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Report of the Information Technology Syndicate on the University Computing Service for 2000-2001

Introduction

1. The Information Technology Syndicate develops computing policy for the University and the Colleges and supervises the University Computing Service; this report covers the activities of the Syndicate and the Service for the year from August 2000 to July 2001. The printed version of the Statistical Annex gives only top level summaries of the use of services but breakdowns to the level of individual institutions are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.cam.ac.uk/CS/ITSyndicate/AnnRep/stats00.01.html/. Please note that the statistical information is provided only to give a general picture of the width and volume of Service activities and makes no pretensions to being fully comprehensive.

Syndicate Matters

2. The IT Syndicate again functioned smoothly and effectively under the chairmanship of Professor Longair, while its Technical Committee, chaired by Dr Heath and now including a representative from the Management Information Services Division of the University Offices, continued to provide extremely valuable input to the discussion of any business with a technical dimension. Issues discussed by the Syndicate and dealt with in more detail below include the EastNet regional network, the future development of the CUDN, reducing the impact of hackers by blocking certain types of traffic, a Code of Practice for Computing Service staff dealing with personal information, and plans to avoid running out of IP addresses.

3. Computer staff employment issues continued to be a major concern. At the February Syndicate meeting, the Director of Personnel, who was present with two of his senior staff, outlined the progress made since the previous summer (including agreement in principle to drop the strict age relationship for starting salaries) and future possibilities (including plans to establish a transparent reward structure based on well thought out criteria). Dr Sayers was subsequently asked to contribute to a general review of academic-related staff recruitment and retention by producing proposals for changes to Computer Officer contracts and salary scales, and most of the June meeting was given over to a detailed discussion of his draft paper, which was then modified accordingly and sent off to the Personnel Committee.

Separation from the Computer Laboratory

4. By the end of the year, the academic side of the Computer Laboratory was ready to move both itself and that name to West Cambridge, while the Computing Service remained on the New Museums Site. This physical separation of the Laboratory and the Service was preceded by the approval of a Report which formally established the Computing Service as an independent institution under the supervision of the General Board with effect from 1 January 2001, including appropriate changes to various regulations and the establishment of two new Appointments Committees for the officers in the Service.

5. During the Lent and Easter terms, the General Board re-allocated the New Museums Site accommodation being vacated by the Computer Laboratory. The Computing Service share is less than was requested (particularly in the Arup Building, where the space is to be shared with the Language Centre) but will meet all short term needs. By the end of the year, in addition to the new (and mostly HEFCE Teaching Infrastructure funded) undergraduate classrooms on Arup Floor 2, the Estate Management and Building Services (EMBS) were preparing to refurbish the Hardware Support workshop and the Service's newly acquired parts of the Austin Building, including the relocation of the Common Room from Arup Floor 2. Thought was also being given to the security and access implications of needing to make the new classrooms (and adjacent Language Centre facilities) available to students around the clock.

The Computing Service

6. The facilities and services provided by the Computing Service include:

Services such as networks and electronic mail, which can only be provided on a University-wide basis;

Centrally-managed services such as the Public Workstation Facility (PWF) and the Central Unix Service (CUS), which are available to any member of the University who needs them but provide facilities of a kind which individual institutions often supply in-house to their own staff and students;

A wide range of support services for institutional and individually-owned facilities, from local area networks and personal computers to powerful multi-user computers and scientific workstations;

Advice and consultancy services which include a Help Desk for the centrally-managed facilities, the Techlink support scheme for local computer staff, and a wide range of training courses.

7. The Computing Service is made up of five divisions; two of these manage central facilities and provide specialized technical support of various kinds while the other three provide direct support to users, either individually or by institution.

The Network division is responsible for the University Data Network (CUDN), the Granta Backbone Network (GBN), support for institutional networking, the PWF and the Managed Cluster Service;

The Systems and Unix division is responsible for the CUS, the Thor teaching facility, electronic mail and news services, Unix support to individual institutions, and the Pelican archive service;

The Technical User Support division is responsible for the Help Desk and the Techlink scheme for local computer support staff, training courses, general technical user support, and the Hardware Maintenance and Videoconferencing services.

The User Services division is responsible for information provision, user administration, Software Sales, hardware purchasing advice, and the Printing and Photography and Illustration services;

The Institution Liaison division maintains contact concerning institutional IT strategies and related matters with Heads of Department, other senior managers, and local computer support staff.

		2001 (£000) Centrally Funded				Combined Total
Service	Staff	Other	Total	%	Cost recovery	2001	2000
Network	508	120	628	16.5%	410	1,038	920
Network-related	386	150	536	14.1%	31	567	497
PWF	300	142	442	11.6%		442	394
CUS and Thor	144	30	174	4.6%		174	235
Other centrally-run facilities	228	10	238	6.3%	28	266	248
Software sales	103	0	103	2.7%	631	734	836
Other charged support services	290	0	290	7.6%	474	765	722
Advice and consultancy	639	49	687	18.1%		687	666
Directorate, liaison, and staff eqpt	253	113	367	9.6%		367	398
Administration and overheads	182	154	336	8.8%		336	327
TOTAL	3,033	768	3,801	100.0%	1,574	5,375	5,243

8. The table above summarizes the estimated cost of various types of service provided by the Computing Service, distinguishing central funding (UEF and equipment grant) from costs met by charging users (with combined 2000 figures in italics). The cost recovery services account for £1.57m (29% of the total) compared with £1.58m in 2000 and £1.32m in 1999.

Some of the major developments during the year are discussed immediately below, followed by paragraphs about each of the individual services.

EastNet and SuperJANET 4

9. The EastNet regional network, which resulted from a successful bid for funding under the second phase of the HEFCE Metropolitan Area Network Initiative, links together seven universities (Cambridge, Anglia Polytechnic, Cranfield, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire, and Luton) plus Homerton and Writtle College (Chelmsford). EastNet has its primary JANET connection at Cambridge (in the Computing Service) and Cambridge was also the lead site in its implementation, although ownership may be transferred to the Association of Universities in the Eastern Region. Following a procurement process during Summer 2000, ntl were awarded a contract to provide the EastNet network services, while a separate procurement for network interface equipment resulted in the use of Cisco routers supplied by Logical UK.

10. Although thrashing out the details of the contract with ntl cost the head of the Network Division much time and effort, their implementation work was completed in early April (only slightly behind schedule) and, after the installation of the routers, EastNet came into service during May. An invitation from the HEFCE to bid against a £860,000 allocation for enhancing EastNET was used both to uprate the routers and to improve the reliability of the power supply for the equipment at Cambridge by installing an Uninterruptible Power Supply backed up by a diesel generator. A contract was negotiated with UKERNA to manage EastNet; the associated costs will be covered by counter payments in respect of UKERNA's use of EastNet to meet its contractual requirements to provide JANET connections to HEIs and FEIs in the region.

11. By the end of January, Worldcom had completed the Cambridge SuperJANET 4 node, installing new fibre cables from the Science Park to the Computing Service, where they were connected to the UKERNA Backbone Access Router. The SuperJANET 4 connection provides a total capacity of 2.5 Gbps for all the institutions in East Anglia; at 1 Gbps for both in-coming and outgoing traffic, the Cambridge share of this is almost two orders of magnitude more than the previous (outgoing only) limit of 12 Mbps under SuperJANET 3.

CUDN Development and Reliability Issues

12. In mid-August 2000, CUDN performance was badly degraded for several days by an intermittent fault which caused major loss of connectivity and was made more difficult to investigate by the attempts of the network's automatic reconfiguration software to respond to the constantly changing situation. The fault caused great inconvenience to Finance Division staff trying to process payroll and other vital functions using procedures which depended critically on good data communications between offices at the Old Schools and computers at the old Royal Greenwich Observatory building (although it was not responsible for most of the long delays then being encountered by other users of the newly live CAPSA project). It was the first significant CUDN failure since February 1999 and during the interim both JANET failures and planned electrical shutdowns had caused far more total loss of connectivity.

13. Following the fault, steps were taken to improve reliability of the links between the Old Schools and the RGO. A more general conclusion, reinforced by similar but much shorter failures in the Michaelmas Term, was that the intermittent faults were related to overloading on the central ATM switch. Existing plans to simplify the design of the CUDN by ceasing all use of the ATM protocol and to convert the backbone network to use Gigabit (1000 Mbps) ethernet were therefore accelerated and by July the backbone network was using IP only, with Gigabit ethernet in use on all main trunk links to the routing nodes and also on most backup ones.

