Matt Bear wrote:
>
> Unlike most of the posts in this group, this is not a complaint about the
 service.  I would just like to give a big "Thank You" to all of the people who
 are tearing their hair out trying to make this thing work.  I'm sure that this
 is just as frustrating for you as it is for us.
>
> I just wanted to say that I really appreciate all of the hard work you are
 doing.  Thanks for your time.
 
Matt,
 
Many, many thanks for your post.  We definitely appreciate the
encouragement.  I plan to share your comments with our implementation
team when we meet on Friday.
 
You are correct in thinking it is as frustrating for us as for you.
We really want to have this go well, and we've worked very hard over
the past year preparing the infrastructure, the services and support.
We were told early on that we could not expect much in the way of
staff increases, and they have, in fact, been quite minimal compared
to what we projected was needed.  On the other hand, we've
accomplished much more in the short time allocated than I think any of
us hoped.  And generally, the data and video network are going much
smoother than we expected.  The exception to that, of course, has been
the PPP service.
 
We were warned by other universities with residential networking
programs that PPP service would be much more problematic than Ethernet
or video network connections.  That's the nature of the beast. My
personal opinion, from the staffing and support side of things, is
that I wish we had waited to implement PPP until we had more time for
testing.  However, I know that would have left many students upset
that they could not get access to the network services that the 2,700
students in the 16 wired residence halls had.  So I've concluded in
the grand scheme of things that it's preferable to have PPP available
(albeit, sometimes frustrating) than not to have it there at all.
 
Those who cannot tolerate the frustrations in use of the PPP service
might want to consider going back to using Kermit in the meantime --
those modems are still available.  Not a perfect answer, by any means,
but one option.  Since the PPP modems are now more reliable than at
first, maybe more people are willing to deal with the frustrations in
their use.
 
Thanks again for your comments.  You've made my day!
 
Debi Allison
MCIS Assistant Director for Client Services