WVNET in the Early 2000s

January 2000

WVNET is working on an agreement with the Federal Courts of Northern West Virginia to supply them with access to a VGate so their ISDN video equipment can work with the ATM video equipment at the regional jails. Work continues to verify that all production software is Y2K compliant.

AMS representatives are at WVNET to install the latest version of Advantage, version 2.1.1. Advantage 2.1.1 will offer users the choice of using the standard character screen for data input or a Windows 95/98 compatible GUI interface. A GUI based decision support module will also be available.

February 2000

The WVNET Managers and staff who support the Banner Student Information System and the Advantage Finance System for the state colleges are evaluating a proposal by SCT Corporation to replace the Advantage software with Banner financial software, Banner Human Resources, and several Web products. The cost would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million, not including possible hardware purchases and additional staff requirements.

March 2000

WVNET staff is testing the new toll-free 500-69-WVNET modem accounts which are slated to replace the existing modem pools. Additional work is being done to revamp billing and account management procedures, develop new documentation, and train help desks around the state in support of the new dialup service. Estimated production deployment for the new service is now scheduled for April.

The Governor's Office of Technology (GOT) has granted WVNET $420,000 for "WVSUN Start-Up Funding Needs." This money will be used for the first year's salary for a WVSUN Coordinator, and the remainder will be used for to buy hardware and software. The legislature has transferred $2,500,000 into a WVNET account. This money will be used to install video equipment and other hardware into the remaining county courthouses for the Court Room of the Future Project.

April 2000

WVNET has been tasked to prepare a response to Governor's request for types and availability of internet filtering software, anticipated cost of this technology, and suggestions for implementation.

WVNET is working with BAIS to plan a major upgrade of our Internet Access. The first step will be to full DS3 North and South. We are working on getting the price of two OC3s. In the long run, we may fold this into the Internet2 project with WVU.

May 2000

WVNET has begun work on the creation of listserv, membership, and mailing lists for the Networking Forum, Shared Systems Forum, Collaborative Libraries Forum, Instructional Technology Forum, and Computer Center Directors Advisory Forum. These forums will be an integral part of the new Policy Board mandated by the WVNET Governance Document that became effective on February 14, 2000.

WVNET's Director, Associate Directors of Customer Services and Systems & Operations, Chief Financial Officer, Manager of Administrative Applications, and Director of Purchasing are leading and participating in discussions and contract negotiations with SCT, along with Chief Financial Officers, Chief Procurement Officers, Human Resources Administrators, and others from state college and university system campuses. This effort is part of a project to move from Advantage to the Banner Finance System.

June 2000

WVNET staff has begun converting colleges to Advantage 2.1.1.

July 2000

WVNET Director issued a memorandum involving Banner Implementation Cost Estimates to Presidents, Chief Financial Officers, and Computer Center Directors. This information was shared in order to assist institutions in developing campus plans and budgets for the upcoming Banner Finance implementation. The information provided involved summary cost estimates for individual institutions and a discussion of each item; additional campus costs; central costs breakdown; costs for running finance at WVNET; staffing recommendations; recommended PC configurations for Banner 4.0, and optional services. A member of the Banner implementation project will contact individual institutions as a follow-up to this memo.

August 2000

WVNET Director attended IT Consolidation Workshop being held at IS&C in Charleston on August 29 and 30.

September 2000

Database Administration and Systems staff ordered disk space for Banner Finance prototype system. Following discussions with SCT, it was determined that approximately 40 gigabytes of storage will be required for the prototype installation, which will be placed on a node on the IBM SP system located at WVNET. The prototype system will serve as a basis for the Finance implementations at the colleges.

October 2000

Planning is underway for installations of Banner Student and Finance on WVNET equipment for WV Northern Community College, West Liberty State College, Glenville State College, and the School of Osteopathic Medicine.

Some time ago the last Vitalink remote circuit was retired, and now the last remaining local Vitalinks have been turned off. Thus ends a significant chapter in WVNET's communications history!

WVNET Director hosted the first meeting of the WVNET Policy Board Collaborative Libraries Forum. This forum will represent the library community, including universities, colleges, private schools, West Virginia Library Commission, and K-12 libraries.

