Network Upgrade:IS&T is planning to finish upgrading the network in the next few months, bringing the entire building up to current standards for speed and reliability. This will involve an initial walkthrough by IS&T people, followed by teams of contractors replacing some older wiring and installing new equipment in the closets. There will be brief disruptions in service as they move the current wiring to new equipment. They had hoped to start walkthroughs last week- this is strictly a visual inspection to note the location of network jacks that will need to be upgraded and should only take a few minutes. Overall, they would like to be done around June-July The initial survey will begin on July 2 in 201-206 and 510-519. We are looking to get a schedule together for space availability – for this initial run you can contact Ned Parsons (nedp@mit.edu, 3-4433), although it may be helpful in the future to establish a shared calendar or possibly just use the comments in this wiki to coordinate. VOIP Migration:Once the network is ready, the VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) people will go through all of our spaces to take a detailed phone inventory, followed by teams to replace the existing phones. They will also be coordinating with people working in the closets to switch wiring and with central phone services to re-route the phone service; this means there will be some downtime (possibly up to a couple of hours) on the phones. Aside from the downtime, calls and messages can not be forwarded between the new and old systems, so they will prefer to switch large blocks of people at a time, although they can work down to the level of a lab or office, if necessary. IS&T has more information regarding VOIP on their site: http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/voip/update.html In advance of all this, they will need to know a few things: - who is the best person to contact for scheduling and information?
- are there better or worse times for work to be done?
- are there any restricted spaces?
Like we did with the power shut-offs last year, we are establishing a contact list of responsible people each lab and office to help get information to the right places without spamming the whole building, please let me know if there is anyone else you think should be on it (or if I should take someone off it). |