This summer, RUCS will be performing a complete overhaul of our dorm network infrastructure. This overhaul will standardize all of the equipment in our dorm network on HP ProCurve technology, allowing us to reduce complexity and increase reliability for our students. This change is more than an upgrade, it is a completely new network for our dorms. Between this overhaul and our previously announced Internet bandwidth upgrades, students should expect a much improved residential network come August 2009.

Last summer, RUCS did a partial upgrade to Xavier-Loyola Hall, which served as the template for this project.

This overhaul will remove all previous switches, hubs and wireless access points from the dorms and replace them with HP ProCurve equipment. All of the new switches will feature full duplex 10/100Base-TX connectivity between system to switch, and full 1 Gig-T connectivity from switch to switch. Previously, the network consisted of mostly hubs which are slow and inefficent. In addition, all previous 802.11b access points (11 mbps) will be replaced with 802.11g (54 mbps) access points. These upgrades should allow for maximum access to the bandwidth upgrades the entire campus will receive.

We will also be increasing the number of wireless access points to most of the dorms. The move from 802.11b to 802.11g will also give us greater range per access point. This should allow us provide coverage in all dorm rooms.

• Xavier-Loyola Hall will double the amount of wireless access points it currently has.
• Town House Village complex will double the amount of access points it currently has, we will also be using larger antennas to help penetrate all rooms.
• McGee will go from six, to nine wireless access points, with coverage on every floor.
• We will also be adding wireless coverage in the THV Community Center.
• Corcoran, in addition to having a complete renovation done by Physical Plant, will have all access points that were previously missing or broken, all brought back online.
• Student Activities Hall will now have a dedicated access point, instead of pulling signal from Corcoran Hall or the Fieldhouse.

We will also be utilizing new monitoring software to better track outages, and be proactive about issues. We'll be installing new rack mount power surge suppression systems on all equipment points to help prevent electrical storms or issues from damaging this new equipment. All of the new HP equipment feature lifetime warranties, so this investment will provide future Rockhurst students with a reliable network without additional service contract costs; it will also allow us to replace failed or malfunctioning equipment much faster than was possible with the previous network.

Rockhurst University Computer Services is pleased to announce that we have partnered with Surewest Communications of Kansas City (previously Everest) to provide increased bandwidth to our campus.

Currently Rockhurst has a 20 mbps connection through The Missouri Research and Education Network (MOREnet), a public program that provides Internet connectivity to Missouri's K-12 schools, colleges and universities, public libraries, health care, state government and other affiliated organizations. Over the last few years with the growth of video on demand services like YouTube and Hulu, voice over IP services such as Skype, and the increasing general use of the Internet on our campus, we've needed to increase amount of bandwidth we have available.

The additional Surewest line, which will be added before the beginning of the fall semester, will provide 100 mbps of multiple carrier connectivity. This, in addition to our current MOREnet connection will provide a total of 120 mbps to our campus, an increase of 5X.

Having a second provider also gives us redundant capacity. Should one of our ISPs have a problem, or need to be taken offline for maintenance, the campus should still have Internet connectivity through the other provider. Also, since we're now using multiple upstream providers (AT&T, Cogent and Level 3) , we should have a more reliable connection overall. We also hope to run the fiber connections to the campus through different pathways to limit the chances that a physical disaster would take the campus offline.

We will also be installing better, more reliable and more powerful, traffic control devices on the network over the summer. This will insure that all users of our network resources have a fast and reliable connection and to help manage this additional bandwidth. Since our connection to the Internet is a resource that we all must share, it's important for us to make sure that everyone has fair and equitable use of that resource. It is also important that this resource is used in a way that is consistent with our university's mission, and in both an ethical and legal way.

Our migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 (employee) and Exchange Labs (students) has been completed. The old mail address, https://email.rockhurst.edu has been discontinued. At this time, the following addresses should be used for web mail access.

Students 

• http://email.hawks.rockhurst.edu
  OR
• http://www.outlook.com
  (if you have issues logging in at the first address, use the second)

Employees

• http://mail.rockhurst.edu

Students, if you have not setup your Exchange Labs account, you should contact the Helpdesk at 816-501-4357 for assistance.

