Engineering Computing report to CNAG January 2005

• DNS Management Tool - Engineering Computing plans to phase out its existing DNS Management Tool some time after IST puts the new Maintain system into production. Active users of the current system were advised of the plans in June 2004, and another message will be sent out shortly. For some history the current system went into service in April 2001, and has been used by approximately 40 administrators to perform approximately 300 IP additions, 500 deletions, 4000 TXT/MX/HINFO record changes, and 15,000 queries.
• Avaya Access Points with vlan trunking - (See December report for problem description). Apparently the currently installed version of the firmware on the APs (version 2.4.5) turns off broadcasting the SSID on tagged wireless interfaces, and it does not appear to be configurable. Version 2.5.2 supports per SSID configuration of broadcasting the SSID (see instructions). If SSID broadcasting is disabled, user must manually enter "uw-wireless" into their wireless configuration which explains why the issue appeared to only affect some users.
• Private Campus Network - (see proposal). The idea is to augment UWs 129.97.0.0/16 address space with a campus private network, routed internally to UW. The private network could be subnetted similarly to 129.97, and used for applications which don't require a direct world wide internet presence.
• Wireless - coverage in Engineering is almost complete. 3 APs are still to be installed once cabling etc is finished.
• NAA - "unable to ping computer" issue resolved. This affected Windows XP SP2, which enables a firewall by default, requiring the user to adjust firewall settings in order to connect to wireless. The NAA now uses a low level ARP, and examines dhcp lease timeouts, rather than pinging all clients every 20 seconds.