Part of this plan includes replacing the current search engine on the UNB Web server. This item will fund the acquisition of a new commercial search engine, Inktomi 4.0. 17. The current campus network architecture was put in place when use was not as critical. Today there are a number of single points of failure which can and do cause outages in significant portions of the campus. ITS is beginning a project to introduce some redundancy in its network facilities by providing multiple connections to the network for some servers and multiple connections between the core campus ethernet switches.
Some electronic equipment is highly susceptible to fluctuations or failures in electrical power.
Problems of this type can cause a complete failure or intermittent failures. ITS has a number of such devices in place now and some are in need of replacement. Critical network and server equipment must continue to run even if the power fails. This expands the current Help Desk window and phone staffing to cover all hours between 8am through midnight. Such a service would allow quick and casual access to web-based information such as WebMail, course and general or personal information without the need for the time consuming process of logging into a fully functional network system.