Vice President for Information Technology Status and Activity Report for September 2021 Prepared by Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT) 1. Key Items for Faculty and Staff Meetings •
More than $1M in campus wireless upgrades planned: EITS will soon begin work on more wireless upgrades in buildings across the Athens, Buckhead and Griffin campuses. These upgrades are part of EITS’s work to continuously improve wifi connectivity and coverage to support teaching, learning and student life. The $1.2 million project, funded by Student Technology Fees, includes wireless refreshes and redesigns in the following buildings: Caldwell Hall, Brooks Hall, Boyd Graduate Studies, Pharmacy North & South, the Davison Life Sciences Complex, the Coverdell Center, the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, Graduate Housing on Rogers Road, Brown Hall and the Griffin Campus. More access point replacements are also planned at the Center for Applied Genetic Technologies, the Lamar Dodd School of Art, the Ramsey Student Center, the Science Learning Center, the Terry-Buckhead campus and Wright Hall, Rhodes Hall, Miller Hall and Russell Hall at the Health Sciences Campus. Work should begin this month and is expected to be completed by June 2022. For more information, contact Chris Fleming at cfleming@uga.edu.
•
Update your Zoom client by October 15: To help ensure online meeting security and give UGA Zoom users access to the latest features, EITS will require all users in the main UGA Zoom account to update their clients to version 5.7.7 after October 15. This version will be the minimum required version to continue using Zoom. After October 15, users in the main Zoom account, which are primarily students and UGA affiliates, will be asked to update Zoom to version 5.7.7 the next time they open their client. They will not be able to use Zoom until their client is updated to version 5.7.7 Most users should be able to update their client without the assistance of an IT professional, as updates do not require an administrator account. Any users who update their clients to version 5.7.7 before October 15 will not be affected by the mandated update, and they should be able to use Zoom as normal. This update will apply to anyone in the main UGA Zoom account, not in departmental sub-accounts, but we encourage all students, faculty and staff to keep their Zoom clients up to date. For more information on updating your Zoom client, visit https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362233-Upgrade-update-to-the-latestversion.
•
Major network bandwidth expansion under way to improve connectivity: EITS networking staff are working on a multi-year project to upgrade building routers, increasing network bandwidth for research and allowing for 10G connectivity. The Building Edge Router Refresh project will upgrade the current building edge routers and cabling in 180 buildings to a new platform that connects buildings back to the university’s core network. Buildings completed in August include the Ramsey Center, Memorial Hall, Rhodes ADS, Coverdell Hall, Miller Plant Sciences and Boyd Graduate Studies. Buildings scheduled for September include the Lab of Archaeology, Printing Services, the main building of the Savannah River Ecology Lab and One Press Place. Visit https://eits.uga.edu/network_and_phones/building_edge_router_project/ for more information.
VPIT Status and Activity Report for September 2021
Page 1 of 4