Diverse and the chorus: Billy Marr of illScarlett was among the stars of Friday night's concert at Federation Hall, the kickoff event for this year's Diversity Campaign. The Mississauga-based band wowed the crowd, but had to cut their appearance short before they got a chance to play "Maryjane" from their latest album, “Clearly in Another Fine Mess”. Photo by environmental studies student Neil Gregg.

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‘Better reliability’ from network upgrade

“Better reliability and better security” are the goals in a major upgrade of the campus computing network that will take at least a year to complete. “We are in the process of rebuilding the network from the top down,” says Roger Watt, director of network services in Information Systems and Technology.

The job began early this year with the installation of two central switch/router devices that connect one part of the campus with another, and link to the router that connects all of UW to the outside world through the Orion inter-university network and commercial Internet providers.

Coming next: twelve second-level servers “constituency aggregation switch/router devices”, each serving a faculty or other large unit of UW. Each is connected at one side to the core devices and at the other side to local switches and then hundreds servers, printers and of individual computers where faculty, staff and students rely on uninterrupted communication with the rest of the wired world. There are about 20,000 “network drops” altogether on the main campus and at UW’s outposts in Kitchener and Cambridge, with the health sciences campus soon to be added.

“The changes will only be visible if we make a mistake somewhere,” says Watt. That’s why we always announce each pending change in the uw.network newsgroup.” He points out that an individual user rarely even notices faster performance from a network, but is sure to notice when the network goes down or when a virus or intruder cripples operations. Hence the emphasis on reliability and security in the new configuration of the network, and a higher level of redundancy (including the two devices at the core) so that if one machine crashes, another can carry on.

And he notes that deployment of the new devices, one at a time over the coming months, will be carefully scheduled to minimize the impact on users.

“We’re changing the architecture and the design, and adding security appliances,” said Doug Payne, manager of network development, who joined Watt in a conversation last week about the project. He said the new network is intended to be “better, faster, more reliable”.

The last major overhaul of the campus network came nine years ago. “The equipment we bought back in 1997 is now obsolete,” says Payne. “We were running them into the ground as well.”

After all, says Watt, the kinds of demand put on computer networks nowadays were hardly imagined a decade ago. A simple example: an average web page in 1997 had nothing but words in simple arrangements, and maybe the occasional graphic. There were no Flash animations, no Javascript, no interactivity. “All that stuff invisibly consumes bandwidth,” Watt points out.

“The whole campus depends on the network,” he says, comparing it to electricity as an essential service. The network services unit has about ten of its staff constantly at work maintaining and upgrading the parts of the network for which IST is responsible (some faculties look after their own equipment), and a rough calculation suggests that maintenance of the network and regular replacement of obsolete hardware costs UW about $1 million a year.

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Here since 1958, SDE prof retires

by Patricia Bow

Barry Wills, an associate professor in systems design engineering, retired August 1 after 42 years on the UW faculty. That's thought to be one year short of the record, held by SDE colleague Peter Roe.

Wills (right) has actually been connected to UW continuously for 48 years: he arrived in January 1958 as an undergraduate student, and all his degrees are from Waterloo (’62, ’63, ’68), all in electrical engineering. He graduated in July 1962 with the first class of BASc recipients, along with other UW pioneers such as Bill Lennox and Jack Kruuv who arrived either in early 1958 or in the first class in July 1957.

His master's degree in hand, Wills signed on as a demonstrator in the Faculty of Engineering in 1964 and became an assistant professor in 1968. A specialist in systems modelling and simulation, with an interest in the social impact of technology, he became deeply involved in the use of computer-aided learning technologies and in engineering education in general. His work in this area ranged from the administrative to the grass-roots. As associate dean of engineering for computing in the 1980s, he set up the first fully equipped computing labs for students in engineering. He also helped to establish the Engineering Education Research Centre to improve engineering education at UW through the use of technology.

For many years he co-ordinated the fourth-year systems design workshop, a central feature of the SDE program, and taught many of the courses. “Barry was very interested in design and creative problem solving,” says colleague Keith Hipel. “And he was always deeply concerned about the students’ education and welfare. He really liked the students and they liked him.” Wills also helped organize the original Shad Valley summer program for high schoolers in 1982 and was among its first few instructors.

As well as an engineer and professor, Wills is a jazz musician. Former philosophy professor and music critic Jan Narveson (“Cecilia” for many years in the UW Gazette) describes Barry Wills as “an interesting, learned, and thoroughly enjoyable jazz pianist, surely one of the best in the area.” Wills paid his way through university by playing gigs with a variety of bands. Until very recently he often performed in a jazz trio with Michael Wood on percussion and Art Lang on bass. He is also a composer: among other works, he improvised the musical score for a video on Edna Staebler.

"University is not a training school," Wills often liked to tell students, urging them to take time out from engineering classes to attend concerts or check out art shows. On occasion he was able to combine his own central interests, as in the 1980s when he collaborated with kinesiology professors on research into how people learn to play the piano, using a keyboard wired to computers.

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Fragments from today's in-box

There's a reception this afternoon to honour UW's Academic All-Canadians — the student-athletes, all across the Canadian Interuniversity Sport system, who earned academic averages of 80 or higher during the term in which they were competing on a Warrior team. In 2005-06 there were 170 such athletes, a memo from the athletics department advises, compared to 137 during 2004-05. Today's reception starts at 4:30 in the Laurel Room in South Campus Hall, hosted by UW president David Johnston.

The Communications and Public Affairs office has produced an updated "facts brochure" that is designed to introduce people to the university's key strengths, and also includes basic information, such as a "where is Waterloo"? locator map. It's compact — 8.5 by 11 inches, folded vertically (left). The brochure is being distributed in the next week to those who made an advance request for such a publication, says CPA associate director Kelley Teahen. Anyone else who would like copies for university promotional use should get in touch with Linda Howe at ljhowe@uwaterloo.ca.

The Bookstore and Recreation Committee announced some months ago that they'd be starting a book club this fall, aimed at staff and faculty members, and here it is. They've announced that the first BookClub (that's all one word) meeting will be held this Thursday at 12 noon in the Bookstore, South Campus Hall. The first BookClub title is Latitudes of Melt by Joan Clark, a novel set in Newfoundland in and after 1912 that's apparently been adopted by many other book clubs as well. Copies are available at the Bookstore. "Everyone is welcome to join us," says a note from the organizers, "even if you haven't read the book yet. Bring your lunch; refreshments will be provided." More information is available from the bookstore's Susan Parsons at ext. 3-5680, and there's a website to provide the details of the next meeting and sign-up for e-mail announcements.

As "Canada's Outstanding CEO of the Year", the Financial Post Business magazine has chosen a Waterloo-based duo: Mike Lazaridis (who is also UW's chancellor) and Jim Balsillie of Research In Motion Ltd. "I think anyone would have a difficult time finding a more worthy pair," says UW president David Johnston. "They have shown tremendous leadership, not only within RIM, but also with their ground-breaking support of the Perimeter Institute, the Centre for International Governance Innovation and here at the University of Waterloo."

The president of the Federation of Students has appealed for two undergraduate students who'd like to be members of the selection committee for this year's Distinguished Teacher Awards. . . . Today was announced as the nomination deadline for this year's President's Circle Awards for Volunteerism, but the student services web site now says nominations will be accepted until October 16. . . . The Campus Rec Health Challenge ("will expose you to a variety of ways to incorporate a healthy lifestyle into everyday living") gets started tomorrow with the first of five weekly sessions. . . .

CAR

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