By Bret Martin
Frustrated because you couldn't access The Yale Herald On-Line? Maybe your room had a faulty computer network jack - and yours wasn't the only one.
In May, University officials announced that six residential colleges (Calhoun, Jonathan Edwards, Ezra Stiles, Branford, Trumbull, and Saybrook) would be rewired over the summer for high-speed ethernet networking, a significant upgrade from the existing LocalTalk network. But when students returned, ready to plug their Macs in, many found dead or miswired jacks which caused delays in the activation of room network connections.
Three organizations were involved in the summer's rewiring project: Academic Computing Services (ACS), Data Network Operations (DNO) - both of which are divisions of Computing and Information Services - and Yale Telecommunications. ACS is responsible f or selling and supporting network connections. DNO provides the substrate of the network to each college and the equipment which runs the network, and Telecom is responsible for the wiring to individual rooms.
Complaints of problems caused by the summer rewiring constitute about 50 to 60 percent of calls to ACS' new Network Hotline, according to Pat Fontaine, ACS' manager of student computing. In many cases, rooms which should have had three active jacks (fo r telephone, LocalTalk, and ethernet) had only two or had not been rewired at all. The most severe problems were in Saybrook, Trumbull, and Branford, where almost none of the connections initially worked.
"Next to nothing worked when we got here, but no one believed me when I reported it," Computing Assistant Phil Obbard, TC '96, said. "In fact, some rooms weren't rewired at all. They were the same old jacks." When students returned for the fall semeste r, only five rooms in the entire college had jacks that were working properly. In addition to the new ethernet connections not working, the existing LocalTalk network was inoperative after the rewiring.
"DNO and Telecom just refused to admit that Trumbull was a disaster," Obbard said. "Another CA and I finally tested about 40 rooms, hardly any of which worked. That seemed to convince them." Telecom finally decided to check every room for correct wirin g.
According to Paul Johnson, a senior network operations specialist at DNO, administrators didn't realize the extent of the problem until about the second week of September, and it is still difficult to completely evaluate. "Telecom has been working hard this week and will continue to work through the weekend," Johnson explained. "They're working hard, doing overtime, to try to fix all the problems."
Some rooms on Old Campus, which were wired over the summer of 1994 for ethernet, are also experiencing problems. According to DNO, these problems can be attributed to the fact that some room connections were not used last year, so their status was unkn own. Furthermore, rooms were occupied by participants in Yale summer programs and the Special Olympics, preventing DNO from testing all the jacks.
Bud Dannheim, director of engineering at Yale Telecommunications, blamed the miswiring on the lack of time and access to rooms, as well as limitations in the old wiring present in non-renovated colleges. "We weren't able to really start the project unt il late June, because of the Special Olympics," he said. "That's a pretty short time for a project of this magnitude."
Yale Telecommunications workers, as well as some subcontractors, worked on the rewiring depending on the location. For example, in Ezra Stiles College, which was renovated this summer, the work was the responsibility of the construction manager, but ma y have been done by Yale Telecom.
Dannheim cited access problems during the summer as well as in the first few weeks of the semester as causes of delays in the planned rewiring as well as in repairs to rooms with defective wiring. Branford, Saybrook, and Trumbull, which were not renova ted, used existing wiring, which had been installed in the late 1970s. In Calhoun, Jonathan Edwards, and Ezra Stiles, the wiring was replaced during recent renovations.
What remains to be seen is whether these problems will recur - either in the six colleges that were rewired this year, or in the remaining six colleges that are scheduled to be rewired next summer. When glitches arise, officials say they'll be ready. " We'll have more experience dealing with the different problems," Dannheim said.
Copyright 1995, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article may be freely distributed electronically, provided it is distributed in its entirety and includes this notice, but may not be reprinted without the express written permission of The Yale Herald, Inc. Write to herald@yale.edu for additional details.