Network Services provided dedicated service to all of the Maricopa Community Colleges WAN/LAN issues. Throughout the year the colleges requested bigger pipes to the Internet. One year ago, Maricopa used 70% of a 7 MB pipe for Internet access. As of this publication, the demand requires a large portion of an 11 MB pipe, with plans to increase it to 13 MB for the start of the Fall semester.

The team continued to research and support the use of IP/TV, Voice over IP (VoIP) telephones, and Virtual Local Area Networks (VLAN) as well as keeping the Web Cache server running. Each of these technologies provided direct benefit to Maricopa.

Network Services rolled into the New Era quite seamlessly. All of the Cisco equipment --Routers and ATM switches across the Maricopa WAN as well as the LAN equipment at the District Office, were upgraded to the latest IOS at least six months prior to December 31, 1999. The team assisted the campuses regarding which versions of IOS were needed to be Y2K compliant with more than ample time to be ready. We then used the Network Testing Lab to do a mock 2000 rollover that went like it was just another day. Feeling very "Y2K" confident, we performed a final backup on all of our systems during the week before Christmas break and decided to leave the all of the Cisco equipment, WAN and LAN, up and running through the turn of the Millennium. As expected, the Maricopa Network handled Y2K like it was just another day! All of the research, preparation and testing had finally proven itself.

The choice of ATM for the Wide Area Network infrastructure has proven to be a very worthy and stable selection. A minimal amount of downtime was experienced over the last fiscal year, proving that ATM is an excellent WAN bandwidth platform for voice, video and data. It is important to have a stable, as well as a manageable network with the rapid rate of growth and bandwidth demands necessary to fulfill college needs.

This year, Maricopa has grown to consume the current 11MB path to the Internet with peaks of 99% utilization and average loads of in the 50% area. We will continue to keep our current 11MB bandwidth during the summer and will raise the bandwidth to 13MB before the start of the fall semester.

Johnny Baba has been approved for formal training on Cisco's Campus ATM this July.

IP/TV testing continued by broadcasting programs to seven of the ten colleges with great success. With the help of the AV department, we were able to air all 12 Governing Board meetings, live and recorded as well. Network Services has been working with other campuses to provide more content to air such as the Honors Forum Lectures at PC, Robert Kennedy Jr. speech at GWCC, and the Endangered Species lecture at Rio to list a few. MCLI has used IP/TV to broadcast the Black Board User's Group Meeting as well. Training Services would like to use it for broadcasting training programs to the desktop.

With the coming of the new fiscal year, Network Services has been granted funds to purchase the newest software and the Cisco Appliance Server for IP/TV. This will bring IP/TV out of the testing phase and into full production.

Early last year a Cisco 550 Web-Cache Server was installed which provided a great savings on Internet access. It took some fine-tuning through access-lists, and a few upgrades of code to get the cache-server up and stable. Currently, over 40% of the requested web pages are already stored in cache, reducing the impact on the Internet connection by over 20% and giving users a faster response time.

In the start of this fiscal year, a VoIP (Voice-Over-Internet-Protocol) starter kit was purchased which consisted of 10 IP phones, five 30 button and five 12 button phones. A Cisco Appliance Server that would be the Call Manager to run the VoIP software was also purchased. The IP phones are working on the data network making intercampus calls and outside calls. Cisco voice mail software was recently installed as well.

The Network Services team feels that VoIP can be a great solution for the implementation of integrating Voice and Data for new campuses. Bruce Huston was approved for formal training on Cisco's Voice Over IP software in June.

A few new sites were added to the WAN, the largest being Maricopa Skill Center South West Campus, located on the Estrella Mountain Community College campus in Avondale. They have a 100mg-ethernet connection to the EMCC network, then routing back to the District Office via the EMCC ATM WAN connection.

Williams Education Center has added a new facility to their campus. The Virtual Reality Center "VRC," which was previously a private entity but located at WEC, is now a part of, and managed by WEC. VRC has been recently added to the network and has expressed great interest in the VoIP technology.

Another location added to the WAN is the Small Business Development Center, located downtown. Along with the purchase of a Cisco 2600 Router and a Catalyst 3524XL Ethernet Switch (which are installed and in operation), SBDC has also purchased 5-12 button and 2-30 button VoIP phones to implement in their LAN.

The Network Services team has been assisting campuses with their implementation of VLANs on their Local Area Networks. It takes quite some time planning and coordinating with the campus and District network personnel, as well as IP addressing schemes and protocol encapsulations. But, once VLANs are installed, bandwidth utilization improves as well as network management and troubleshooting. Campuses involved in VLAN implementation are Scottsdale, Chandler-Gilbert, and South Mountain Community Colleges.

In between all of the college issues, Network Services staff has been working on the installation of two new Cisco 5500 switches. These two switches were purchased as part of the redundancy program for the Districtwide enterprise servers, which is the home to Financials, MEMO, HRMS, Black Board, IVR and other district- wide web and file services. Also purchased in the redundancy program is a Cisco 8540 WAN Switch, which will provide redundant WAN switching for all ATM connections as well as a back up Internet connection via a separate fiber pull to USWest.

Network Support Services has a website as well. Monthly status reports about Network Support Services are available on the ITS Status Report System.