ICC Notes from May 10, 2007 ITAC-NI Meeting:

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notes by Steve Lasley


The meeting was held, as usual, on the second Thursday of the month at 10 AM in room 219 of Dauer Hall. The meeting was run by Hansford "Ty" Tyler, Health Affairs Business Manager and VPHA IT in John Sabin's absence. The single agenda item was the wallplate project, the status of which was described in some detail by Tim Fitzpatrick.

Wall-plate Project Plan

Tim Fitzpatrick reported that a DDD draft memo was presented Tuesday to the president's office by Marc Hoit. Marc stated that it would be revised based on feedback received at this meeting and that we could expect the finalized DDD memo to come out very shortly.

Tim first addressed the matter of what units were and were not included in this plan:

Included

• Academic Units
• Administrative Units

Not Included

• Most Auxiliary Operations
• Healthnet
• Shands
• Housing
• Sororities and Fraternities
• Units off main campus

Overview

Tim will be the overall project manager now that Russ Poole has left. This project is receiving steady state funding of $1.5 million per year and startup costs are being incorporated by making this a 3 year project involving the addition of 6K ports per year over 3 years. This corresponds to the overall 5 year replacement cycle for the expected end total of 30K ports.

Departments will soon be visited and asked three questions:

1. Do you wish to Opt-in or Opt-out?

This program is not mandatory. However, many disadvantages may become apparent down-the-road should a unit choose to opt-out. The ability to do VoIP is an important consideration in particular.

2. Do you wish to have 10/100 or GB (gigabit) to the desktop?

The extra cost of GB will be borne by the units.

3. Do you want VoIP now or wait until at least the next 5-year replacement cycle?

VoIP will require POE switches at extra cost. Not having those installed initially will prohibit moving to VoIP.

Project Organizational Details

David Burdette, Documentation & Outreach Coordinator for CNS, will be in charge of the Wall-plate project website.

John Mady, Associate Director of CNS-Telecommunications, will be in charge of contacting the unit chairs to explain the project and obtain answers to the above three questions.

Todd Hester, Sr. Systems Programmer for IT-CNS NS Infrastructure, detailed the proposed implementation schedule. Todd explained how the survey of our current situation was handled and how the active port count was made (active link lights for ports of building switches--not DHCP MAC counts). Status of the facilities were also evaluated with regards to wiring, security, etc. These were rolled into an evaluation infrastructure score which totaled to a possible 1500 points and which was used to prioritize which buildings would be handled first. Todd mentioned that ports would be allocated based on the estimated "Active Port" numbers. Steve Lasley asked if that number could be corrected should more accurate counts be made available. Steve pointed out that his unit, for example, has at least 2 dozen workgroup switches which are currently providiing more than 60 additional ports beyond what was surveyed.

Wireless access points will be provided at each switch location, but full building coverage would entail extra cost. Some remediary wiring may be included, but any major work will have to be paid for by the department. Workgroup hubs/switches will not be permitted, so some units may have considerable costs in wiring remediation. Steve Lasley reports that his department would have at least 63 drops to run at an estimated cost of $200 each; this would be to replace the ports currently provided by workgroup switches with direct connections to ports on the managed switches. Outside of this, the cost of the roughly 233 currently managed ports at Entomology would be (for someone) about $14,000 per year based on the estimated $5 per port per month cost (which is way low according to Healthnet reckoning). Entomology recently replaced 300 ports (not all in use) via HP managed switches at a cost of about $5000. Amortizing this over five years means we have been paying about $1000/yr for ports that will now be costing 14 times more (again, costing "somebody"); and this is not considering any remedial wiring costs or the inconveniences of not having control over our own network infrastructure. No service level agreement documents are yet available.

Buildings will be done in sets of three starting at the top of the list. Each building will have a specific project manager so units will have a reliable and known source of contact.

VoIP


John Madey detailed the various VoIP phone handset options. The 7940G is the phone primarily suggested for most folks. A receptionist needing several lines might require the 7960G. These phones are not cheap and you need an expensive GB phone (two options there) if you are going to want GB to your desktop as well (the phone supplies your workstation drop).

Currently the Cisco Call Manager only works with Cisco handsets. They plan to support SIP eventually, which will then give other vendor options for VoIP handsets--however, there will still be the matter of a Call Manager license, so Cisco will get their money either way. The draft phone offerings document has prices which are not yet firm, but which UF hopes to be able to provide.

Next Meeting

The next regular meeting is due to be June 14th.