14. However, CUDN development never stands still and in May the University submitted a successful £1.2m bid for its further enhancement using money from the Science Research Investment Fund (with a 25% contribution from the University). To enable the network infrastructure to support the next generation of e-science projects, the central switches and routers will be replaced by higher performance equipment which can use the full capacity of the SuperJANET 4 link and deliver Gigabit speed connections to departments. Using high-performance Cisco routers with built-in redundancy should also improve network reliability.

Network Security

15. Protecting the CUDN from hackers is a never-ending battle over constantly shifting ground. During the year, attacks became noticeably more automated, and a successful probe would immediately use its target system to attack other machines on the CUDN (or in one case to launch 'denial of service' attacks against external targets, effectively paralyzing the Cambridge connection to JANET). Investigating and recovering from these incidents can be very prodigal of staff time. For example, when a single insecure machine was compromised in December and used to probe the entire network for a service normally blocked at the JANET-CUDN network, the result was five more compromises, all in different institutions. Users at each institution had to reset their passwords and the overall cost of the incident was at least thirty person-days of Computing Service staff time, plus that of the local computer support staff.

16. Incoming traffic was already being blocked at the JANET-CUDN gateway (with a few exceptions for host destinations with valid needs) on several ports not much used by ordinary users but popular with hackers. However, between October and December, so many probes were observed on the ftp (file transfer protocol) port that, despite the fact that it would affect many users, it was decided to block from January 22 all incoming requests for ftp transfers in either direction. The blocking was widely advertised to users during the Christmas vacation, staff were primed to provide advice on alternative procedures and a few exceptions were made for user systems with a large need and a good security record. In the event, users adapted to the ftp blocking much more readily than was first feared and its introduction caused very much less overall disruption than if the probing had been allowed to continue unchecked.

17. For the rest of the year, external probing continued at alarming rates but the blocking kept it at bay apart from a few small and well-contained security breaches. From May, web servers running Microsoft IIS were attacked by the Code Red worm, which became more of a threat with each month's new variant. For much of late June and July, major denial of service attacks sent vast amounts of unwanted transatlantic traffic to certain Computing Service and other cam. ac.uk addresses. Attacks on this scale caused notice-able SuperJANET degradation and after consultation between the local and JANET Computer Emergency Response Teams countermeasures were installed at the US end of the transatlantic links to limit their effect.

Data Protection Act 1998

18. Previous reports have described Computing Service plans to comply with this Act by the time the transitional exemption for existing computing activities expires in October 2001. In December, the Service produced a Code of Practice for its staff which sets out procedures for dealing with various kinds of request involving personal data. The Code takes into account not only the Data Protection Act 1998 but also other relevant recent legislation including the Human Rights Act, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, and the Telecommunications Regulations 2000. After approval by the IT Syndicate, the Code of Practice was made available on the web for the benefit of University institutions and Colleges facing similar problems.

IP Addresses

19. If no changes are made to the way in which Cambridge IP (v4, 32-bit) addresses are currently allocated, they may well run out in two years or so (i.e. well before IP v6 with 64-bit addresses comes into widespread use). Following the Technical Committee's consideration of how to use the existing total Cambridge allocation more effectively (IP v4 addresses being currently in such short supply world-wide that asking for more is unlikely to succeed), the Computing Service has agreed to produce an action plan. Possible strategies include using Network Address Translation for new student users, freeing up sparsely allocated address ranges and creating a strategic reserve from addresses currently allocated to the Computer Laboratory. The practicability of connecting College rooms via an Internet Service Provider (ISP) rather than the CUDN while maintaining student access to appropriate cam.ac.uk facilities will also be investigated.

Network

Granta Backbone Network (GBN)

20. Network division staff again handled all operational matters for the GBN Management Committee. During the year, as part of EastNet, Homerton finally obtained its long planned GBN connection. At West Cambridge, the re-routing of GBN cables to allow the access road to be widened was completed, also the GBN node in the new Computer Laboratory building. Following the completion of the Unilever Centre, cables were installed on the new GBN route into Chemistry and the re-instatement of diverted services was put in hand. Building work at New Hall necessitated a move of the GBN cabinet and cables to the opposite end of the College, although staff managed to limit downtime on the CUDN connection to a few minutes. Finally, discussions which are in progress about the re-routing of GBN ducts and cables because of separate building projects at the Sidgwick Site and at Gonville and Caius Harvey Court aim to limit overall disruption by agreeing in advance one new route across both sites.

Cambridge University Data Network Connections

21. Almost all of the network now consists of ethernet connections, either at 10 Mbps or less (slow) or at 100 Mbps or more (fast); these institutional links are connected via eight area routers to the Gigabit ethernet CUDN backbone network (see above). Uninterruptible Power Supplies were installed at two of the area routers (North and West) and when their performance has been assessed, more may follow. During the year, the number of fast connections increased from 48 to 76 while that of slow ones fell from 94 to 73 (for fuller details see the Annex). In general, each of these connections will support one or more local area networks (LANs), thereby interconnecting equipment in a whole building or even a whole Department.

22. Around Easter, the first Gigabit ethernet connections to individual institutions were installed and both new connections and upgrades to this speed now appear as standard items on the CUDN price list. Virtual Private Network tunnelling products were trialled, with the aim of allowing the same secure authenticated access to CUDN services via other Internet Service Providers, as if the client were within cam.ac.uk. Total registrations for the Magpie modem service were again just over 2,000 and the existing lines and modems handled the load without congestion; most subscribers now use V.90 modems at 56 Kbps, and so notice was given that the older and slower V.34 and SLIP service will be withdrawn from April 2002.

23. While the ethernet connections data shows how the CUDN now reaches into every corner of the University and Colleges, the true size of the network is most obvious from the total of Internet addresses. This was 42,900 at the end of 2000-01 (up from 36,500, 29,500 and 18,900 in previous years), with 28,000 addresses in University institutions and 14,900 in the Colleges. The University ones were used not only for personal computers and workstations but also for many servers and other equipment while the College addresses included over 7,500 active connections in student study bedrooms. The July introduction of devolved IP address registration will allow College computer staff to deal with the Michaelmas 2001 rush without the previous need to involve Computing Service staff.

Network Support

24. During the year, Network Support staff provided advice to individual institutions on over 210 occasions (40 more than in 1999-2000); typical topics included wiring up buildings, establishing LANs, and obtaining CUDN connections. The Network Installation team was just as busy as in previous years and carried out or supervised work which included 30 new fast ethernet installations or upgrades, new network equipment installations at 11 sites, optical fibre installation work at 25, copper wiring at over 30, and testing of existing cables at 5.

Transatlantic Traffic

25. Individual institutions were again charged a share of the cost of incoming transatlantic SuperJANET traffic. Total traffic was 60% more than in 1999-2000, but the overall charge to Cambridge had been fixed in advance at £113,651 (down from £132,580) and so the top charge to any individual institution (all of the top six and eight of the top ten being Colleges) was again only £6,300. The same charging mechanism will apply in 2001-02, with Cambridge as a whole paying £119,968, but major changes are expected from the following year. The Computing Service continued to supply Colleges on request with snapshot monitoring information to identify individual cases of large use, but remained unable (for reasons outlined in last year's report) to produce reliable figures for the total traffic to individual IP addresses.

26. Since in the previous year saturation of the outgoing 8 Mbps link to JANET had caused considerable concern, an increase to 12 Mbps from the start of the Michaelmas Term was purchased from UKERNA. This, combined with the use of control mechanisms to limit the impact of outgoing recreational traffic at busy times, avoided any serious problems until the greatly increased bandwidth provided by SuperJANET 4 and EastNet came on stream (see above). The control mechanisms were then removed, but the immediate effect was that increased recreational use caused outgoing traffic volumes to match or slightly exceed incoming ones, so some of the controls were reinstated.

