Channel, Issue No. 30

Abstract

[evdate 1999-01-15] Channel January 1999, Issue No.30 What's inside ??Computer barns upgrade ??Windows 2000 (Windows NT 5) in Computer Barn ??Well prepared for the secured ESD (Electronic Service Delivery) -Campus- wide directory service ??Select Windows 95 or Windows 98? ??Staff Email Server Upgrade ??Modem pool now support new standard V.90 ??Student Dial-up service budget scheme ??Richwin 97 Available ??Live broadcast of Distinguished Lecture and Congregation ??Netscape Messenger 4.5 On-Line Tutorial ??A taste of video conferencing Channel Home Page.Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Teddy Poon, ccteddy@ust.hk Computer barns upgrade To cope with the increasing demand for computing resource, CCST has recently scheduled

to perform the computer barns upgrade, as follow:

Computer Barn Old hardware New hardware Old quantity New quantity Status Barn A Pentium 166 32M Pentium II 350 64M 105 120 Completed on 23-Dec-1998 Barn B Pentium 166 32M Pentium II 350 64M 83 84 Scheduled on 22-Feb-1999 Barn C Pentium 166 32M Pentium II 350 64M 62 80 Completed on 18-Nov-1998 After the hardware upgrade exercise is completed, all barn PCs will be equipped with:

Windows 98 and Chinese Windows 95 ? Reborn card - a piece of hardware which can improve a PC's bootup speed and system

security/stability significantly ?Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. David Shiu, ccdshiu@ust.hk Windows 2000 in Computer Barn Windows 2000 (formerly known as Windows NT 5) is the next version of Microsoft Windows expected to be released by Microsoft in late 1999 or early 2000. Aiming to replace and unite current Win95/98 and Windows NT, Windows 2000 is equipped

with a number of new and exciting technologies, which will benefit both mobile users and

systems administrators. These include: A new directory service (called Active Directory) for storing system and user data

which is more scalable for large enterprise (e.g. HKUST) ?A new feature called IntelliMirror, which includes: Users Document Management - allows user data to be more available by making them mirrored to the network and cached locally automatically ?Software Installation - includes just-in-time applications, services packs and operating system installation/updates ?User Setting Management - includes mirroring and management of user settings to the network store ??On the security side, Windows 2000 supports digital ID and sim card logon which greatly increases the security on a distributed Windows environment ?Currently, advanced hardware/software vendors are already preparing/planning their

products for Windows 2000 as well. To get our users a head start on the concerned upcoming operating systems, CCST has set up

two Windows 2000 Beta machines in Barn B (next to the color laser printer) for your trial.

For further instruction on using the trail OS, please refer to the paper note posted on the

machines for operation instructions. More information of Windows 2000 system can be found at: http www.ust.hk/ccst/windows2000.Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Patrick Leung, ccpleung@ust.hk Well prepared for the secured ESD (Electronic Service Delivery) - Campus-wide directory service To further enchance our electronic campus towards a wise University, CCST is well

prepared for the secured Electronic Service Delivery, which requires our operations

experience in infrastructures like Internet, Public Key, and Certificate Authority.

CCST started to provide these kind of services (like the first version of Communication

Directory) back in 1996. Now CCST is pleased to announce our next generation of campus-wide directory service based on LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol)

technology. LDAP is an Internet standard for accessing and managing information in a

directory. The directory contains descriptive information for our people, which is the core or

the Public Key and E-bussiness infrasturcture. More information about LDAP and directory

service can be found in http www.ust.hk/ccst/ldap/ Actually, LDAP and directory service will be one of core enabling technologies for all other

services. CCST are committed to build and support more LDAP-aware applications in

future. Currently, we've already made use of LDAP to provide the following services:

Email Client Address Book No need to remember email address any more, nowadays email clients have integrated

LDAP to their address book and allowed you searching email address with partial full-name

while composing a mail. By the way, we have a tutorial of Netscape Communicator 4.5 in

above web page for showing you how this can be done.

Communication Directory (ComDir) The Web-to-LDAP gateway to search and display users' information on LDAP directory and

allow users to edit their profile for better communication with others.

Central Web Authentication LDAP is used as the authentication database for users and groups in WWW applications.

This provides a fairly convenient and flexible way for web developers to limit access to their

webpage only to a specific group of users of HKUST community.

