[158] in Resnet-Forum
Re: Student installations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bernard Hecker)
Wed Feb 23 09:26:23 1994
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 94 09:03:17 EST
To: Resnet-forum <resnet-forum@MIT.EDU>
From: Bernard.Hecker@mail.cc.trincoll.edu (Bernard Hecker)
>Do any of you have a program that puts the responsibility of
>installing the network software on the student? I am interested
>in hearing how much the student seems capable of installing
>him/herself and how much help he is given by way of automated
>installs, telephone support, on-site support, etc.
>
>Thanks, Debbie
Trinity College is a residential liberal arts college with about 1800
students. We've had the dorms wired for appletalk several years. (EtherNet
is now being phased in.) We currently have over 600 active connections.
With appletalk - or even ethertalk - it's not all that difficult to equip
the students with appropriate handouts so that they can first, make the
initial appletalk connection to the network, and then download general
purpose (mostly IP) applications, such as Eudora, Mosaic, etc. The most
complicated "configuring" the kids have to do for AppleTalk is selecting
their dorm's zone in MacTCP. For EtherTalk, we'll be doing BOOTP.
We've even go so far as to pre-configure Macs that the kids buy from our
on-compus resale effort. The result is _true_ plug and play for the new
owner, at the expense of some pre-sale student employee labor.
We have 3 student "dorm technicians", who help out when a visit to a
student room is required by a bad jack, or other problem that can't be
handled over the phone with our regular student consulting staff.
Doing wholesale support for DOS-compatible PCs in the dorms, though, makes
us quake in our boots. We're fine at doing it in college offices (we use
LAN Manager clients with AT&T's LAN Manager under UNIX and Windows NT
servers, packet drivers for IP, etc.). But the lack of standardization of
student-owned machines, their operating systems and memory management are,
obviously, problematic. Even with student labor, we're afraid it will end
up being unmanageable. Perhaps we'll have to stipulate that only
DOS-compatible machines of a certain ilk will be connected, for instance,
those that run DOS 6.x and have some number of bytes free before we touch
it. Even better, maybe we should require the PC owner to have Windows for
Workgroups running before we get there! Hmmmm, that's actually a pretty
neat idea! What do you think?
-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.-=.
Bernard Hecker (203)297-2111
Director of Academic Computing Bernard.Hecker@trincoll.edu
Trinity College Hartford, Connecticut 06106
