The Academic Computing Services office at KU completed one of the most extensive computer communications systems upgrades in its history Jan. 9.
The work took place between the fall 1997 and spring 1998 semesters.
"This upgrade represents the most significant performance improvement in years," said Richard M. Kershenbaum, manager of technical services for Computing Services, "and was accomplished at a very reasonable cost with a minimum of inconvenience to users."
What the $60,000 upgrade means for most KU computer users is that using Internet services and KU computer resources is noticeably faster and that account holders can have more complex World Wide Web sites.
KU users who use Internet services, such as e-mail or news groups, will see performance more than doubled. KU Eagle and Falcon system account holders now have nearly four times more available disk space - up to 5 megabytes per account - to accommodate larger and more graphical Web sites.
The system upgrade involved the computer systems called Falcon, Eagle and Raven and the addition of a system called News housed at the Computer Services Facility. Both hardware and software were involved.
Falcon and Eagle support 22,400, or 78 percent, of the almost 28,800 current KU user accounts, as well as e-mail and other Internet services. Raven is KU's main Web server.
News is a dedicated news server, allowing KU users to have and use news groups to post news and have online discussions on the part of the Internet called Usenet news.
Academic Computing Services switched two existing systems to less demanding applications so that four systems could be upgraded with the purchase of only two new processors.
The Raven and News communications servers also were upgraded to use RAID disk configurations. On News, RAID 0 spreads disk accessess across multiple drives to improve performance. On Raven, RAID 5 stores data in a way that permits the system to continue running with no information loss during recovery from any single disk-drive failure.
The upgrade was complemented by the addition of 48 more high-speed lines that improved access to campus computer systems and the Internet via modem for KU dial-in account holders.
Questions may be directed via e-mail to question@ukans.edu.