Digital Certificate Lookup.All our issued certificates are now stored in LDAP directory which allows applications to

lookup for verifications and composing S/MIME email. Besides all these, more will be coming. Check the above webpage for our planned or in

developing applications..Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Teddy Poon, ccteddy@ust.hk Select Win95 or Win98? What are New in Windows 98? Microsoft has rolled out the Windows 98 (Win98) official release in mid 1998. This "new"

operation system provides/supports: Internet Explorer 4.0 - well integrated with the Win98 ? FAT32 disk format - supports larger disk volumes ? DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) - next generation of CD-ROM ? USB (Universal Serial Bus) - device connection standards ? Multiple displays - up to 8 displays can be connected simultaneously ? Multiple modems - better dial-up network support ? AGP (Advanced Graphics Port) - improved graphics display ? Apart from all these, Microsoft claims that Win98 runs faster and is more stable - if

compared with Win95. Upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 98? While the mentioned Win98 features are nice to have, they may not be so attractive/necessary for every user. The CCST began to evaluate Win98 since its early beta

versions. Generally speaking, the system has become quite stable since its official release

although a handful of users have reported that they experienced unexpected stability

problems when running Richwin97 (a Chinese interface) with Win98. The following tips

might be helpful for those who are considering to use or upgrade system to Win98:

Win98 requires more disk space than Win95. ? Win98 has no significant performance gain on less powerful PCs (including low-end Pentium like Pentium 75 MHz). In fact, for the 486 PCs, Win98's performance is even poorer than Win95. ?Recommended hardware for running Win98: Entry level: Pentium 120 / 32MB RAM / 500MB hard disk More ideal hardware: Pentium II / 32MB (or more) RAM / 3GB (or more) hard disk ?Some users have reported that their Win98 became unstable when running with Richwin97 (a Chinese interface). ?Suggestions For existing Windows 95 user: If you are satisfied with your existing Win95 setup or

if you think the Win98 advance features are not useful, it is recommended to better

stay with your Win95 system. ??For new PC installation: It is a matter of your own choice on selecting Win95 or

Win98. ?For testing Win98: To have a trial of the Win98, you may come to CCST helpdesk at room 2021 (Lift 2). You may also bring along with your software to test Win98

compatibility. ?For more Win98 information: Please refer to CCST's Win98 home page at http www.ust.hk/ccst/windows98/ ??Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Kenneth Lai, ccfylai@ust.hk Staff Email Server Upgrade To cope with the server loading by the increasing usage of email with attachment, we have upgraded our mail server with followings: the mail INBOX will be served by a high-performance RAID storage 1. additional 512M memory 2. This upgrade aims to increase the overall performance of mail services, particularly it will

boost IMAP access clients such as Netscape Communicator, Internet Explorer and Pine.

The upgrade exercise has been completed on November 14, 1998 (Saturday Channel

Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Raymond Chau, ccrayc@ust.hk Modem pool now support new standard V.90 The Student and Staff HiSpeed Modem Pools have been upgraded on the 21st Jan 1999.

With this upgrade, the Pools now support V.90 modems in addition to K56flex ones.

By supporting the V.90 industry standard, users with V.90-only modems can now enjoy a

connection speed upgrade from 33.6K to around 50Kbps. Users with modems that support

both V.90 and K56flex will now be connecting to the modem pool using V.90 instead of

K56flex, resulting in a more stable connection. For further details, please visit the Dialup Web Page at: http www.ust.hk/ccst/dialup/.Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Raymond Chau, ccrayc@ust.hk Student Dial-up service budget scheme We have had a successful trial run of Dialup Budget Scheme during the fall semester. Our

usage statistics indicated that the Scheme has effectively regulated the abusive usage from

those extremely high usage users: Daily dialup consumption of top 5% users during 8pm-12am Before budget scheme: 2.47 hr/day After scheme is in effect: 1.05 hr/day Dialup time thus saved: 344 hr/day Percentage of students used up their entire dialup budget 3.68% of students used up their entire budget, in contrast with our original estimate of 5%. To bring the advantage forward, the Scheme has been extended to the winter session and

spring semester as well. For the winter session, an initial budget of 40 hours of connect time

has been assigned to all students during Dec 23, 1998 to Jan 31, 1999 (end of winter

session). For the spring semester, an initial budget of 120 hours of connect time will be

assigned to all students during Feb 1, 1999 to May 31, 1999 (end of semester). Please note that only dialup time used between 8pm to 12 mid-night will be deducted from a

student's dialup budget. Unused budget will not be brought forward to the next semester.

