As of June 21, 2001 Cisco stopped its support for the 4700 router family. Since several colleges had these routers installed in their network, replacements were necessary. With the variety of network appliances in the District's network, that meant several "flavors" of modules had to be installed. Networking personnel are still in the process of replacing these 4700s and should have the project completed within the next month.

Then there's the Red Mountain Campus of Mesa Community College. MCC personnel along with one of our vendors, Calence, and District personnel have been busy installing a complete Cisco network, both LAN and WAN With classes starting in the fall there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

Red Mountain has decided to utilize the new Voice over IP (VoIP) phones as their primary phone system. This is the first campus to do so although Small Business Development Center had been the beta site for the District. This technology uses the network cabling for its infrastructure, eliminating the need for two separate cabling networks.

The technology is really quite simple since it utilizes the IP protocol, which the network already understands. When a call is placed, the network server looks through its database to see if the dialed number is in the network. If it is, the call is processed and the server drops out of the loop, freeing it up to "set up" another call. When the call terminates, the phone(s) notify the server once again, letting it know that the call has terminated so that the phone(s) will be ready to take another call.

If the number is not in the network database, the server utilizes a "gateway" to the "normal" telephone system (PSTN) and the call is placed as any other phone call would. Again, when the call is completed, the VoIP phone will then contact the server, let it know that the call is finished and to free up the line for another call. Since the server is only used for the set up and tear down of the circuit, this one server can handle up to 2500 phones.

Many varied applications can be utilized with this technology such as voice mail, IVR, ACD, etc. This is a very new technology that holds a great deal of promise for the future.

Along with the introduction of VoIP in our network, wireless systems have now been brought in to our network. The District Office is looking in to the deployment of wireless in several different areas. With our cable plant virtually full, this technology makes a great deal of sense.

Then there's the issue of security for our network. A consultant was hired to provide us with an assessment of our security needs. Several key issues were brought up that will need to be addressed in the next fiscal year. Hardware and software need to be implemented along with a complete set of policies and guidelines. This topic has become the highest priority in networking and will be dealt with in a very timely fashion. Input will have to be gathered from all of the colleges to ensure that all concerns have been met.

A network assessment was instituted in May of this year. This was accomplished by monitoring our ATM link from the Internet. With the bandwidth utilization from the Internet peaking at 100%, we needed to understand why so that we could justify increasing the bandwidth again. We will use this assessment as a baseline for the network and then perform another traffic monitoring session in August or September to see how or if the network "signature" has changed and make decisions from that.

Finally, in June, a Network Operations Center, or NOC, was hired on in a trial mode, to see if this type of operation could alleviate some of the work put on the networking personnel in trying to maintain a 24 x 7 x 365 uptime for the colleges. This NOC will monitor our network, proactively, and forewarn us of any potential problems. If this trial works, we may then go out with an RFP for a more permanent solution.