Network-related services

Electronic Mail

27. As a result of the advance integration of additional equipment, the Hermes mailstore system coped well with the usual sharp rise in demand at the start of Michaelmas 2000. The total volume of mail delivered by Hermes increased by 60% during the year (from 320 GB to 520 GB) after more than doubling in the previous one, while the number of messages increased by 15% (from 49.1 M to 56.6 M) after a 50% rise in the previous year. The number of users of Hermes rose by 1,800, from 26,100 to 27,900, although some of these were existing e-mail users transferring over from CUS. For much of the year, staff illness and other problems limited software work to routine maintenance and local improvements to deal with increases in load but towards the end work was resumed on essential long term software developments. The first to appear is the Web interface to Hermes which, after needing to be coded specially to achieve the required scale of operation, should go into pilot service during Michaelmas 2001.

Information Services

28. For Michaelmas 2000, the data management facilities on the Computing Service web servers were improved and the pages about the Service were re-designed to direct users more effectively to the relevant electronic and paper documentation; this significantly increased the number of accesses. New material installed on the University server included the Press Office's Media Guide to Expertise (using material collected via an online database) and the 2002 Undergraduate Prospectus, including departmental contact information. By the end of the year Information Group staff had also completed the task of lower-casing all the urls on the server, to simplify access for both users and maintainers. The Technical Librarians dealt with 5,644 enquiries to Webmaster (32% up on the 4,267 in 1999-2000), in addition to maintaining the staff library and setting up user libraries for new Managed Cluster Service installations.

29. The server hosted pages for over 180 University societies (150 in 1999-2000), while 42 (25) bodies used the managed web server service for institutions which can author pages but do not wish to run their own server. A pilot web-based version of the University map was released to general approval after Systems and Unix staff had solved the technical problems of presenting a complex map on relatively low-resolution web browser screens while including features such as zoom and locate. The Information Group incorporated the map data (derived from the same base as by the University Press's paper version) and will be liaising with the Press about future updates. Staff also continued to provide input to the University Web Site Steering Committee, and to organize useful and well attended meetings of local webmasters.

30. The Computing Service University-wide web search engine uses commercial Ultraseek software to produce a single index of the contents of all the more-or-less 'official' servers within cam.ac.uk. This allows outside requests to locate material without the need to know or guess in advance which server may have it, also to make complex searches, and to search within individual servers. The following table compares use in July in 2001 and July 2000:

	July 2001	July 2000
Servers, documents indexed	321, 401 K	269, 267 K
Total searches, data sent,	111 K, 2.2 GB	90 K, 1.8 GB
% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world	25%, 15%, 60%	22%, 15%, 63%
Originating computers: University, rest of world	4.5 K, 25.5 K	4.4 K, 21.1 K
	July 2001	July 2000
Total requests received, total data sent	5.7 M, 29 GB	3.7 M, 17 GB
% requests from Cambridge, rest of UK, rest of world	33%, 8%, 59%	42%, 10%,48%
Originating computers: University, rest of world	12.3 K, 150.6 K	10.7 K, 118.0 K
	July 2001	July 2000
Total requests received, total data volume	122 M, 830 GB	61.8 M, 465 GB
% hits (requests), % hits (data volume)	46.4%, 18.0%	48.3%, 19.3%
Client systems, client domains	8,559, 161	6,652, 150
	July 2001	July 2000
News server connections: monthly total, peak rate	282 K,102	232 K,164
Total, local newsgroups	14.47K, 233	13.7K, 229
Monthly volume, number of individual postings	18.5 GB, 8.9 M	19.1 GB, 9.2 M

31. During the year, there were 66.5m incoming requests (compared with 49.1m in 1999-2000) to the main Computing Service website (http://www.cam.ac.uk/). They came from over 190 country-level domains (180), with a daily peak of 304,000 (216,000). The past expenditure of time and money on monitoring and fallback arrangements paid good dividends over the Christmas break when staff were alerted to and readily circumvented hardware failures which would otherwise have caused a major outage of information services. The table above compares main server activity during July 2001 with July 2000.

32. The local and national Web caches reduce external network use and improve performance by automatically maintaining copies of recently referenced documents. During Michaelmas 2000 there was serious overload on the local cache server, and although some improvement was obtained from changes to the server software, new hardware with additional capacity was clearly needed. The new system uses a cluster of powerful PCs, which not only facilitates the provision of spare components and fallback capacity but also makes the system easier to build and to develop. After a phased introduction starting in late April, the system is already handling a greater load than its predecessor with much improved performance. The table above summarizes activity for the new cache in July 2001 and for the old in July 2000. Because one cannot distinguish individual clients in institutions which route requests to the cache via firewalls or local web caches, the client systems figures will be underestimates.

33. The Computing Service's USENET news server gives Cambridge users access to thousands of local and world-wide news groups, thereby providing them with the opportunity to disseminate information on, and to engage in the discussion of, a very wide range of topics. The table above compares the levels of activity during July 2001 and July 2000.

Centrally-managed services

Public Workstation Facility

34. The Public Workstation Facility and the Managed Cluster Service (see below) are supported by the staff of the Small Systems Group and the Operations Group, who planned and implemented two major changes during the year. First, during the Easter vacation, six of the central PWF servers were replaced by new and more powerful hardware and four were upgraded to use Novell NetWare 5.1 with the newer version of Directory Services. This worked well in general, but an unfortunate side effect caused the loss of statistical data on PWF use from 18 April until the end of July. The following table therefore compares data for the first 8.5 months of 2000-01 with (in italics) full year figures for 1999-2000. (N.B. In general, undergraduates are registered as College users and postgraduates as University ones.)

Public Workstation Facility
		Users
University	4,329	(46.1%)	4,530	(51.1%)
Colleges	5,016	(53.4%)	4,300	(48.5%)
External	40	(0.4%)	27	(0.3%)
TOTAL	9,385	(100.0%)	8,857	(100.0%)
		Sessions
University	237,489	(37.4%)	409,275	(50.0%)
Colleges	395,955	(62.3%)	405,681	(49.5%)
External	2,179	(0.3%)	4,401	(0.5%)
TOTAL	635,623	(100.0%)	819,537	(100.0%)

35. During the year, staff continued to roll out a new basic Windows NT image each quarter, managing the provision of multiple variants to different sites by using Zenworks Workstation objects. All PWF Macintoshes were given a new log-in program and upgraded to OS 9.1. When escaping Microsoft NETBIOS traffic caused broadcast storm problems on the CUDN, the PWF Club members installed Netware 4 tunnel blocks to contain it within each institution. Finally, after much planning and testing, the second major change took place just after the end of the year, when a one-day shutdown allowed all PWF and MCS sites to change simultaneously to a new image which uses Windows 2000 Pro rather than Windows NT.

Central Unix Service. Thor, and Linux

36. The Central Unix Service continued to be widely used by researchers throughout the University, although a significant number of mail-only users moved to Hermes. The related Thor facility supports Unix-based taught courses (primarily in Physics and Computer Science, although a Geography course was included at very short notice). The table below presents summary statistical information for their use in 2000-01, with that for 1999-2000 in italics:

Central Unix Service
	CPU		Users
University	92.3%	90.5%	3,135	3,715
Colleges	6.9%	8.8%	378	428
External	0.8%	0.7%	38	49
TOTAL	100.0%	100.0%	3,551	4,192
Thor
	CPU		Users
University	8.6%	15.7%	66	112
Colleges	91.4%	84.3%	402	351
TOTAL	100.0%	100.0%	468	463

37. Following the success of last year's pilot project to provide Linux on the Computer Science PWF cluster, Unix Support staff put in over eight man-months of work (at all levels from operating system modifications to applications tuning) to create PWF Linux. This will run alongside Windows and MacOS on dual-boot machines in PWF clusters (and MCS clusters which opt to include it) and can also be used on a dedicated machine to provide students with remote access (using SSH) during vacations to Unix-based PWF teaching material.

User Administration

38. During summer 2000, substantial developments were carried out to the user database. As part of the pre-registration of 7,000 new postgraduates and undergraduates for the start of Michaelmas 2000, a new web-based facility was introduced to allow those who could establish their identity by supplying appropriate personal information remotely to be sent details of their e-mail address in advance. Although only limited password resets were required this year, surprisingly many users were out of the country and had to prove their identity over the telephone to get their new password; arrangements have therefore been made to allow such people to nominate in advance someone with authority to act on their behalf if necessary.

