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March 2003 Update

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Help With Spam Now Available

A new junk email filter that will help reduce the aggravation of junk email, or spam, is now available for everyone who has email delivered to the UW's central email system. Instructions for turning on and using the filter are on the Web at http://www.washington.edu/computing/email/spamfilter.html

Departments that have their own email addresses and servers may be able to take advantage of some of the filtering provided by the central email system. To find out, contact your departmental computing support staff.

Junk email now comprises nearly half of the email messages coming into the UW. In response to community concerns about this dramatic increase, C&C investigated commercial email filtering packages to determine which would meet the UW's needs and handle the high daily volume of roughly 600 thousand to 1 million email messages.

Once a filtering product was selected, C&C took steps to ensure the product would meet user needs by conducting usability tests, inviting feedback from members of the UW community who had emailed comments about spam, and releasing the filter to UW computing support staff for further testing and refinement before announcing it to the UW community. The filter has since been publicized on the UW Web site, in University Week, and in OnTech News.


New Wireless Options

In response to requests for lower-cost and more flexible wireless alternatives, C&C is developing an option for small-scale wireless deployments in areas such as individual conference rooms or small office suites. This option would be managed by C&C and fully integrated into the campus network infrastructure. Details are being worked out and should be available within a few months.

C&C continues to offer three pricing alternatives for departments interested in centrally managed large-scale wireless deployments in areas such as buildings, floors, or departments. More information is available at http://www.washington.edu/computing/wireless/pricing.html or by contacting install@cac.washington.edu

In addition, C&C has updated the guidelines for departments wishing to handle their own wireless deployments. The guidelines are aimed at preventing interference with the campus wireless infrastructure and are available at http://www.washington.edu/networking/wireless/guidelines.html


Group Explores Central Site Licensing

The UW Computing Directors Group is evaluating whether the university could achieve cost savings and other efficiencies by expanding its central site-licensing program. A subcommittee led by Scott Barker of the Information School is assessing whether potential benefits would outweigh the overhead and other difficulties involved, and then will make a recommendation on how to proceed.

For more information on software licenses available for use at the UW, see http://www.washington.edu/computing/software/

New Tool Will Help Store and Deliver Digital Content

C&C is developing a new Web-based tool that will provide an easy way for colleges, schools, and departments to store and deliver large collections of digital content including documents, photos, multimedia, and streaming audio and video of up-to-high-definition quality.

The tool, DigitalWell, can be used to deliver teaching, learning, and research materials on-demand over the Internet, and to preserve and retrieve digital scholarship material of all types. C&C initially developed the tool in collaboration with the Research Channel and KEXP radio. C&C now is working with the Catalyst group and UW Libraries to create a system for the UW community. Partnerships with the Library of Congress, Internet2, and others will ensure that DigitalWell interoperates with national digital repositories.

With existing digital materials, anyone can use DigitalWell to build, access, search, and share digital collections at any time. The tool uses UW NetID identification to provide security and to control access to collections.

During Spring Quarter, DigitalWell will be tested by several groups in preparation for university-wide release. In the future, DigitalWell will be integrated with MyUW and Catalyst Portfolio and SimpleSite tools so that faculty, staff, and students will have more ways to use their own multimedia collections.

C&C looks forward to working with colleges, schools, campuses, and departments to explore potential uses of DigitalWell and resource issues. We welcome ideas on how to make this tool more useful for you.

For more information see DigitalWell

Calendaring Options Narrowed

C&C has narrowed the options for software that might replace Corporate Time, the calendaring system used by C&C on Nebula workstations. Corporate Time also is used by many UW departments. The two products under consideration are MeetingMaker and SunOne. Both products offer many of the same features as Corporate Time, with MeetingMaker being the most similar.

Corporate Time recently was acquired by Oracle, which is considering making changes that are incompatible with the UW's technology environment. As a result, Corporate Time will likely need to be replaced within the year, although an exact timeline is not known. C&C is continuing to talk with other UW departments that currently use Corporate Time to share information and mutually benefit from each other's efforts.


Lower Cost Managed Desktop (Nebula) Option in the Works

C&C is developing a new lower-cost managed desktop option designed for departments that have limited onsite technical staff and are interested in having some of the most critical desktop services managed centrally. The new service, Nebula Bronze, will offer:

  • Ongoing operating system security updates including hot fixes, security patches, daily security checks and reports, and local account security enhancements
  • Network file services including home and shared directories, backup and emergency restore services, and self-service backup/restore for day-old files
  • Account services including individual and group setup, shared directory permissions, and Nebula password support
  • Network printer services including defining network print queues and troubleshooting network-based printing problems

Departments will be responsible for hardware acquisition and maintenance, software acquisition, updates to application software, and user support. Details of the new service are still being developed and are expected to be available within a few months.