November 2000

WVNET staff met with technical managers and administrators from Glenville State College concerning Glenville's move of their Banner Student Information System to the WVNET Central Site.

WVNET 2000, a conference celebrating WVNET's 25th year, was held at Lakeview Scanticon Resort & Conference Center on November 13-15. Over 300 attendees participated. The closing session featured past and present directors of WVNET, 1977-2000: Wayne Muth, George Trapp, Chuck Shomper, Johnnie Byrd, and Henry Blosser.

December 2000

WVNET is working on an RFP for a solution for carrying data, video and voice traffic across the boundary between the Charleston and Clarksburg LATA's.

WVNET staff met with West Liberty State College concerning implementation of BANNER Finance for WLSC at the WVNET Central Site.

Database Administrator working out problems with BANNER Finance software installation for OpenVMS systems. Numerous problems have been encountered with software. WVNET will work with SCT to correct installation problems prior to making the software available to campuses.

January 2001

WVNET and WVSUN staff attended meetings to begin investigation of IP Telephony. A Standards Task Force has been created by the state. WVNET completed processing an order from Verizon Internet Service to upgrade our Internet service to 70 MB in both Clarksburg and Charleston LATAs.

Oracle databases were installed for Glenville State College, West Virginia Northern Community College, and West Liberty State College on WVNET's IBM RS/6000 systems. WVNET will work with computer center staff at these schools to install current versions of the BANNER and Oracle software.

The WVNET MVS Transition Project Team held a kickoff meeting. This team will meet weekly to plan the WVNET movement off of the MVS operating system.

February 2001

WVNET and WVSUN staff attended several presentations on Voice over IP by Nortel, Cisco, and Gartner Group.

March 2001

Oracle contract negotiations proceeded as hardware configuration information was received from the campuses participating in the Oracle contract. WVU and its campuses did not participate in the Oracle contract renewal since they were covered under WVU's campus license.

April 2001

WVNET completed the license agreement for the usage of Banner Financial Aid by the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission.

May 2001

WVNET issued an RFP to investigate solutions for carrying data, video and voice traffic across the LATA boundary between the Verizon ATM Switch in Charleston and the Verizon ATM Switch in Clarksburg.

Testing of first three Banner finance interfaces was continued. These interfaces are Invoice, Manual Warrant, and Vendor File. Both the Manual Warrant and Vendor file required corrections.

June 2001

WVNET worked with Glenville State College to complete a plan for moving their BANNER Student Information System to WVNET hardware. The plan included updating the Banner software to current levels, and the installation of Banner Finance on a new test system. With representatives from Eastern Community and Technical College, WVNET discussed the possibility of installing Eastern's Banner system at WVNET. The initial load of West Virginia Northern Community College's Banner Student Information System on WVNET hardware was under way.

WVNET worked on the Banner Finance interfaces delivered by SCT. There were numerous problems with installing the interfaces and getting them to run to completion. WVNET worked to outline the Banner interface deliverables problem for SCT, and to request improvements/changes in how future interfaces will be delivered.

WVNET reached an agreement with Verizon and Accord to get the Southern MCU installed in Charleston. WVNET completed the physical install of the MCU, and the VGate.

July 2001

Accord and Verizon completed the logical MCU install, startup, and training. The MCU is operational, able to create IP and ATM conferences. Verizon worked on cascading the northern and southern MCUs together. The VGate was operational, and we were able to make an ISDN call from an ISDN video unit at WVNET, to the VGate in Charleston, and have it map the call via ATM to an ATM unit in the WVNET conference room.

WVNET completed the Glenville State College move of their Banner Student Information System to WVNET, including bringing Banner to current maintenance levels. Glenville will use this configuration to register students. The upgrade of this system to Banner 4.x and the installation of Banner Finance on a test system will be completed at a later date. WVNET was still working to convert some of Glenville's locally developed procedures from VMS to AIX. The Oracle print streams must also be converted.

The initial load of West Virginia Northern Community College's Banner Student Information System at WVNET was completed.

WVNET was completing plans for the rollout of Banner 5.x to all campuses. The scheduling of central resources for narrow implementation windows was the greatest hurdle in making this move. Coordination with the Banner Finance implementation was also required.

August 2001

WVNET experienced a major Internet slowdown, and investigation confirmed that there was a problem. Traffic counts on the WVNET Internet links were very high, and Verizon discovered that a DOS (Denial of Service) attack was clogging their DS-3 connections from the Internet into Charleston. The attack was against a single IP address and was coming from many different addresses. The rate of traffic was around 90mb going toward a single 56kb modem connection. It seemed that a modem user did something to make someone very angry. Verizon had Qwest put a filter in at the Qwest level to block the DOS attack.

WVNET begin preliminary work to install a new Ethernet switch and three Akamai servers. We also installed a Cisco 4700 peering router.

WVNET will now support personalized Userids for our modem users. WVNET will allow each modem account to have four personalized e-mail addresses, and each address is allowed a personalized Web directory with 4 MB of space at no additional cost to the user.

November 2001

WVNET staff visited the Higher Education Policy Commission to assist in a review of their Chart of Accounts design. We also visited West Virginia State College to assist in the loading of their Chart of Accounts.

WVNET staff member visited the Shepherd and Bluefield campuses to upgrade their VMS Alpha computers from V7.1 to V7.2 in preparation for installing a new version of Oracle.

December 2001

WVNET issued an RFP to establish a contract for supplying dedicated Internet connectivity with multiple links to multiple global providers for use by West Virginia higher education, K-12, state government, county government, city government, public libraries and some non-profit organizations.

WVNET released Banner 5.x for distribution. The Banner 5 upgrade requires upgrade from Oracle Forms 4.5 to Oracle Forms 6i. At our central computing facility, WVNET was supporting 20 Banner/Oracle database instances housed on 5 different machines, with 6 more installations planned in the next few weeks. Oracle upgrades from version 7.3.4.5 to 8.1.7 were nearly complete at this time. Upgrades from Banner 4 to Banner 5 were also underway.

WVNET staff assisted West Virginia State College with their Banner upgrade. Their plan was to be in production on Banner 5 by the end of December. WVNET staff also assisted Bluefield State College with their Banner upgrade.

January 2002

WVNET staff performed the upgrade of Glenville's Banner applications on a WVNET IBM SP node running AIX and the latest version of Banner 5.x and Oracle 8.1.7. WVNET completed upgrades to the latest Banner 5.x for WVSOM's Banner application running on OpenVMS at WVNET. WVNET staff assisted Bluefield by upgrading their Banner test database from 4.x to the latest 5.x.

WVNET decided to purchase additional memory, processors, and disk space for the IBM SP multi-node complex. This hardware was used to improve the performance of systems running Oracle databases for Glenville State College, West Liberty State College, WV Northern Community College, Higher Education Policy Commission, and WVNET.

WVNET began the development of Oracle applications to replace locally-written applications running in Adabas on MVS. The user interface for these applications was Oracle Forms.

The State Telecommunications Users Council awarded $200,000 jointly to WVNET and Verizon to develop and execute a pilot IP-video project. This project will involve Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College. As part of the pilot, a Web-based MCU scheduler was ordered. This software will allow end-users to schedule their own video conferences while providing us with accounting information for billing.

February 2002

Telephone/network rewiring was begun in the WVNET building. Upon completion, everyone will be on a new switched fast Ethernet LAN, and new phones will be installed to implement the new voice switch.

WVNET began testing a Nortel BCM PBX at WVNET. The PBX was installed with 6 digital and 6 IP phones connected to it.

WVNET completed the upgrade of the Bluefield State College campuses from Frame-Relay to ATM.

WVNET worked with the Regional Jail Authority to install filtering appliances at the WVNET POPs in Morgantown and Charleston.

March 2002

The WVNET Policy Board decided that WVNET must move all remaining applications off of the CMOS by October 1st, 2002. The original plan was to run the VM operating system on this system until July 1st of 2003, but the cost of running VM after removing the MVS operating system would be about $150,000 for FY2003. The WVNET Policy Board decided that this was not economically feasible.

WVNET has used VM to support multiple copies of different operating systems on a single box and to supply many user services. For example, VM is used to support the MVS operating system, VM/CMS users, RSCS networking, VTAM to connect to IS&C, several Linux server machines, production Web pages, E-mail for our modem users, personal Web pages for modem users, and 3270-style E-mail for some users. VM also provides backups for all WVNET computers, E-mail filtering for viruses and spam, our E-mail gateway to other servers, and support for SAS reports, our Problem Management System, and LISTSERV functions.

Over the last year, WVNET had been concentrating on moving the applications that run on the MVS operating system to other servers, because our technical staff felt that it would be difficult to move off both MVS and VM in the same timeframe. Nevertheless, a project to carry out the instructions of the Policy Board was established, and work on this challenging task began.

April 2002

WVNET staff worked with the West Virginia Library Commission to integrate the library network more tightly into WVNET's network. The redesign will improve performance at every library, and will include the capability of filtering, depending on developments at the federal level.

WVNET investigated the hardware and software requirements for replacing all functions of VM on the CMOS. At a minimum, we must replace the tape backup system, the EMC disk array, E-mail support, Listserv services, virus filtering, spam filtering, the Problem Management System, both production and personnel Web pages, and our file server. We must also plan on migrating all 3270 terminal and CMOS print services directly to IS&C.

May 2002

WVNET contacted EMC and IBM to discuss the possible upgrade or replacement of our current disk array and tape backup system. WVNET also carried on discussions with SAS, Listserv, and several other vendors to investigate the most cost-effective software solutions for replacing SAS, Listserv, virus and spam filtering and other services.

June 2002

WVNET ordered five Intel servers and Listserv software for Linux to replace services previously offered on the CMOS. All of the servers run Linux, and will be used to support Web pages, E-mail (for about 20 E-mail domains), the WVNET Problem Management System, Listserv, and virus and spam filtering.

July 2002

Ten West Virginia Banner consortium institutions (Bluefield State College, Concord College, Glenville State College, Higher Education Policy Commission, West Virginia Northern Community College, Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, West Virginia State College, West Liberty State College, WVNET, and West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine) began using the Banner Finance System in a production environment on July 1.

WVNET installed our five new Linux servers and Listserv 1.8e. This new Listserv has Web accessibility to help users manage their lists, add or delete subscribers, post to the list, and check out statistics from the Web. The Web interface can be accessed as listserv.wvnet.edu.

August 2002

WVNET warned users that on October 1, 2002, all mainframe data on both disk and tape will be inaccessible because the CMOS will be retired from service. Users must move any information they wish to preserve to another system before this date.

WVNET decided on the virus and spam filtering software that we intend to use. The software was installed and tested; WVNET staff now filtered all E-mail domains.

WVNET moved all WVNET e-mail discussion lists to the new Linux Listserv. All E-mail accounts were also cleaned up and recreated on the new E-mail server. All E-mail domains were also migrated to this server.

WVNET staff begun migrating all production WVNET Web pages from the VM Webserver to the new Linux Apache Webserver. We also moved all personnel Web pages to the new server, and worked with users to help them do what is necessary to update their Web pages.

September 2002

WVNET ordered a SAN disk array from EMC, a tape backup system from IBM, and a Pseries AIX server to drive tape backups. We also contracted with IBM to configure a new version of their TSM backup software.

WVNET system staff worked hard this month customizing, enhancing, and stabilizing our new e-mail and Web servers. They delivered to our users Web interfaces for updating passwords and forwarding e-mail. They also created a utility to check on the size of POP e-mail files and to help users delete large files that are blocking their Inbox.

WVNET Database support staff began a complete rewrite of our Problem Management System. The new system is based on Oracle with a Web interface, and is modeled after the problem system that WVNET ran for many years on VM.

WVNET has agreed with the Department of Education to do virus and spam filtering on their e-mail domain. We have ordered another Intel Server to run Linux for this purpose.

WVNET migrated our phone system to a new Nortel PBX. Most phones are digital, but the new switch fully supports Voice over IP.

October 2002

WVNET staff did a complete rewrite of our AMS (Account Management System) and we are still working to get the last bugs out of the new code and get people trained in its use.

November 2002

December 2002

WVNET distributed an RFB for the sale of the CMOS computer. This computer was taken out of service on October 1, 2002. WVNET saved a large sum of money by retiring the mainframe and will realize some return on the sale of the old equipment.

2003

January 2003

The OZ Problem Tracking System is now fully operational at WVNET

OZ is a "Private Help Desk". Every person who accesses it must be registered. The advantage to this is that users can login to the system and track/update their own problem tickets. User information is maintained in the system and does not have to be re-entered when the user encounters a new problem. Users can register simply by pressing the "Register for an Account" button at the login panel and supplying some basic information. Another way for a user to be registered is when the WVNET Help Desk enters a problem for a user, the information obtained for the problem is used to register them. OZ sends email to supporters (update authority to database) and users just as previous problem tracking systems have done.

OZ includes a knowledge base. Knowledge base entries can be created by any supporter from a trouble ticket in the system, a text or html file, or by manually typing information into the screen. Once entries are in the knowledge base, they are indexed, categorized and searchable. OZ also supports the ability of supporters to subscribe to areas of interest via the subscription page. This allows you to see every problem posted to a particular area. WVNET implemented this function using its LISTSERV software.

Feburary 2003

March 2003

The WebCT contract for the VISTA product was approved. WVNET facilitated the negotiations with Marshall University, HEPC, West Virginia University and Fairmont State College resulting in the production of the final contract. Marshall University is the first institution to begin testing. Later in the year, WVU and Fairmont State will begin testing. The plan is eventually for these three institutions to host this product for the other state institutions.

WVNET staff installed/turned on WVNET's new modem pool. These modems replace the modem network that was run by Verizon for WVNET. Modem pools are now located in Charleston, Morgantown, and Martinsburg.

April 2003

Technology Procurement Officer processed the Fibernet second OC-3 addition. This contract (29090) change order provides for a second OC-3 from the WVNET location in Morgantown to the Capitol Complex (Building 6) in Charleston.

May 2003

June 2003

September 2003

November 2003

December 2003

2004

January 2004

February 2004

March 2004

WVNET has two new customers for our virus scanner and spam filtering. They are the West Virginia Library Commission and the Tax Office.

We have completed the migration from the IBM SP system to the IBM P650 system. This is being used for Banner financial and Student Information Systems.

WVNET has completed a major effort to surplus a lot of equipment that was no longer being used. This was a large part of our effort to cleanup and rearrange our machine room. This reorganization was the last step in the departure of the mainframe. We have also completed a survey of computer room power. This will be used in the future to help us provide space for additional equipment and in a future effort to upgrade our UPS system.

April 2004

The move takes about 60 seconds to complete and involves changing a pointer in our ATM switch to direct an institution's traffic from one router to another.

May 2004

After the SCT announcement of support for Banner on Red Hat Linux, WVNET has announced that it will purchase a Red Hat Linux system to test Banner. From now on, WVNET will support Banner on Red Hat Linux in the same fashion that it supports Banner on AIX and VMS.

June 2004

August 2004

2005

April 2005

WVNET increased the disk space for Oracle on the groucho server by more than 100 gigabytes. This will be about a 30% increase in space for the Oracle databases on the groucho server and is normal growth of existing databases. More space will be needed as we start the Banner 7 upgrades this summer/fall.

May 2005

October 2005

WVNET has implemented dynamic IP blocking on our email gateways. Basically, IP filtering provides a mechanism to reject mail from a specific IP address if more than a specified number of messages are received from it. The block is removed after one hour. Subsequent messages from the violating IP address are rejected with a 445 error code. The leading '4' indicates a persistent transient failure. The '45' indicates mail system congestion. A mail transfer agent behaving properly will hold the messages in their queue and retry them some time in the future. Spam flooding servers, whose primary goal is to dump their payload as quickly as possible, will most likely ignore the particulars of the response and move on. The idea behind this technique is to throttle down bulk mailers to a reasonable level and stop spam dumps.

November 2005

The IBM Blade server is now installed and working. There were some delays because of hardware problems and a learning curve in understanding the software. We have now installed and configured the first Linux virtual machine.

December 2005