39. Thanks to increased network security activity (see above), the total number of incidents requiring investigation was 733 (45% up on the 506 in 1999-2000). Many of the non-security incidents involved unwanted e-mail (which often appeared to come from a Cambridge user but had actually been forged by an external user); another common type, especially in Michaelmas, was internal probing caused by inexperienced students with incorrectly configured machines.

Pelican data archive service

40. The new disc farm based Pelican data archive service continued to operate efficiently, with considerably faster retrieval times than the tape based system it had replaced. By the end of the year, the total data stored was 200 GB (20% up on last year's 166 GB) for 920 different users (949) and it was clear that more discs should be added very soon. Although Pelican was used to some extent by more than eighty University and College institutions, the largest users by volume continued to be the Computing Service (for backup of programs and data) and the University Library (for various projects including the storage of scanned photographic data).

High Performance Computing Facility

41. The Computing Service continued to provide the High Performance Computing Facility (which comes under a separate committee of management) with the services of one of its senior programmers who has a particular interest in advanced computing systems.

Support services

Software Sales

42. Software Sales supplies members of the University with competitively priced software through CHEST (Combined HE Software Team) and other deals and administers University-wide support agreements for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. After much consideration of how best to reconcile user demands for faster ordering and delivery with the need to stay within the terms of the different licences and to ensure that users are aware of the University Software Policy, the web software product catalogue was supplemented by a web Ordering System. This allows users who have already signed up to the general terms and conditions to create and print order applications on-line, although the need to accompany them with a purchase order (currently only available on paper) then slows things down to the speed of the internal mail. The table below summarizes sales for 2000-01, with 1999-2000 in italics.

Software Sales	Items
Communications	751	598
Graphics and drawing, statistics	2,226	2,626
Office packages, operating systems/utilities	6,510	7,702
Programming languages, mathematics/libraries	675	698
Word processing, spreadsheets, databases	1,826	2,307
Geographic, miscellaneous	1,742	1,169
SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics	486	556
TOTAL	14,216	15,656

Managed Cluster Service

43. The Managed Cluster Service (MCS) enables institutions to reduce the running costs of their general-access computer rooms by paying the Computing Service to install and manage both the Novell NetWare servers and software for the PCs and Macintoshes, based on the standard PWF image (see above) with optional additional applications. The 17 MCS clusters at the start of the year (ten in Departments and seven in Colleges), had increased by three (at Chemistry (Unilever Building), Selwyn, and Sidney Sussex) by January 2001 and by five more (at the new Computer Laboratory, the Betty and Gordon Moore Library, Clare, Emmanuel, and Trinity Hall) by September 2001. To reduce the total number of servers and hence the work involved in installing new images, these five and all future clusters will use (and share where appropriate) servers which are supplied by and located in the Computing Service.

External Hardware Maintenance

44. The Engineering Group again provided institutions and individuals with either a full cover contract service or repairs charged on a time and materials basis and also carried our warranty repairs on behalf of certain manufacturers for their University customers. The tables summarize repair work carried out during 2000-01, with figures for 1999-2000 in italics.

Equipment repaired by Type
	Contract		Non-Contract
IBM PC &c.	147	125	138	152
Apple Macintosh	46	55	89	157
Printers	97	73	137	126
Laptops	5	9	192	259
Other equipment	95	117	113	136
Total	390	379	669	830
Equipment repaired by Institution
	Contract		Non-Contract
University	208	258	473	571
Colleges	182	121	190	251
External			6	8
Total	390	379	669	830

Printing and Reproduction Service

45. The existing Xerox Docutech and Xerox and Agfa colour machines continued to work well. During the year, the Docutech service produced a total of 0.91m impressions for the Computing Service (up from 0.75m in 1999-2000), 0.81m for the Computer Laboratory (0.72m) and 0.60m for external customers (0.52m), while the colour copy totals were: Service 7,000 (12,000); Laboratory 1,400 (1,000); external customers 7,200 (13,500). The lease on the Xerox equipment expires in December 2001 and plans are in hand to obtain replacements more suited to the reduced requirement following the departure of the Computer Laboratory.

Photography and Illustration Service

46. Although the traditional photographic activities had a rather reduced throughput of 7,300 rolls of E6 film (compared to 8,800 in 1999-2000), 133,000 colour prints (160,000), 3,300 duplicate slides (5,000) and 3,400 slides made up from artwork supplied by customers (3,700), the number of posters produced doubled from 1,000 to 2,000 and a new service to scan 35mm film into digital images on CD processed almost 300 rolls. Staff took photographs for sale at General Admission and other Congregations, both inside the Senate-House and on the Lawn, and also carried out specialist photographic work for Departments and Colleges on request. Equipment purchases included a 60**L375** wide inkjet printer to keep pace with user requirements for larger posters, a more modern display board system for hiring out, and new digital minilab film processing equipment which will be in service by Michaelmas 2001.

Videoconferencing Service

47. The staff of this service spent much time during the year using their considerable expertise in both ISDN and IP (room and PC-based) videoconferencing to advise those University Departments (such as Education, Engineering, Mathematics, and the Veterinary School) which wanted to move on from extensive use of our facilities to buying their own equipment. As a result, despite an increasing overall interest in videoconferencing throughout the University, total use of the Computing Service suite for ISDN videoconferencing was only 132 hours in seventy-two bookings (compared with 170 hours in eighty-seven bookings in 1999-2000.) To keep abreast of new developments, staff purchased IP desktop cameras for trial purposes and spent two weeks in July, in association with the Cambridge-MIT Project (CMI), on successful trials of an IP/ISDN codec from Tandberg. CMI subsequently purchased four of these codecs, for the Computing Service facility and for new videoconferencing facilities in CMI, the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET), and the Judge Institute of Management Studies, while the Service team will manage the installation, training, and support for all four.

Advice and consultancy

Technical User Support

48. The Technical User Support division (TUS) manages and largely staffs the advice and consultancy services, including the Help Desk and Techlink (see below) and also looks after a wide range of application software on the PWF and other Computing Service facilities. At the request of the Windows Integration Group, a bookable Test Bed Facility of PC server and workstation equipment was set up to double both as a facility for learning about NT under the guidance of TUS staff and an environment in which local computer support staff may safely rehearse planned changes to their institutional systems. Although there were no major virus problems until the summer worms, staff continued to distribute McAffee VirusScan and other anti-virus software and to remind users of the need to install it and keep it up to date.

49. At the start of the year, the joint Computing Service/Library Electronic Reference Library system held ten databases, although PsycLit was soon replaced by the larger and more frequently updated PsycInfo. Additions during the year were MLA International Bibliography (covering language, literature, linguistics, and folklore) and British Nursing Index, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and Health Management Information Consortium (covering between them nursing, midwifery, biomedicine, and health care and management). Medline was again by far the most widely and heavily used of the individual databases.

Consultancy, Help Desk, and Techlink

50. TUS staff give general user consultations on a wide range of topics and provide a member of the support team which co-ordinates computing developments and technical liaison with the Computing Service for the whole of the Sidgwick Site, where staff from the Literary and Linguistic Computing Centre (LLCC) also provide a specialist service for the humanities. Because of changes in recording practice, it is no longer possible to give detailed figures for staff time spent on all kinds of advice and consultancy work but the following table summarizes Help Desk calls for 2000-01, with 1999-2000 figures in italics:

Help Desk	Calls
University	7,103	(70.6%)	7,142	(71.2%)
Colleges	2,420	(24.1%)	2,565	(25.6%)
External	535	(5.3%)	319	(3.2%)
TOTAL	10,058	(100.0%)	10,026	(100.0%)

More calls were initiated by telephone (45%) than in person (28%) or by e-mail (also 28%). Over 85% of calls were closed within 1 hour and over 90% within twenty-four hours while 2% of calls had to be referred to local computer staff when Help Desk staff could not provide a ready answer to a question about a non-Computing Service facility.

51. In return for asking users to direct queries about non-Computing Service facilities to local computer support staff, the Service provides those staff with 'fast track' backup and general support through the Techlink scheme, which had over 300 members by the end of the year (up from 260 a year earlier). Techlinks initiated 14.4% (13.4% in 1999-2000) of all Help Desk calls but, because their questions tend to be more difficult, again accounted for 21.8% of the total time spent answering calls. For Michaelmas 2000, the Service's various IT support mailing lists were rationalized into just two (Departmental and College), which are now widely used not only by the Service but also by support staff seeking (and usually finding) all kinds of advice and information from their peers. The Techlink seminars given by Service staff were regularly updated to reflect current concerns and proved so popular that both the room and the day had to be changed to accommodate everyone who wanted to come to them.

