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A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

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Re: A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

#11

Post by the_third_wave »

pjc50 wrote: post #9

1998: "On August 4th the University's JANET connection was upgraded to a 34 Mbps ATM link." - or, in modern terms, a domestic ADSL line.

Not to be picky or pedantic (ha!) but that should be a SDSL line to be comparable to (synchronous) ATM. That 34Mbps ADSL (A for 'Asynchronous') line probably does no more than 4Mbps on the uplink.

Re: A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

#12

Post by gushie »

twic wrote: post #4

I wonder why this timeline has been upvoted to the front page with no comments. > 1994 In September a Digital Alpha 2100 server with four processors and 1 gigabyte of memory (known as sable) was installed to replace black as the University's general-purpose Unix server. > 1996 In June a second Digital Alpha server was installed (known as ermine). This was bought because the load on sable was much greater than had bee…

I hadn't used a shell prior to 1993, looking back I'm amazed at how much I learned in my first few weeks using black. Fond memories of using elm for email, tinyfugue to connect to muds and writing my first web pages. I can't remember if it was black or sable that a small group of us crashed a few times with a deliberate fork() bomb. Not our proudest moment looking back!

Re: A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

#13

Post by sammko128 »

the_third_wave wrote: post #11
pjc50 wrote: post #9

1998: "On August 4th the University's JANET connection was upgraded to a 34 Mbps ATM link." - or, in modern terms, a domestic ADSL line.

Not to be picky or pedantic (ha!) but that should be a SDSL line to be comparable to (synchronous) ATM. That 34Mbps ADSL (A for 'Asynchronous') line probably does no more than 4Mbps on the uplink.

Doesn't the A in ADSL stand for asymmetric?

Re: A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

#14

Post by twic »

nicoburns wrote: post #8
grahamlee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was ntl (styled as ntl:). Like your nerd house friends I had ntl in my house on the Cowley Road, and they offered a dual-line service so we had one line connected to the modem pool full-time (my SuSE Linux desktop ran an RFC1918 network for the other computers in the house). Sadly around the time this history comes to an end OUCS (now IT Services) abandoned much of its work with bespoke open source development to…

> Sadly around the time this history comes to an end OUCS (now IT Services) abandoned much of its work with bespoke open source development to become the Microsoft money funnel it is now. Yeah, a lot of UK universities seem to have gone this route (the number who pay huge sums of money to use the atrocious Blackboard software is scandalous). I think they got burnt by their old-school proprietary software being outcom…

I have friends who were in IT at UCL, and yes, it sounds horrifying. All the people who actually knew how to do things for users are gone, and there are hundreds of managers who can't and won't do anything instead.

I'm not sure it was a rational decision based on experiences with proprietary software. It sounds like good old grift to me.

Re: A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

#15

Post by wink »

the_third_wave wrote: post #11
pjc50 wrote: post #9

1998: "On August 4th the University's JANET connection was upgraded to a 34 Mbps ATM link." - or, in modern terms, a domestic ADSL line.

Not to be picky or pedantic (ha!) but that should be a SDSL line to be comparable to (synchronous) ATM. That 34Mbps ADSL (A for 'Asynchronous') line probably does no more than 4Mbps on the uplink.

Yeah, but you could also just assume some 100-120 down with 30-40 up. Still same "ballpark" for me, and yet better than the upload of my official 50/10 that is actually 60/12 or so.

Re: A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

#16

Post by dogcatter »

twic wrote: post #14
nicoburns wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly around the time this history comes to an end OUCS (now IT Services) abandoned much of its work with bespoke open source development to become the Microsoft money funnel it is now. Yeah, a lot of UK universities seem to have gone this route (the number who pay huge sums of money to use the atrocious Blackboard software is scandalous). I think they got burnt by their old-school proprietary software being outcom…

I have friends who were in IT at UCL, and yes, it sounds horrifying. All the people who actually knew how to do things for users are gone, and there are hundreds of managers who can't and won't do anything instead. I'm not sure it was a rational decision based on experiences with proprietary software. It sounds like good old grift to me.

It's not that I disagree with you exactly, but as someone who teaches at a UK university (much less prestigious than Oxford or UCL)... I used to complain a lot about how much money we were sending to Microsoft and Blackboard etc, but then someone pointed to me that the main non-outsourced piece of software we use (the main student records/teaching info system) is borderline unusuable. Horribly slow, lots of 90s errors like commas in course names breaking things, doesn't work on a tablet, etc etc. At least the Microsoft stuff works.

Re: A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

#17

Post by the_third_wave »

sammko128 wrote: post #13
the_third_wave wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be picky or pedantic (ha!) but that should be a SDSL line to be comparable to (synchronous) ATM. That 34Mbps ADSL (A for 'Asynchronous') line probably does no more than 4Mbps on the uplink.

Doesn't the A in ADSL stand for asymmetric?

Yes, it does, got them mixed up. Still, it is the same idea: same rates up and down versus different rates.

Re: A History of Oxford University Computing Services (2008)

#18

Post by riverdweller »

It is odd that as late as April 1994 the info service was migrated to gopher instead of http. By that time, most of the colleges had their own websites up and running. Students themselves were rapidly authoring web content (my contribution on my college server was a choose your own adventure from my room, past my dusty empty pigeonhole, through town to my common room bar). It was already clear that the ease of contribution meant http was going to dominate going forward. I guess the gopher migration wasn't a quick project.
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