For more information about Rockhurst e-mail, please see the Mail & Messaging section of our website. You can get more information about accessing up your email account from various desktop clients as well as Mobile Phones.

This is a reminder that your old email account, currently accessible from http://email.rockhurst.edu, will no longer be available after Monday, June 1, 2009.

You will need to save any emails that you would like to keep from your old email account before that date. After this date all information stored in these accounts will be terminated and will not be able to retrieve it for you. Also, the automatic forwarding that currently transfers new email messages sent to you from YourUsername@rockhurst.edu to YourUsername@hawks.rockhurst.edu will also be discontinued.

If you still are using your old email address for Facebook or any other website or service tied to an email address, you will need to change your contact information to the @hawks.rockhurst.edu address.

For more information on changing your Facebook email address, please see this page in their Help Center: http://www.facebook.com/help.php?page=748

You may have received the phishing e-mail listed below in your e-mail mailboxes. Rockhurst, Microsoft or any other provider will never ask for your password or for you to confirm your account details in an e-mail.

If you have received any of these messages and already responded to any of them or similar messages please change your password immediately and contact the helpdesk to notify them. Below is a example e-mail we have found.

If you receive e-mails similar to this in the future please delete it promptly and try to avoid opening them.

We have a company that comes on campus to recycle our used computers and electronics. There have been several requests for old equipment to be picked up in different locations across campus. If you know of any electronics or computer equipment that needs to be picked up, please let us know so that we can schedule the company to come out. The company does come out several times a year. With summer quickly approaching that may be when you find some items. This company picks the equipment up free of charge and they either recycle it if it is inoperable or try to resell anything that is still in working condition. That is why they do this free of charge with the thought that some if the equipment can be resold.

Please contact martin.zaragoza@rockhurst.edu and let him know the building, room number and description of the equipment if you have anything that just needs to go. For more information on the company recycling the equipment, please visit http://www.forerunnerrecycling.com

Global Information Technology Awards Foundation Pays Tribute to Individuals and Organizations that Use Information Technology to Benefit Society

We have completed our migration of users to the new mail server. At this time, users will need to visit https://mail.rockhurst.edu to access their messages over Outlook Web Access. Desktop clients using Microsoft Outlook from Rockhurst computers should be automatically reconfigured for their new settings.

We apologize that corruption issues on the old mail databases, caused some users to lose messages sent/received between 2AM yesterday to when their box was moved to the new server. We are unable to recover these messages, so you'll need to have them resent to you, if you still need them. Otherwise, no other data should have been lost in the transfer.

Your Rockhurst email address is unaffected by this transfer.

The new server gives each user an increased mailbox size, up to 500MB (current limit is 60MB). 

If you receive email through a mobile phone that you've configured to connect to our servers, you'll need to adjust your settings to change the server address to just mail.rockhurst.edu, for more information on setting up mobile phones to check your Rockhurst email, see our Mobile Mail page.

The migration to our new mail server running Microsoft Exchange 2007, for staff and faculty, has begun. We expect the migration to be fairly seamless for most of our end users and should be completed by the end of business today. If you are running Outlook 2003/2007 when your box is migrated, you'll need to close and reopen the program to continue receiving mail. Other than that, no further configuration should be required for your desktop client.

Your Rockhurst email address will not change during this migration.

On Monday morning we experienced problems with our e-mail queues filling up on our Faculty and Staff e-mail server which sends mail for both the Faculty and Staff server as well as the old student e-mail server.

Since students still have access to the old server until June, it can still be used to send messages out. Unfortunately, one of our student’s account was either compromised or infected with a SPAM bot Monday and was sending thousands of SPAM messages using our Exchange server.

We were successful in removing this student’s access and deleting all the SPAM messages that were left in the mail queue that were being sent from their account. This was also the reason some messages sent out yesterday were delayed. Even though we fixed this issue and have removed our e-mail server from the blacklists that we have found, it is still possible that individual domains could still be blocking messages from our e-mail server.

If you send out any messages and receive a bounced message please forward it to michael.craig@rockhurst.edu and he will look into getting our server removed from their blocking mechanism.

Please be aware that messages sent to or from student accounts should not be bouncing or be delayed.