Training

52. The Computing Service training courses on central services and popular applications software help reduce the advice and consultancy load and enable better use to be made of computer equipment throughout the University. Some Michaelmas Term courses were again heavily oversubscribed and additional sessions had to be arranged, although demand for the most basic courses fell off. It was clear nevertheless that some new students need IT literacy training, although additional publicity channels may be needed to reach them all. Demand for courses was high again in the Easter Term as students took their last chance to benefit from free training; the additional sessions included a two-afternoon Introduction to Unix given at New Addenbrooke's. Exit surveys continued to report customer satisfaction rates of 90% or 95%. The table summarizes course information for 2000-01, with 1999-2000 in italics.

Course Attendance
	Attendances
University	4,153	3,686
Colleges	878	1,087
External	132	163
Total	5,163	4,936

COURSE TYPES
	Sessions		Attendances
Personal Computers	13	17	194	291
Unix	13	14	970	858
Networking	46	58	1,183	1,363
Spreadsheets and Databases	35	34	1,091	1,064
Word and Doc. Processing	42	41	931	826
Statistical Computing	9	7	438	282
Other courses	5	4	356	252
Total	163	175	5,163	4,936

53. After the resignation of a key member of the training team, who had inter alia given all the courses for assistant staff, it was fortunately possible to recruit a well-qualified replacement at the first attempt. Well attended and received imported courses from external providers included an SPLUS introduction and two courses for webmasters from Netskills, while in July Dr Hazel, author of the widely used Exim e-mail software, gave a very successful two-day workshop to 86 participants (over double the original plan), including twenty from overseas. Computing Service trainers also provided a growing number of customised courses for specific groups, ranging from an Excel course for administrative staff needing to input RAE informa-tion through Powerpoint for staff from English and Windows 2000 for Jesus College to Access, SPSS, and Excel courses for delegates attending a conference at Anaesthesia.

54. Total loans and sales from the self-teaching courseware library went up by 25% and a total of 212 assistant staff from University institutions attended 31 Personnel Division funded course sessions (compared to 176 and 23 in 1999-2000), although the attendance at similar courses for College staff was only 50 at six sessions (compared to 167 at eighteen).

Unix Support

55. Major projects carried out during the year included the development of PWF Linux (see above) and the completion of the JTAP funded work to develop the friendly probing software (as described in last year's report). After much development and test-ing of this largely unsung but complex and critical infrastructure component, the introduction of a new print spooler was achieved with only minor glitches. The week-long hands-on course on Linux System Administration was given twice and the ssh CD, which allows Unix users to log on securely from remote locations, was updated. Direct institutional support, including help to recover from security incidents, was provided to Chemistry, Lucy Cavendish, Management Information Services, Biochemistry, and twenty other Departments or Colleges.

Support for Purchases of Personal Systems

56. Using information and feedback obtained from regular contacts with major suppliers, Computing Service staff again advised individual users and institutions, either in person or via web pages, about economic sources of personal computer systems to meet their particular needs. The Service web pages were linked to the new site maintained by the University Purchasing Office, with which a close liaison has developed. The fifth annual November Demonstration Day again attracted hundreds of University users into the Small Examination Hall, where a wide range of hardware and software vendors were exhibiting their wares.

Directorate and liaison

Institution Liaison

57. This division liaises on computing matters at institution level with both senior management and computer support staff, and its two staff are able to call on assistance from the Directorate, Network Support, and Technical User Services as required. The help given to Departments facing TQA assessments in-cluded advising on the preparation of IT-related base materials, attending Learning Resources meetings, and arranging for assessors to visit the central PWF classrooms. Staff also spent much time on the difficult IT resource and support issues arising out of the transfer of Homerton's teaching to the School of Education and on understanding and implementing the access control system for the Raised Faculty Building.

58. In a new development, Institution Liaison staff were asked by some institutions not only to advise on computer staff gradings and individual appointments but also to help with the appraisal of existing staff; this raised some rather more general concerns about support and personal development opportunities for computer staff which were shared with the Personnel Division. Meanwhile staff continued to organize both well-attended termly meetings open to all Departmental and/or College computer staff and smaller liaison meetings at which staff from the Computing Service and from the Library or Management Information Services could discuss issues of mutual interest. They also fitted in almost 150 visits by request to University institutions and 100 to Colleges, assisted with staff selection on nearly thirty occasions and helped introduce several new staff into the idiosyncrasies of computing in Cambridge.

M. S. LONGAIR Chairman	R. GLEN	S. KEARSEY
S. J. BARTON	K. GLOVER	I. LESLIE
T. A. CARPENTER	R. HANKA	B. K. OMOTANI
D. E. DETMER	T. R. HARRISON	M. D. SAYERS
I. M. LEM. DUQUESNAY	M. F. HEATH	P. B. WILSON
P. K. FOX

Statistical Annex

The following tables give details of various activities of the University Computing Service for the year 1 August 2000 to 31 July 2001, with figures for the previous year in italics. Those tables which break down information on an institutional basis all follow a similar pattern:

(a)	Overall summary (University by Faculty group, Colleges, and External groups)
(b)	Cambridge University Faculty and similar groups (by Faculty or Department, except that the Faculty of Clinical Medicine is not divided.)
(c)	Colleges (by College)

In this shortened version of the Statistical Annex all the (b) and (c) tables are omitted.

University Data Network

Tables 1(a) to 1(c) show Cambridge University Data Network connections by institution. With no asynchronous or X.25 lines left, the remaining connections, which are overwhelmingly ethernet in type, have been divided into slow and fast as follows:

Slow ethernet	All 10 Mbps except for 8 at less than 2 Mbps
Fast ethernet	All 100 Mbps ethernet except for one 155 Mbps ATM and 4 1000 Mbps ethernet

Figures are for the end of 2000-01; end of 1999-2000 figures are in italics.

Table 1(A) - Data Network Connections
	Slow ethernet		Fast ethernet
Arts and Humanities	2	6	4	3
Humanities and Social Sciences	10	9	4	4
Physical Sciences	4	4	13	11
Technology	2	3	5	4
Biological Sciences	7	11	10	5
Clinical Medicine	3	4	5	3
Other GB Institutions	6	7	6	3
Council Institutions	12	12	10	5
Societies	2	2
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	48	58	57	38
COLLEGES	17	27	18	9
Research Councils	3	4	1	1
Other external	5	5
TOTAL EXTERNAL	8	9	1	1
Total	73	94	76	48

Transatlantic Traffic

Electronic Mail

Tables 3(a) to 3(c) show numbers of Hermes users and messages by institution.

Users	Includes users who access Hermes directly and those who have their mail forwarded to another system such as the CUS.
Messages	Includes both messages sent and messages received, which are typically in the ratio 1:3.

Figures are for 2000-01; 1999-2000 figures are in italics.

Public Workstation Facility

Tables 4(a) to 4(c) show numbers of users and sessions by institution. Note that the figures for Computing Service users include temporary identifiers issued to users on training courses.

Users	Number of individuals using the system at least once during the year
Sessions	Number of times logged-on during the year

Table 5 gives details, extracted from Tables 4(a) and 4(b), on the use of the PWF from certain University locations while Table 6 gives similar details of the use of the PWF from those Colleges which have either Managed Clusters or tunnelled links as members of the PWFClub.

In all the Tables, the figures are for 2000-01, with 1999-2000 figures in italics. Unfortunately, for reasons given in the main Report (para. 34), the 2000-01 figures only include data for the period from 1 August 2000 to 17 April 2001.

