• The SSID Guest-Portal will be changed to UNI-Guest
  
• WPA2 and AES will be enabled on WiFi-UNI
  
• Guest account provisioning will be upgraded to use SmartPass. This requires recreation of all existing guest accounts. The ITS helpdesk will create guest wireless accounts upon request from UNI faculty staff sponsors.
  

The VMWare server named "Ironhide" will be down for maintenance on the
morning of June 2 between 5:30 and 6:30.

User-facing services affected include:

Guest Wireless System
Jazz Print Server
Gears Sharepoint Server
SCC1 Print Server
NotifyLink Test Server
ITS-ET Showcase Machine
RADIUS-2

Service is expected to be restored by 6:30. If this early morning time
period doesn't work for you for some reason, please let Seth Bokelman know.

Wireless will be undergoing maintenance on 6/25 from 5:30-7:30 AM and maintenance is also planned for 6/26 5:30-7:30 AM. Wireless will be unavailable from 5:30-6:30 AM on both days.

Folks in ITT reported this morning of an inability to connect to UNI-Wireless, WiFi-UNI (no prompt to authenticate) or to the Guest system. This problem didn't span the entire campus, as other access points were functioning normally.

The problem in ITT was resolved with the power cycling of one our of radio/access-point controllers around 8:48am. Contact Chris Conklin if you experience additional problems.

On Wednesday morning August 12 between 6-7AM, new radius servers will be added to the wireless authentication server pool. Depending on your wireless settings and group policy you may be prompted to approve new certificates. The names of new radius servers are kickback.its-ns.uni.edu and roadblock.its-ns.uni.edu. Please double check your group policy to allow these radius servers.

A wireless service outage is scheduled for this Thursday 11/12 from 6:30-10:30pm. All wireless network systems campus-wide will be affected during this time. Service may be intermittent or completely unavailable throughout this window.