NDSU's network infrastructure supports:

• Bandwidth from CableOne is insufficient for all network based applications.
• Network Engineering and Operations centrally monitors the network for viruses and security breaches.
• Many auxillary services only run on NDSU's network, such as:
• • Card access systems (door security)
  • Fire alarm system
  • Survellience
  • Enviornmental monitoring and management (centrally managed from Thorson)
  • Energy management to monitor a buildings energy consumption
  • IP telephony
  • Bison card enabled vending or point of sale systems
• NDSU's wireless network relies on wired
• HD video conferencing

Currently our backups are for disaster recovery. We do not archive data.

Backups for e-mail are retained for 2 weeks. All other data is retained for 1 month. Bacukps are retained for disaster recovery purposes, not for archival purposes.

No! Individuals attaching a private wireless access point or router circumvent all security measures implemented by Enterprise Computing and Infrastructure. By attaching a 'rouge' access point to the NDSU network, this allows any client (with no 'access list' implemented) to by-pass security and attach directly to the network thus compromising network security and Network Management.

In addition, radio frequencies need to be actively monitored. The 2.4 GHz band is limited to 11 usable channels of which only 3 do not interfere (non-overlapping) requiring centralized coordination to ensure wireless clients can associate to the network at appropriate speeds, provide roaming capabilities and fail-over.

Hardware:

• Server class hardware with redundant components (power, mirrored disk)
• Backups for internal hard drives
• Server hardware is replaced every four years to maintain reliability

System Administration:

• Installation time
• Maintenance which includes security updates, patching Operating System
• Troubleshooting issues
• System monitoring 24 hours/day, Systems Engineer on call 24/7 (The average time spent on each server is 123 hours per year)

ECI charges $2.10/GB (Fiscal Year 2010). ECI has invested in a SAN (Storage Area Network) in order to accommodate storage growth and redundancy. The SAN allows us to assign any amount of storage to multiple servers. In the event that more storage is needed, ECI can resize the storage live. The cost also includes backup services for your data.

You can buy a 1TB hard drive from most retailers for under $100. These drives are for consumer purposes. They do not include a system to backup your data, mirroring/redundancy and provide services to a large number of users.

It is NDUS/NDSU policy that all users accessing the NDUS/NDSU network MUST present user credentials to access network delivered services whether it be on-campus or off-campus properties. The exception to this is that we currently allow limited unauthenticated WEB access through the wireless network at the primary campus location only.