Chapter I

24X7 Secure, Accessible Network

CURRENT POSITION

The networking environment at UF has developed without a unified campus plan the last twenty years. In the past three years, NERDC, in cooperation with Cisco and IBM, has developed the primary UF network backbone. Most of UF's schools, colleges and business units connect directly to this backbone, which provides them with Internet access and maintains a local network for file sharing, applications, etc. Because of the decentralized nature of the system, a variety of network protocols and operating systems have evolved.

KEY ISSUES

A primary goal of the university is to provide network service for students, faculty and staff and offer continuous, secure access with appropriate bandwidth.

The complexity of the various LANs and their connection to the UF backbone:

hampers and confuses troubleshooting
makes it difficult to assess responsibility when problems arise
confuses users who often don't know who to contact or who are directed to several different sources (NERDC, UF Computer Help Desk, local technician)
promotes a lack of standards and impedes inter-operability

Each school, college and business unit needs the flexibility to develop a network that meets its needs and at the same time each unit needs to communicate seamlessly with each of the other units.

The quality of end-user service ranges from poor to excellent. In many environments, however, end-user service and expectations are not being managed. Users need a forum for requesting review and support.

Network security suffers from a "weakest link" scenario: Every server in the network is a potential security risk for the entire network. Persons who are entrusted to manage these resources are not always well trained or informed.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The University of Florida should negotiate a contract with NERDC for campus networking services. The campus would then do its business with a central UF organization, not NERDC. NERDC would become a service provider for UF and would expand its service as UF moves toward a more centralized approach to network computing.

The university should provide a central connection service to the Internet with redundancy when needed.

The central service provider needs to have a test implementation site and needs to determine a price for providing the services that might be available. Once it is determined that the university can offer a viable central solution, we can begin to offer this provider as an alternative to other campus sites.

A set of standards, developed as consensus among the technical staffs at the university, needs to be promoted to support the cooperative communication and computing efforts of faculty, staff, students and external constituents of the university. Toward this effort, several strategies should be developed:

creating and managing network policies, procedures and performance measures that promote the teaching and research missions of the university
offering centralized, customer-oriented local area network services to the academic and business units at a fair and reasonable price
including representation of all university groups to evaluate the direction and performance of the network, either directly or by proxy
ensuring network security that includes the proper hardware, software and training
funding existing organizations to allow flexibility, but offering a central solution where appropriate

A CIO-based university-wide networking facilitator and planner should be appointed or reassigned to advise the CIO in networking matters and assist in:

negotiating a central services contract with NERDC
managing the development and maintenance of university-wide standards and promoting a collaborative effort to ensure reasonable compliance
developing and implementing a plan for continuous performance and security monitoring, as well participating in campus security audits (planned and ad-hoc)
coordinating new and existing network installations and ensuring compliance with required security and communication standards
maintaining an inventory and auditing current network installations
promoting campus-wide awareness of safe security practices
offering network consultation services to identify and promote technical solutions in the best interest of the local users
pursuing a single point of contact for computing problems, questions and concerns
developing and promoting a central network service that offers competitive services to all academic and business units
evaluating new network technologies and maintaining an ongoing plan for network services
developing UF's Internet access strategy, including Internet II
identifying and promoting training opportunities and development tasks as new technologies emerge
promoting a "one system" ideology for security verification
developing standards and practices for walk-up ports
developing key measures for assessing the success of network strategies and employing those measures


Chapter II