On January 31, 2002, all the zones will disappear forever from the Chooser in your UCSC Macintosh. This means that, although you will definitely still be able to *use* them, you will no longer be able to browse through a list of servers and printers that aren't in your zone. Below are links to explanations of how to navigate the new, changed environment.
Here are the specific things that will be different after January 31:
1. File servers outside your zone will no longer appear in a list in the Chooser. You will access them a slightly different way. (Please note that these changes have nothing at all to do with web browsing.)
2. Printers outside your zone will no longer appear in the Chooser. Even some printers within your zone will no longer appear in the Chooser. However, there will be no change in accessing heavily-used printers like those in the Faculty Services offices.
3. If you access Filemaker files in zones beyond your own, Filemaker must be run in TCP/IP mode. This is a simple, one-time change. If you only use Filemaker to fill out your timesheet, there's no need to change.
4. Key Server (if you use it) must be run in TCP/IP mode. This is also a simple one-time change.
Staff are the most likely to be affected by these changes. We have already made the necessary accommodations to staff computing setups, so that on and after January 31, staff should notice few if any changes in their computing environment.
• If you are in the Porter zone, print on the Faculty Services printer, and do not use any central campus administrative systems, like Banner, PPS or SIS, you will not notice any changes. (If you don't know what those admin systems are, you probably don't use them.)
• If you are in a zone outside Porter, print on a local Faculty Services printer, and don't use the Arts Software or Shared Files servers, or central admin systems, you will not be affected. If you do use the Arts servers, you will only be minimally affected -- you may need to make a one-time change to the way you access the servers.
• If you use Banner, PPS or SIS, or if you use Filemaker for more than your timesheet, or Keyserver, these changes do apply to you. But the transition is relatively simple, and by now, your computing environment is probably already set up to accommodate these changes.
1. Here are instructions for how to connect to servers outside your zone.
2. Here are instructions for how to use printers that no longer appear in the Chooser. Along those lines, here is a list of printers and their various attributes in the post-zones era.
Who is Affected by the Changes in Printing?
Although this is the process that will be the most different, it won't affect very many people. It only affects:
- people who print on printers outside their zone. After asking around, we don't think very many people do that. And...
- a small number of people who print from Banner or PPS or SIS (central systems), and have printers that do not come with TCP/IP built in. For these folks, we will have already installed a network box, and done the paperwork, to make it work. But this will make it disappear from the Chooser.
3. Here are instructions for how to change your Filemaker settings from Appletalk to TCP/IP. If you access Filemaker files in zones beyond your own, Filemaker must be run in TCP/IP mode. This is a one-time change. If you only use Filemaker to fill out your timesheet, there's no need to change.
4. Here are instructions for how to change your Keyserver settings from Appletalk to TCP/IP. If you use shared software via Key Server, and you are outside Porter (where the Keyserver lives), you will need to make this one-time change.
This is happening because the campus has made a decision no longer to extend Appletalk network services across zones. There are many different ways to network computers together, and Appletalk is one of them.
Appletalk was a very innovative creation when Apple introduced it back in 1984. Before that, networking computers and printers together was complicated and expensive -- the domain of technicians and experts. With Appletalk, anyone with some inexpensive little gadgets and some phone wire could make a small home or office network. It's what made "desktop publishing" possible.
But this technology doesn't scale up so well, especially to an enterprise the size of the UCSC campus -- it becomes inefficient and expensive. The networking protocol called TCP/IP is faster and more efficient, and Apple has rewritten key services to use that protocol instead. And Apple has abandoned more non-essential services.
As a result, pieces of new networking hardware -- especially the routers that communicate between zones (subnets) -- no longer support Appletalk. Thus, as the campus continually upgrades its network, Appletalk across zones is being phased out. In technical terms, on January 31, 2002, Appletalk packets will cease to be routed across subnets, though they will still be carried within subnets.