Table 4(A) - Public Workstation Facility
	Users				Sessions
Arts and Humanities	528	(5.6%)	446	(5.0%)	36,281	(5.7%)	53,456	(6.5%)
Humanities and Social Sciences	758	(8.1%)	657	(7.4%)	58,819	(9.3%)	82,642	(10.1%)
Physical Sciences	732	(7.8%)	696	(7.9%)	34,059	(5.4%)	41,127	(5.0%)
Technology	396	(4.2%)	375	(4.2%)	20,200	(3.2%)	44,376	(5.4%)
Biological Sciences	459	(4.9%)	436	(4.9%)	43,875	(6.9%)	65,012	(7.9%)
Clinical Medicine	286	(3.0%)	252	(2.8%)	25,011	(3.9%)	21,417	(2.6%)
Other GB Institutions	811	(8.6%)	988	(11.2%)	14,567	(2.3%)	81,189	(9.9%)
Council Institutions	356	(3.8%)	680	(7.7%)	4,660	(0.7%)	20,056	(2.4%)
Societies	3	(0.0%)			17	(0.0%)
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	4,329	(46.1%)	4,530	(51.1%)	237,489	(37.4%)	409,275	(50.0%)
COLLEGES	5,016	(53.4%)	4,300	(48.5%)	395,955	(62.3%)	405,681	(49.5%)
Research Councils	27	(0.3%)	16	(0.2%)	1,238	(0.2%)	244	(0.0%)
Other external	13	(0.1%)	11	(0.1%)	941	(0.1%)	4,157	(0.5%)
TOTAL EXTERNAL	40	(0.4%)	27	(0.3%)	2,179	(0.3%)	4,401	(0.5%)
TOTAL	9,385	(100.0%)	8,857	(100.0%)	635,623	(100.0%)	819,357	(100.0%)

Table 5 - University Public Workstation Facility Sessions By Location
Location	Users		Sessions
Computing Service locations
New Museums Site (Phoenix User Area and Balfour Macintosh Room)	1,869	3,293	25,024	95,566
New Museums Site (Phoenix Teaching Room)	1,380	2,016	13,148	75,657
Old Music School	2,021	2,322	15,981	49,118
Sidgwick Site (Oriental Studies Basement)	585	786	13,462	54,038
Managed Cluster locations
Mathematics	339	457	5,182	8,290
Chemistry	665	563	28,712	26,493
Physics	547	688	12,081	18,090
Clinical Medicine	280	259	19,678	16,519
Computer Laboratory	606	660	26,094	75,099
Clinical Veterinary Medicine	338	324	37,518	55,420
Land Economy	181	168	10,863	12,630
Archaeology and Anthropology	89	63	4,368	2,355
Social and Political Sciences/African Studies	94	41	7,335	853
Arts and Humanities (English, Philosophy, MML Graduate Centre, and Divinity)	642		13,246
PWF Club locations
Economics	13		252
Chemical Engineering	10		72
Law	5		66

Table 6 - Public Workstation Facility Use From Colleges
	Users		Sessions
Managed Cluster locations
Downing	611	517	33,769	50,286
Fitzwilliam	518	191	24,926	3,386
Gonville and Caius	610	97	54,730	4,203
Newnham	579	560	45,201	79,006
Peterhouse	344	317	28,771	48,761
Queens'	662	4	46,446	5
St Catharine's	618	445	74,523	32,541
Selwyn	393	69	23,359	3,404
Sidney Sussex	356	233	21,834	22,061
PWF Club locations
Christ's	42	78	764	2,463
Churchill	96	122	1,001	3,588
Clare	34	84	454	2,030
Emmanuel	64	134	740	2,302
Girton	21	55	148	1,116
Homerton	4		17
Jesus	1	56	1	828
King's	62	93	1,313	5,156
Magdalene	27	38	379	789
New Hall	24	31	652	1,968
Pembroke	95	112	1,006	2,476
Robinson	20	35	1,248	1,290
St John's	103	156	2,080	6,197
Trinity	147	189	2,055	6,092
Trinity Hall	27	22	342	280

Central Unix Service and Thor Teaching Facility

The Central Unix Service is a general user facility based on a multi-processor configuration. The Thor teaching facility is used for certain undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses.

Usage figures are given in percentage terms only and refer to the use of the Solaris 2 operating system. Note that the figures for the Computing Service include all systems, applications, and operational support activities, together with Unix-based training courses. Under Solaris 2 a certain minimal level of usage may be automatically recorded by the system against a user who has not actually logged on during the year; an active user has therefore been defined as one whose recorded use exceeds an appropriate threshold.

Tables 7(a) to 7(c) are for the Central Unix Service and show the relative use giving:

CPU	CPU time consumed as a percentage of total use
Users	Number of individuals making some active use of the system during the year

Figures are for 2000-01; 1999-2000 figures are in italics.

Tables 8(a) to 8(c) give similar figures for the use of Thor.

Table 7(A) - Central Unix Service
		CPU			Users
Arts and Humanities	3.7%	5.1%	265	(7.5%)	326	(7.8%)
Humanities and Social Sciences	7.4%	11.5%	446	(12.6%)	552	(13.2%)
Physical Sciences	23.3%	29.8%	981	(27.6%)	1,205	(28.7%)
Technology	14.1%	4.9%	191	(5.4%)	208	(5.0%)
Biological Sciences	19.0%	12.8%	596	(16.8%)	688	(16.4%)
Clinical Medicine	4.3%	4.3%	226	(6.4%)	252	(6.0%)
Other GB Institutions	18.9%	19.5%	308	(8.7%)	312	(7.4%)
Council Institutions	1.7%	2.5%	121	(3.4%)	172	(4.1%)
Societies	0.0%		1	(0.0%)
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	92.3%	90.5%	3,135	(88.3%)	3,715	(88.6%)
COLLEGES	6.9%	8.8%	378	(10.6%)	428	(10.2%)
Research Councils	0.2%	0.4%	24	(0.7%)	31	(0.7%)
Other external	0.6%	0.3%	14	(0.4%)	18	(0.4%)
TOTAL EXTERNAL	0.8%	0.7%	38	(1.1%)	49	(1.2%)
TOTAL	100.0%	100.0%	3,551	(100.0%)	4,192	(100.0%)
Table 8(A) - Thor
		CPU			Users
Arts and Humanities	0.0%	0.4%	1	(0.2%)	2	(0.4%)
Physical Sciences	0.2%	0.1%	9	(1.9%)	6	(1.3%)
Technology	3.3%	10.1%	39	(8.3%)	82	(17.7%)
Other GB Institutions	5.2%	5.1%	17	(3.6%)	22	(4.8%)
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	8.6%	15.7%	66	(14.1%)	112	(24.2%)
COLLEGES	91.4%	84.3%	402	(85.9%)	351	(75.8%)
TOTAL	100.0%	100.0%	468	(100.0%)	463	(100.0%)

Pelican Data Archive Service

Tables 9(a) to 9(c) show the use of the Pelican data archive service by institutions at the end of 2000-01 with end 1999-2000 figures in italics.

Stored	Amount of data stored (in MB)
Users	Number of individuals with stored data

Table 9(A) - Pelican Data Archive Service Use
	Stored				Users
Arts and Humanities	19,811	(9.9%)	6,104	(3.7%)	60	(6.5%)	50	(5.3%)
Humanities and Social Sciences	10,039	(5.0%)	9,539	(5.7%)	113	(12.3%)	112	(11.8%)
Physical Sciences	30,687	(15.3%)	39,567	(23.9%)	215	(23.4%)	264	(27.8%)
Technology	19,864	(9.9%)	20,409	(12.3%)	168	(18.3%)	186	(19.6%)
Biological Sciences	8,292	(4.1%)	7,738	(4.7%)	76	(8.3%)	76	(8.0%)
Clinical Medicine	1,751	(0.9%)	1,749	(1.1%)	26	(2.8%)	26	(2.7%)
Other GB Institutions	101,279	(50.6%)	71,037	(42.8%)	110	(12.0%)	112	(11.8%)
Council Institutions	474	(0.2%)	571	(0.3%)	11	(1.2%)	9	(0.9%)
Societies	141	(0.1%)	140	(0.1%)	4	(0.4%)	3	(0.3%)
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	192,337	(96.1%)	156,852	(94.5%)	783	(85.1%)	838	(88.3%)
COLLEGES	7,530	(3.8%)	8,820	(5.3%)	126	(13.7%)	102	(10.7%)
Research Councils	291	(0.1%)	180	(0.1%)	7	(0.8%)	6	(0.6%)
Other external	79	(0.0%)	47	(0.0%)	4	(0.4%)	3	(0.3%)
TOTAL EXTERNAL	370	(0.2%)	227	(0.1%)	11	(1.2%)	9	(0.9%)
TOTAL	200,238	(100.0%)	165,899	(100.0%)	920	(100.0%)	949	(100.0%)

Software Sales

Table 10 shows totals of software sales items supplied by month. Tables 11(a) to 11(c) show software sales items supplied by institution. General software (excluding media) and SunSpectrum/Silicon Graphics items are shown separately. Table 12 lists software and other items distributed by the Computing Service. An item may be any of a full copy of a software package, an upgrade, or a maintenance contract.

