CSnet

CSnet is the working name for the new CS department network currently under development and supported by the STEP grant.

I suggest changing the name to Cirrus or Stratus or something that suggests clouds. SkyNet would be funny.

I also suggest naming the machines in the cloud after cartoon characters: wiley, homer, stimpy, etc.

Services

CSnet will provide four categories of services:

These services will be rolled out over the next 10 months.

Student Profile Services

Student profile services include a web server and a portfolio server.

Each student will have an account on the web server. The student will use this account to create a profile:

Profiles will be uniform and will consist of static HTML documents. Perhaps we can provide a web-based tool running on the department application server (DAS) that allows students to create and update their profiles (see Control Panel). Ideally, student profiles will be an academic analog of FaceBook profiles.

We should investigate existing social networking platforms to use such as Mahara.

The portfolio resides on the portfolioServer. It contains course and extracurricular projects developed by the student (or by teams that the student was a member of). For the most part the projects will consist of files containing source code and reports. However, the portfolio may also contain running network and web applications. To support this, the portfolio server uses a standard suite of enterprise services (web server, application server, dbase server, see below for details).

Of course a student web application running on the portfolio server is risky. The portfolio server will crash from time to time. To discourage students from running experimental code on the portfolio server all applications deployed on that server will be subjected to a one week review period.

Department Application Services

Department application services consist of enterprise services (see below) and supports department applications such as web-based interfaces to the other services, department web pages, and home-grown applications such as MatchMaker.

Instructional Support Services

Instructional support services consist of enterprise services (see below) and collaboration services:

Collaboration services include version control, bug tracking, wiki, forum, IM, virtual meetings, etc.

Faculty Research Services

Faculty research services consist of enterprise services (see below) and supports faculty developed applications as well as other applications used by the faculty member. An example might be a grading program.

Enterprise Services

The standard enterprise services suite consists of the following components:

Mapping Services to Virtual Servers to Physical Servers

For example: