On April 8th, connection beyond the Big Island was down between 19:30 and 21:00 due to a misconfiguration on a core router.
On May 17th, connection beyond the Big Island was down again between 11:00 to 12:00 due to problems on Lisa.
On May 22nd, the same thing happened between 8:30 and 9:30. UH-ITS staff consulted with Cisco and were advised to replace the VIP2-40 controllers with VIP4-80 controllers, thereby increasing the memory pool. Replacement controllers were ordered and were installed on June 11th. In the meantime, interface cards were redistributed among the various VIP2 controllers to alleviate the problems.
Pui Hin then described some of the latest network development plans at UH campus. UH-ITS has been working on building redundency for all the core routers. When it's all done, all core routers will be connected with gigabit ethernet, backed up by OC3s. FDDI will be completely removed.
Miranda has found at least two bad ports in the Catalyst 2900 switch at HP. A replacement switch has been ordered.
After working with UH-ITS for over a month, it has been decided that it is not possible to have the OC3 fiber terminated at the IfA building because of the large number of connections involved. To minimize the chance of lengthy connection loss, Pui Hin has worked with UH-ITS and UHH to install a Catalyst 3550-12G at the UHH communication room to backup the UH-ITS Catalyst 6500 that will otherwise be the single connection point for both our microwave and fiber paths. In the IfA building, the router to be purchased for the implementation of Class-Based Weighted Fair Queueing (CBWFQ) will include a gigabit ethernet port for connection to the 3550-12G. Cisco does not have a fast ethernet adapter for single-mode fiber. Using gigabit ethernet avoids having to use single-mode to multi-mode converters which creates two additional points of failure. The 7200 VXR currently installed in the IfA building will replace the 7200 on the summit. This will make it possible to support CBWFQ on the summit and free up the current 7200 for a backup in Hilo
Pui Hin has run into some problems on the procurement of the new router due to inconsistencies between Cisco configuration tools used by Cisco internally and the one provided for customers to use. Agreement was made with Cisco for us to buy -- for now -- the NPE400 as planned and trade in the NPE400 controller for a new NPE-gigabit, when it becomes available, for cost difference only between the two controllers with educational discounts.
Pui Hin further pointed out that the current version of Polycom software allows packet marking of the IP precedence bit. It is therefore not necessary for the observatories to implement CBWFQ on their routers.
The salary portion has gone up due to the union negotiated pay raise. Also, due to the amount of development work, Pui Hin has been working on the network project for 15% of her time rather than 10%. Thus 15% of her salary is charged to the observatories for this fiscal year.
However, the observatories will see a slightly smaller bill this year due to a large surplus from last year. $10k was budgeted to purchase equipment to support the new Internet links through UHH. The project has been delayed until the current fiscal year and we have decided to use infrastructure funds for the new equipment.
Mac Cooper reported that SMA is now using IfA's DNS in the Hilo.