Figures are for 2000-01; 1999-2000 figures are in italics.

Table 10 - Software Items Supplied By Month
	General				SunSpectrum/SGI
August 2000	1,158	(8.4%)	1,066	(7.1%)	61	(12.6%)	359	(64.6%)
September	660	(4.8%)	1,006	(6.7%)			21	(3.8%)
October	977	(7.1%)	1,550	(10.3%)			1	(0.2%)
November	979	(7.1%)	1,189	(7.9%)
December	788	(5.7%)	1,867	(12.4%)			1	(0.2%)
January 2001	1,332	(9.7%)	1,755	(11.6%)			5	(0.9%)
February	1,956	(14.2%)	603	(4.0%)			63	(11.3%)
March	861	(6.3%)	980	(6.5%)	19	(3.9%)	1	(0.2%)
April	623	(4.5%)	1,696	(11.2%)	1	(0.2%)
May	1,399	(10.2%)	1,160	(7.7%)	398	(81.9%)	95	(17.1%)
June	2,000	(14.6%)	1,368	(9.1%)	5	(1.0%)	8	(1.4%)
July	997	(7.3%)	860	(5.7%)	2	(0.4%)	2	(0.4%)
TOTAL FOR YEAR	13,730	(100.0%)	15,100	(100.0%)	486	(100.0%)	556	(100.0%)
Table 11(A) - Software Items Supplied By Institution
	General				SunSpectrum/SGI
Arts and Humanities	1,080	(7.9%)	467	(3.1%)	11	(2.3%)	11	(2.0%)
Humanities and Social Sciences	427	(3.1%)	1,225	(8.1%)			1	(0.2%)
Physical Sciences	2,441	(17.8%)	2,481	(16.4%)	179	(36.8%)	204	(36.7%)
Technology	916	(6.7%)	869	(5.8%)	64	(13.2%)	89	(16.0%)
Biological Sciences	1,480	(10.8%)	1,952	(12.9%)	41	(8.4%)	51	(9.2%)
Clinical Medicine	936	(6.8%)	784	(5.2%)	10	(2.1%)	11	(2.0%)
Other GB Institutions	2,410	(17.6%)	1,937	(12.8%)	62	(12.8%)	135	(24.3%)
Council Institutions	687	(5.0%)	1,316	(8.7%)	74	(15.2%)	1	(0.2%)
Societies	37	(0.3%)	11	(0.1%)
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	10,414	(75.8%)	11,042	(73.1%)	441	(90.7%)	503	(90.5%)
COLLEGES	2,442	(17.8%)	3,863	(25.6%)			9	(1.6%)
Research Council institutions	734	(5.3%)	95	(0.6%)
Other external	140	(1.0%)	100	(0.7%)	45	(9.3%)	44	(7.9%)
TOTAL EXTERNAL	874	(6.4%)	195	(1.3%)	45	(9.3%)	44	(7.9%)
TOTAL	13,730	(100.0%)	15,100	(100.0%)	486	(100.0%)	556	(100.0%)

Table 12 - Software Sales By Product
	Items
Apple ARA Server		11
Apple at Ease		3
Apple Network Assistant		3
Assimilator	28
Hummingbird eXceed	595	395
Interarchy (was Anarchie + Finger)	1	105
JRB Utils	25
Microsoft Interix	2
Microsoft Services for Netware	2	6
Microsoft Services for Unix		4
NetPresenz	20
Novell Netware (per server)	53	48
WebSTAR	7	15
ZENworks	18	8
COMMUNICATIONS	751	598
ARCInfo/ARCView	445	86
Bartholomew's Map Data	2	8
GEOGRAPHIC	447	94
AVS	2	2
Claris Draw		53
Corel Draw	1,188	928
Corel Print Office	24	222
Corel Ventura	4	232
Imagine	154	16
Microsoft PhotoDraw	29
Microsoft PowerPoint	48	47
Microsoft Visio	35
Uniras	9	7
GRAPHICS AND DRAWING	1,493	1,507
Maple	109	131
NAg Products	171	31
MATHEMATICAL/LIBRARIES	280	162
Claris Works		51
Microsoft Office	3,078	3,602
Microsoft Works		4
OFFICE PACKAGES	3,078	3,657
Apple Language Kits		26
Apple System Software		250
Microsoft BackOffice	21	29
Microsoft MS-DOS		2
Microsoft Exchange Server	72	25
Microsoft ISA Server	2
Microsoft Plus for Windows	98	2
Microsoft SQL Server	72	154
MS Systems Management Server	7	21
MS Windows (3.x/Wkgp/95/98/Me)	128	1,011
Microsoft Windows2000	1,904	257
Microsoft Windows NT	1,214	2,076
PCounter	12	34
PKZip		6
SofTrack		152
OPERATING SYSTEMS/UTILITIES	3,432	4,045
Microsoft Visual Basic	40	45
Microsoft Visual C++	69	118
Microsoft Visual FoxPro Pro	8	26
Microsoft Visual InterDev	2
Microsoft Visual J++	2	3
Microsoft Visual SourceSafe		2
Microsoft Visual Studio	33	41
Sun ScholarPAC	241	301
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES	395	536
FileMaker Pro	310	416
Microsoft Access	133	326
Microsoft Excel	45	32
Microsoft Project	132	122
SPREADSHEETS, DATABASES, AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT	620	896
Table 12 - (CONT.)
Genstat	94	11
MathCAD	30
Minitab	118	451
S-PLUS	105
SAS	23	27
SPSS	324	612
SPSS Science Products	39	18
STATISTICS	733	1,119
Adobe Sabon Font	89	390
Corel WordPerfect	289	304
EndNote	586	384
Home Page		13
Microsoft FrontPage	86	104
Microsoft Publisher	51	35
Microsoft Word	105	181
WORD AND DOCUMENT PROCESSING	1,206	1,411
BBEdit	60
Corel WebMaster	2	204
HoTMetal Pro	674	122
Lotus Passport	11	40
Meeting Maker	2
Microsoft Bookshelf		2
Microsoft Encarta		6
Microsoft Outlook	8	2
Microsoft Select Advantage	89	658
Norton GHOST	428	39
XV	21	2
MISCELLANEOUS	1,295	1,075
TOTAL for Software	13,730	15,100
Sun Hardware maintenance (Total Number of machines)	329	396
Sun Software under maintenance (Licence, media, and documentation)	77	63
Silicon Graphics maintenance	80	97
SUNSPECTRUM/SGI	486	556
TOTAL	14,216	15,656

External Hardware Maintenance

Table 13 shows the number of contract and non-contract repairs undertaken for different types of equipment. Tables 14(a) to 14(c) show both the number of repairs and the number of staff hours spent on contract and non-contract repairs distributed amongst institutions.

Figures are for 2000-01; 1999-2000 figures are in italics.

Table 13 - Equipment Repaired By Type
	Contract		Non-Contract
BBC Microcomputers			1
IBM PC	4		5	6
Viglen PC	15	33	11	32
Other PC clones	128	92	122	114
Apple Macintosh	46	55	89	157
Printers	97	73	137	126
Monitors	58	75	55	72
Laptops	5	9	192	259
Others	37	42	57	64
TOTAL	390	379	669	830

Table 14(A) - Equipment Repaired By Institution
	Contract				Non-Contract
	No Hours		No Hours		No Hours		No Hours
Arts and Humanities	5	7	13	15	45	62	95	127
Humanities and Social Sciences	4	18	15	37	98	133	191	204
Physical Sciences	29	42	104	138	88	106	182	222
Technology					31	17	72	27
Biological Sciences	97	133	309	369	120	164	282	274
Clinical Medicine	2	18	5	37	13	20	32	52
Other GB Institutions	40	39	112	126	27	18	84	28
Council Institutions	5	1	18	2	30	36	39	54
No institution specified					17	9	32	30
Societies					4	6	17	13
Warranty repairs	26		137
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	208	258	713	724	473	571	1,026	1,031
COLLEGES	182	121	533	390	190	251	333	457
Research Councils						1		1
Other external					6	7	9	12
TOTAL EXTERNAL					6	8	9	13
TOTAL	390	379	1,246	1,114	669	830	1,368	1,501

Help Desk

Table 15 shows the monthly totals of calls dealt with by the Help Desk. Tables 16(a) to 16(c) show the number of Help Desk calls and users by institution. In Table 15 only, the figures exclude those calls made direct to the NT Support service (172 in 2000-01; 83 in 1999-2000).