For further details, please visit the Dialup Web Page at: http www.ust.hk/ccst/dialup/.Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Steve Yau, ccsyau@ust.hk Richwin 97 Available HIGHLIGHTS CCST is pleased to announce that the new version of RichWin 97 is now available in our

campus network. RichWin 97 enables Chinese capability in English Windows Environments like Microsoft

Windows 95 and Windows 98. It has many improvements over the previous version and lots

of new features. MORE DETAILS With RichWin 97, it improves the system stability a lot. Basically, when compare with

previous version, It can be used to view web pages with Java Applet without crashing the web browser.

(like http www.jupas.edu.hk ) ?It is compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 in Windows 95. ? It supports Windows 98. ? Furthermore, it provides some more add-on features like: More Chinese fonts (but mostly simplified Chinese) ? Incorporated HKSAR GCCS (Government Chinese Character Set). See http www.ust.hk/ccst/chinese for details on EUDC. ?Bi-Lingual User interface (English/Trad. Chinese/Simp. Chinese) ? Improved Cantonese Chinese Input ? To install RichWin 97, please refer to the installation procedure found in http www.ust.hk/ccst/chinese.Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Ban Szeto, ccszeto@ust.hk Live broadcast of Distinguished Lecture and Congregation Distinguished Lecture CCST, worked with other local institutions, has conducted a live video broadcast of a lecture

in Baptist University by Prof. Lee Yuan-tseh, who is Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and

President of Academia Sinica, Taiwan. The lecture "Responsibility of Scientists for Sustainable Development of Human Society",

was successfully broadcasted through our computer network on Nov 23, 98 (Monday).

Congregation CCST also has broadcasted the sixth UST congregation through our compus network. This 3

days event was on Nov 11 to Nov 13, 98. If you want to review the event, please refer to the

following web page: http www.ust.hk/ccst/congregation/ TECHNICAL DETAILS The video broadcast made use of the latest RealSystem G2 technology. The live video will

be digitized and transmitted to the RealSystem G2 server through the network. User can then

invoke a RealPlayer G2 to view the video from the HKUST server..Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Patrick Leung, ccpleung@ust.hk Netscape Messenger 4.5 On-Line Tutorial CCST is pleased to announce the newly created Netscape Messenger 4.5 On-line Tutorial

web page. Part of the Tutorial applied the Lotus ScreenCam software as the presentation tool. With the

ScreenCam technology, you can learn most of the useful features of Netscape Messenger by

"listening" and "watching" the self-paced instructions. Moreover, the "Netscape Messenger Discussion Forum", which is connected to a under-evaluating HyperNews server, is also available in the web page for open discussions.

You may want to share your experience on using Netscape Messenger by posting a message

to the Forum. To learn more about Netscape Messenger 4.5 and to experience the power of the ScreenCam

technology, please visit the Netscape Messenger On-line Tutorial web page at: http www.ust.hk/ccst/email/netscape.Channel Channel - January 1999, Issue No.30 Mr. Charles Choy, ccchoy@ust.hk A taste of video conferencing The videoconferencing technology enables you to conduct live, two-way video and audio

conferences with remote parties throughout the world. Despite that they are geographically

separated, the participants can meet each other face-to-face as if they were in the same room.

Since the introduction of pilot ISDN videoconferencing services December last year, CCST

has implemented videoconferencing sessions for our academic departments:-remote viva exam - the examiner attended a PhD thesis presentation held in Boston, joined the discussion, asked questions and gave comments, all in real time but without leaving UST. The technology helps to save cost and precious time in travelling. remote job interview - the interviewer board met the candidate and gave assessment on a sample lecture delivered, all carried out via videoconferencing,

saving the trouble of flying the candidate from the US. Videoconferencing can also be used in situation like giving remote lectures, administrative

meetings, project review, research collaboration and many others. For further information and service request, please contact Vincent Lok on x6217 or via

email ccvlok@ust.hk