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Pain and the 'Triage System'...Communication Breakdown (part one).

Can't seem to get your Internet account going? You're not alone.

Frustrated students are flocking to Academic Computing in droves, demanding answers to the World Wide Wonder: It sounded so simple, why doesn't it work?

According to AC's World Wide Web specialist Julianne Tolson, the answer is simple: "Nothing's that simple," she said. "It's a continuous learning process."

But for those bewildered by the increasingly essential technologies, this answer provides no solace.

"That doesn't mean that we won't try to make it simple," Tolson said. "But it may take us a few tries. And we will try to improve."

To that end, AC has implemented several steps to alleviate the questions of digitally wounded students. AC's executive director John True said the new "Triage System" answers the most frequently asked questions "en masse" rather than individually, as was done in the past.

"A year and a half ago, when there were 2,000 accounts, it (the number of student questions) wasn't a big deal. But when you start hearing the same questions over and over again ... we had to rethink our service delivery system," he said.

During the first month of school, AC now offers an expanded menu of short classes in the basics of computing and Internet navigation, as well as a phone answering system for the most elementary questions.

According to Tolson, since SF State currently provides Internet accounts for free, it should not be thought of in the same vain as commercial services like the point-and-click -- voila! America Online.

"I don't believe in magic," Tolson said. "If someone doesn't have a threshold for computer pain, maybe this isn't the place for them."

Humanities professor Arthur Chandler jumped to the defense of AC. "They're killing themselves trying to keep up," he said.

"We try to anticipate problems that happened before. We are trying to become more customer orientated," Tolson said.

Get in, get out, get outta here.

Andy Warhol was right: everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Within two weeks CS will install a cluster of dial-up modems designed to disconnect after exactly 15 minutes of on-line time.

According to True, the rationale runs thus: With the number of Internet accounts at SF State increasing at a rate of 200 a day and no end in sight, it is nearly impossible to connect to one of the 168 modems and access the Internet between 5 p.m. and the wee wee hours of the morning -- not much of a computing service.

So, borrowing an idea already instituted at U.C. Berkeley, these modems are designed for the high-speed, on-the-go, compose-a-letter-on-the-fly Internet junkies who just want to check their email, respond to a letter, quickly post to Usenet or browse a Web site or two, rather than spend hours in front of their flickering cathode tubes.

Instead of dialing the 338-6666 number to connect to the school server, the contents of connected SF State can dial, appropriately enough, 338-FAME. But be terse.

Broken Back ... Communication Breakdown (part two)

As if it isn't already difficult enough to connect to the school server, MCI -- the telecommunications enormity that provides the California State University system with the necessary long-distance links used for Internet access -- slipped a disk in its copper wire backbone last Tuesday.

Though not as serious a blunder as its "Friends and Family" fiasco, the breakdown of MCI's national telecommunications structure caused yet more delays in SF State's already overloaded system.

An MCI explanation confirmed it was not a problem within the university, but rather with MCI's national "backbone" -- their foundation of long distance phone lines.

"We are getting hits on all our services," MCI said in email obtained by the Golden Gater. "But there are areas of the world that are currently unable to reach us (and vice versa). This problem is in no way isolated ... and is affecting most sites on the Internet."

However, MCI spokesman John Houser said the problem did not originate on MCI, but rather on the Sprint network.

According to Houser, a Japanese company named "Jicst" sent an advertisement over Sprint lines broadcasting its 192 SUPERNET routing networks. When that information was handed off to MCI's network backbone it caused a "routing anomaly." In common terms, a "bug."

MCI's network was unable to process Jicst's information and subsequently, from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST, about 30 percent of MCI's network was disabled.

Evette Fulton, of Sprint's Washington, D.C. office, confirmed that the bug originated on Sprint, not MCI, network lines.

Jeff Schwartz, graduate student and one of the people who maintain SF State's Instructional Technologies network server -- the oldest and busiest on campus -- said MCI's injured dorsal slowed traffic on the server by 50 percent, bringing some functions to a standstill.

According to Academic Computing's Heidi Schmidt, SF State's systems are now working normally.

Good News (sorta) for SF State Web Publishers

The rumor has been buzzing around that students who publish home pages on the World Wide Web via their converted Internet accounts may actually be recognized by the university and linked to its main page.

Currently, students can have their Internet accounts re-configured by AC to support Web pages, learn Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML -- the programming language of the WWW -- and publish a home page. But without recognition by the university, Web publishers begin with an attention deficit: Without a link, who's going to know about your site?

When asked, Tolson -- better known as the "Websterina" -- would neither confirm nor deny the rumor.

But according to True, tentative plans are being made to develop a "Web Club" on the university's main page.

"What we are learning is that HTML skills are marketable," True said.

And to showcase some of the talent students are squeezing out of the ancillary benefit that is their free Internet account, the club will have a space on the main page along with all the other university happenings, bringing much-needed attention to student's creative work in a developing medium.

But it's not for everyone.

The club would be run much like every other recognized SF State organization. According to True, only "officially-sanctioned" student pages would be linked. And those linked pages would have to meet the rules and regulations that govern content, as set down by the Interim WWW practices, a general guideline students are expected to follow.

According to True, the idea is still in the planning process. No details have been set, but the pages chosen would have to exemplify "appropriate use" of the medium.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Keith Brown can be reached at: kbrown@sfsu.edu

Next week: S'pensive spaghetti.

[ back to Golden Gater Online September 12, 1995 ]

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