Figures are for 2000-01; 1999-2000 figures are in italics. 2000

Table 15- Help Desk Calls By Month
	Calls
August	706	(7.1%)	788	(7.9%)
September	799	(8.1%)	801	(8.1%)
October	1,188	(12.0%)	1,371	(13.8%)
November	1,018	(10.3%)	938	(9.4%)
December	655	(6.6%)	588	(5.9%)
January 2001	922	(9.3%)	863	(8.7%)
February	822	(8.3%)	922	(9.3%)
March	838	(8.5%)	875	(8.8%)
April	790	(8.0%)	650	(6.5%)
May	766	(7.7%)	758	(7.6%)
June	655	(6.6%)	686	(6.9%)
July	727	(7.4%)	703	(7.1%)
TOTAL FOR YEAR	9,886	(100.0%)	9,943	(100.0%)

Table 16(A) - Help Desk Calls By Institution
	Calls				Users
Arts and Humanities	1,076	(10.7%)	1,243	(12.4%)	432	(9.6%)	475	(10.2%)
Humanities and Social Sciences	1,977	(19.7%)	1,907	(19.0%)	749	(16.6%)	801	(17.1%)
Physical Sciences	966	(9.6%)	1,059	(10.6%)	518	(11.5%)	567	(12.1%)
Technology	475	(4.7%)	475	(4.7%)	275	(6.1%)	268	(5.7%)
Biological Sciences	977	(9.7%)	1,036	(10.3%)	449	(10.0%)	464	(9.9%)
Clinical Medicine	641	(6.4%)	614	(6.1%)	312	(6.9%)	312	(6.7%)
Other GB Institutions	477	(4.7%)	433	(4.3%)	199	(4.4%)	189	(4.0%)
Council Institutions	498	(5.0%)	357	(3.6%)	245	(5.4%)	216	(4.6%)
Societies	16	(0.2%)	18	(0.2%)	7	(0.2%)	6	(0.1%)
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	7,103	(70.6%)	7,142	(71.2%)	3,186	(70.7%)	3,298	(70.5%)
COLLEGES	2,420	(24.1%)	2,565	(25.6%)	1,269	(28.1%)	1,319	(28.2%)
Research Councils	46	(0.5%)	56	(0.6%)	30	(0.7%)	29	(0.6%)
UK Universities
Other external (world-wide)	489	(4.9%)	263	(2.6%)	24	(0.5%)	32	(0.7%)
TOTAL EXTERNAL	535	(5.3%)	319	(3.2%)	54	(1.2%)	61	(1.3%)
Total	10,058	(100.0%)	10,026	(100.0%)	4,509	(100.0%)	4,678	(100.0%)

Training

Table 17 lists the training courses provided by the Computing Service; in each case the figures show the number of times a course was offered and the total number of persons attending. Courses involving more than one session count attendances at each separately. Tables 18(a) to 18(c) show how attendances at courses were distributed amongst institutions.

Figures are for 2000-01; 1999-2000 figures are in italics.

Table 17 - Training Courses
	Sessions		Attendances
IBM PC: basic intro to Windows 95/98/NT4	4	4	61	86
IBM PC: further on Windows 95/98/NT4	3	3	55	83
IBM PC: Windows 95/NT4/98 top 10 tools		2		25
Macintosh: introduction	3	4	45	46
Macintosh: applications	3	3	33	41
Macintosh: top 10 tips		1		10
PERSONAL COMPUTERS	13	17	194	291
Unix: introduction	8	7	362	318
Unix: further use	2	2	41	40
Unix: introduction to Perl	1	1	37	31
Unix: configuring X		1		9
Linux system administration	2	3	530	460
UNIX	13	14	970	858
TABLE 17 - (cont.)
	Sessions		Attendances
World Wide Web: introduction	4	7	70	144
World Wide Web: further exploration	5	4	53	76
Setting up a WWW server (Windows NT4)	1	3	10	37
Managing a WWW server on a Unix system	3	3	94	72
Designing and managing a Web site	3	3	74	82
HTML: introduction	11	14	343	370
HTML: intermediate	3	5	180	205
HTML: advanced (overview)	3	3	141	112
HTML: advanced (practical workshop)		3		51
Dreamweaver: for advanced HTML	2		50
Javascript: introduction		3		77
Dynamic Web pages with JavaScript	1	1	13	12
Netskills images and multimedia	1		24
Netskills content management	1		26
Graphics manipulation for the World Wide Web	3	3	48	43
Databases and the World Wide Web		1		11
Email using Pine: introduction	1	3	14	36
Email using Mulberry: introduction	3	1	38	22
Pine tricks of the trade	1	1	5	13
NETWORKING	46	58	1,183	1,363
Microsoft Excel: introduction	8	9	139	171
Microsoft Excel: introduction, self-paced	5	4	225	180
Microsoft Excel: further use	5	6	95	136
Microsoft Excel: advanced	3	1	48	16
Access: introduction	7	9	312	418
Access: further use	4	3	138	84
Oracle: introduction	1	1	99	45
Filemaker Pro: introductory practical	2	1	35	14
SPREADSHEETS & DATABASES	35	34	1,091	1,064
Microsoft Word for Windows: basic	4	4	48	57
Microsoft Word for Windows: intermediate	3	3	53	78
Microsoft Word for Windows: advanced	3	3	55	68
MS Word for Windows: introduction, self-paced	5	4	171	135
Microsoft Word on Macintosh: introduction	1	2	8	24
Microsoft Word on Macintosh: advanced	1	1	5	10
Powerpoint: introduction	3	4	111	64
Powerpoint: quick start, self-paced	3	3	63	86
Powerpoint: advanced workshop	2	3	30	45
PageMaker: introduction	2	3	24	43
Quark Xpress: introduction	3	2	62	35
LaTEX: introduction	2	1	66	24
Computerised Bibliographies	5	5	116	96
Photoshop: demonstration	4	2	103	49
Photoshop for Photographers: demonstration	1	1	16	12
WORD & DOCUMENT PROCESSING	42	41	931	826
Simple questionnaire design and data entry	1	1	14	8
SPSS: introduction	6	5	354	267
SPSS: further use	1	1	16	7
S-PLUS: jump start workshop	1		54
STATISTICAL COMPUTING	9	7	438	282
ARC/INFO: overview		1		18
Java: overview	1	1	15	24
Simple C Programming	2	2	237	210
Visual Basic for applications	2		104
OTHER COURSES	5	4	356	252
Total	163	175	5,163	4,936
Table 18(A) - Course Attendances
	Attendances
Arts and Humanities	285	(5.5%)	271	(5.5%)
Humanities and Social Sciences	649	(12.6%)	682	(13.8%)
Physical Sciences	751	(14.5%)	632	(12.8%)
Technology	550	(10.7%)	417	(8.4%)
Biological Sciences	686	(13.3%)	672	(13.6%)
Clinical Medicine	554	(10.7%)	391	(7.9%)
Other GB Institutions	326	(6.3%)	208	(4.2%)
Council Institutions	323	(6.3%)	409	(8.3%)
No institution specified	3	(0.1%)	3	(0.1%)
Societies	26	(0.5%)	1	(0.0%)
TOTAL UNIVERSITY	4,153	(80.4%)	3,686	(74.7%)
COLLEGES	878	(17.0%)	1,087	(22.0%)
Research Councils	93	(1.8%)	93	(1.9%)
Other external	39	(0.8%)	70	(1.4%)
TOTAL EXTERNAL	132	(2.6%)	163	(3.3%)
TOTAL	5,163	(100.0%)	4,936	(100.0%)

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