Pat McGregor
ABSTRACT
The Merit Computer Network is a regional network based in Michigan. Merit serves the user communities at the Michigan state-supported colleges and universities, as well as a large base of commercial and government users for these institutions.
As part of membership in Merit, each university maintains a half-time user consultant who specializes in network issues and serves as a liaison with the Technical Support Staff at the Merit Central office.
This paper explores the nature of that relationship, its strengths, weaknesses, and successes. It also explores the changing nature of the liaison job, especially as the Merit Network undergoes changes in its membership, audience, and outreach.
- 1.Sprintnet was formerly called Telenet.Google Scholar
- 2.I'ha~ to Jim Sweeton of Merit for permission to use portions of his introduction from Merit's November, 1988 NSFNET backbone management proposal.Google Scholar
- 3.The Merit central office is housed on The University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, and many computing resources are included in that hosting agreement.Google Scholar
- 4.Christine is manager of the Technical Support Group, and my boss. Her assistance on this project has been invaluable. In best academic tradition, I'd like to thank my co-workers ~ Mark Davis, Sarah Gray, Laura Bollettino, Rick Schmalgemeier ~ for assistance, advice and editing.Google Scholar
- 5.FTP is File Transfer Protocol, one of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. Anonymous FTP allows a machine to have certain designed files made 'public', and creates a mechanism under which users without individual logins on that can transfer these public files back to their home machines.Google Scholar
- 6.Our current user liaisons are Joyee Capen (CMU), Daniel Cwiertniewicz (WSU), Margie Easter (WMU), Sarah Gray (U~, Tom Hacker (OLr), Richard Houang (MSLr), Gerard Joswiak (OIY), Ted Solden (M'IXJ), Beth Welch (EM~, and Lih-er Wey (MSU). I've learned a great deal from them.Google Scholar
- 7.The Link Letter is the newsletter of the NSFNET project. If you are interested in subscribing, send a message to INFO-NSFNE~ MERIT.EDU.Google Scholar
- 8.Merit is not a mail network, but most of our member universities have remote mail links. The confusion for our users is understandable.Google Scholar
- 9.A public server database, available without charge to users of the network, where they can search for names of mail hosts on BITNET, the Intemet and uucp. NetMailSites is a project of the Merit central staff.Google Scholar
- 10.The Network Operations Center (NOC) 'watchdogs' are the operations supervisors, and work closely with liaisons and technical representatives to resolve network problems. They are pretty remarkable.Google Scholar
- 11.Laura Bollettino and Ed Vielmetti. Laura is a member of the Merit central staff, and Ed is a postmaster and unix guru for the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan. Both of these folks have made presentations on remote mail to the user liaisons.Google Scholar
- 12.These are the names of the Merit general staff and user staff conferences, respectively, on the U-M mainframe. Both of these conferences use Advertel's Confer I1TM conferencing software.Google Scholar
- 13.Merit manages the NSFNET backbone project, and major points of connectivity for this project are located at our central offices.Google Scholar
Index Terms
- The distributed network: working with network user liaisons at far-flung campuses
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