Wall to wall students (and parents and siblings) jammed the bookstore yesterday, getting a head start on buying their texts for the fall term. By the thousand, they came to Waterloo for Student Life 101, and the campus came briefly to life again with eager faces. At last count, the first-year class was numbering 4,416. Photo by Jesse Rodgers.

 
Daily
Bulletin

Wireless net planned in Davis

"I hope we will have something up and running over the fall term," Black said yesterday.

He said the project is being done "with money set aside from the Bell University Labs project". BUL is a large-scale program involving UW and two other universities in research to develop "ideas and technologies in computing, networking and communications".

Background on wireless Frequently asked questions from Vicomsoft Proxim "learning centre" Search Networking web links

Compugen, based in Richmond Hill, north of Toronto, describes itself as "a systems integrator". Black said the company was bidding with a plan to use equipment from Enterasys ("formerly Cabletron").

Said the associate provost: "The next step is to perform what's called a site survey, since the best locations for the wireless access points (or transmitters/receivers) are highly dependent on physical characteristics of the building. Our intention is to provide pervasive coverage throughout DC, including the library, amphitheatres, and Great Hall, to say nothing of the private office areas.

"The BUL project will be procuring only a small number of network cards for prototyping purposes; the Enterasys equipment complies with the 802.11b standard, and so individuals should be able to use Enterasys or any other compliant card. We'll be ensuring the security and integrity of communication by use of a 'virtual private network' through which all wireless access will be made. This will ensure that only authenticated individuals can use the network, and that their communication will be cryptographically secure.

"Although final details have not been set, I expect that any individuals with credentials in UWdir will be allowed to use the network."

Voicemail down, and other notes Ivy, the voice of Meridian Mail, will fall silent for an hour this evening. The voicemail system and the "automated attendant" that answers calls to 888-4567 will be down from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. for maintenance, the information systems and technology department says. Outgoing calls will not be affected. Central stores says there will not be a surplus sale tomorrow, as there usually is on the first and third Wednesday of each month. Noontime surplus sales will resume on September 5. And . . . the athletics department says there are almost certainly some UW athletes taking part in the Canada Summer Games in London this week, but they don't know who. Each sport chooses its own athletes and keeps its own lists, says athletics director Judy McCrae, so the information isn't available right now.

The future of wireless on campus

It was Johnny Wong, director of the BUL project and of UW's Institute for Computer Research, who set up the ad hoc committee. As he did that, he noted that BUL funding is being provided for "a wireless LAN in the Davis Centre, and subject to approval by the BUL Granting Committee, a 3G wireless network testbed for research purposes."

Wong explained why BUL is interested, and what might come next: "The wireless LAN is part of the network infrastructure in the Davis Centre, while the 3G wireless network is an experimental facility in support of research in wireless/wireline communication, led by Jon Mark of E&CE. More specifically, Jon Mark and his research team have received significant research funding from the BUL program to investigate various aspects of wireless/wireline communication. That research project has a strong link to Bell Canada, and in particular, to Bell Mobility.

"In addition to the above, the Faculty of Engineering has expressed strong interest in deploying wireless technologies as much as possible in the CEIT building. It is also quite possible that the library would like to experiment with wireless technologies. As an example, students may bring their lap-top to the library, check out a wireless modem, and get connected to the campus Internet.

"In view of the above, the University should develop guidelines on how one should design and install wireless networks. Although the initial activities will likely be in the Davis Centre and the CEIT building, it is quite possible that wireless technologies will be used in other buildings also. These guidelines are to be developed by the ad hoc committee on wireless technologies."

Here's the scoop on newsgroups -- by Sarah Fernandes, IST

A newsgroup is like a public bulletin board. Anyone can post a message to the newsgroup for others to read and respond. The first Usenet newsgroups were started in 1979 by Jim Ellis and Tom Truscott, two computer science graduate students at Duke University. Usenet now consists of many thousands of individual discussion forums structured in a hierarchical fashion, in categories such as "comp", "humanities" and "alt". A number of these newsgroups are local to the University of Waterloo and are in the uw.* hierarchy. Terms such as spam and flame originated with newsgroups, as did emoticons such as :-) to denote something meant to be funny. A set of acronyms to minimize typing was also developed, including such well known phrases as BTW, IMHO, RTFM. Most newsgroups include an FAQ(frequently asked questions).

Although newsgroups are alive and well on campus, the total volume of news traffic is down from a high of 3.4 gigabytes per day in March 1999, to 1.8 gigabytes per day in March of 2001. However this is still well above the 1994 level of 0.21 gigabytes per day. (Between 1994 and 2001, the volume of news traffic into and out of UW increased by 900 per cent, while the volume of web traffic increased by 1,922 per cent).

Just as you need a program to read your e-mail, you need a news reader to access newsgroups. A wide variety of software can be used for this purpose. Netscape Communicator (but not Navigator) will work, as well as Outlook Express, and if you don’t have either of those, you can use NewsXpress, which is available on the Home CD from the CHIP for $15, or it can be downloaded from PCDepot. Mac users can download NewsWatcher from MacDepot.

Before you can use your news reader, you must configure it. For example, to configure Netscape Communicator:

1. Open the Netscape browser.
2. From the Communicator menu, choose Newsgroups. This will open a new window.
3. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
4. From the list along the left hand side, under Mail & Newsgroups, select Newsgroup Servers. Click on Add and when it asks for your server, type news.uwaterloo.ca. Click OK, and then OK again.
5. Now, from the list along the left hand side, right click on news.uwaterloo.ca, and choose Subscribe to newsgroups.
6. Select all the newsgroups to which you would like to subscribe and click Subscribe, then OK.
7. Each newsgroup now behaves in a manner similar to your inbox. You can get new messages, reply to messages, or post a new message.

Or to configure Outlook Express:

1. Open Outlook Express.
2. From the Tools menu, choose Accounts.
3. Click on Add News.
4. Answer the questions asked by the Wizard.
5. When it asks for your News (NNTP) Server type news.uwaterloo.ca
6. Click Close and then Yes to download available newsgroups.
7. Select the newsgroups to which you would like to subscribe and click Subscribe, then OK.

Since newsgroups are public forums, please keep in mind the following rules of etiquette whenever posting messages:

• Do not insult, harass, threaten, publicly embarrass etc. other people
• Try to keep your postings short and to the point
• State the subject of your message in the header
• Refrain from quoting the entire message to which you are responding.
• If you want to post a "trial message" to make sure you are configured correctly, send it to the uw.test newsgroup.
Some UW newsgroups may not allow you to post messages if you are off campus.

Setting up newsgroups can vary depending on your reader, your Internet Service Provider, and whether or not you are on campus. Contact the CHIP if you need further assistance.

CAR

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Editor of the Daily Bulletin: Chris Redmond
Information and Public Affairs, University of Waterloo
credmond@uwaterloo.ca | (519) 888-4567 ext. 3004
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