C&C will continue to offer its full-service managed desktop option, Nebula (soon to be called "Nebula Gold"), which provides a full spectrum of desktop support services. For more information see http://www.washington.edu/nebula/description.html

C&C welcomes the opportunity to work with units to tailor an approach that meets their individual needs. For more information, contact the Nebula Support Team, at
nebula-support@cac.washington.edu


Financial Desktop Identifies Work Products

After extensive outreach to the UW community, including 22 focus sessions that generated more than 1,500 user comments, the Financial Desk Initiative has defined the products it will produce:

  • An easy-to-read Web-based replacement for the Budget Activity (BAR) and Budget Summary (BSR) reports that includes the ability to extract, query, and download desired data at the desktop. This will be the first product produced and is expected to be completed sometime in Fall Quarter 2003.
  • An easy-to-use online method for entering and posting internal fund transfers such as journal vouchers, cash transfers, cost transfer invoices, and internal sales documents. This will be the second product produced.
  • Project accounting tools that allow departments to set up a structure to account for costs by project. This product will be developed sometime in the future.

The Financial Desktop Initiative is part of the USER Project and was created to provide financial information to users at their desktops. The initiative is funded by the University Initiatives Fund. Sponsors include the Executive Vice President, the Vice Provost for Planning and Budgeting, and the Vice President for Computing and Communications.

For more information see http://www.washington.edu/user/financial_desktop/index.html


New Web Pages Explain Email Options

C&C has developed new Web pages to help UW users understand and make the best use of their email options. The new pages were developed in response to feedback from users expressing confusion over which email programs are supported at the UW and what services are available. The pages include a chart comparing the features of supported email programs including Outlook Express, Pine, PC Pine, Web Pine, and Mozilla. The new pages can be viewed at http://www.washington.edu/computing/email/index.html


New Group Looks at Accessible Web Design

A new group is being formed to discuss how to design UW Web sites that are accessible to people with disabilities. The group, coordinated by Rick Ells of C&C, will meet monthly at lunch to hear guest speakers and discuss accessibility as part of good general Web design. The group, AccessibleWeb@u, will hold its first meeting on Thursday, March 13, at noon, in Mary Gates Hall, room 015L.


C&C Addresses Online System Problems

C&C has taken a series of steps to address problems that caused the UW online systems, including MyUW and payroll applications such as ETRs, PTRs, and OPUS, to be inaccessible to users on January 6, the first day of Winter Quarter and a payroll cutoff day.

Immediate actions include identifying non-essential services that will be turned off during heavy load times, making changes to improve the performance of applications, moving non-critical applications to other computers, doubling the capacity of computers supporting authorization, making technical changes to avoid known bottleneck situations, and eliminating some non-critical reporting on heavy use days. C&C also plans to acquire more computing power for some Web and database servers, move or give lower priority to UW NetID and other non-critical updates during heavy use times, and find better ways to load test prior to heavy use days.

The UW has a complex computing environment with many interdependent systems that create the potential for multiple bottleneck situations and other vulnerabilities. C&C is engaged in longer-term design work to produce a more manageable and robust environment.


UW Hit by Internet Worm

The Internet worm that disrupted corporate and government systems around the nation the weekend of January 24 also hit the UW, initially infecting more than 90 computers, and then spreading to over 300 to date.

Starting at midnight January 24, C&C network and security engineers worked throughout the weekend to curtail the attack, turning off individual computers and departmental networks, isolating problem machines, and installing temporary filters to stop computers from being re-infected before they could be fixed. In addition, C&C and departmental computing staff worked cooperatively to remove infected computers from the network and get affected departmental networks functioning again.

The worm attack, known as Slammer or Sapphire, sought vulnerable computers using a known problem in Microsoft's SQL database software. Microsoft had issued a security patch for this flaw, but many machines had not yet been updated. C&C is continuing to find vulnerable machines and remove them from the network until they can be fixed.

In response to the attack, C&C is continuing with proactive vulnerability scans and aggressively pursuing a policy of disconnecting vulnerable computers and other devices from the network. The incident underscores the importance of having well-managed desktops with updated security patches in order to protect others, both inside and outside the university.