IT Services and Residential Computing have planned a pilot of a residential firewall system for this summer, to protect student computers against incoming traffic from other networks. ITS has been rolling out firewalls in academic and administrative departments for some time, but a key piece needed for the residences will now be available, the ability for individual users (not network administrators) to select their level of protection. As planned, starting Summer Quarter students registering for in-room network connections would be able to select their level (from wide open to totally closed). Over the summer a few residences would be firewalled in a pilot, likely Summer Research College and Studios 3 & 4. If the pilot was successful, the firewalls would be activated on all residential networks in late August.

For more information on the project see: https://www.stanford.edu/services/firewall/

This summer, IT Services will roll out a new integrated email and calendar system, powered by Zimbra. The switch is tentatively scheduled for July 21. The calendar and email systems will be able to share contact lists and pass information to each other. Users of webmail and sundial will notice the change the most, while people who use email applications (via POP or IMAP) will still be able to do so, and some will even be able to take advantage of the integration.

For more information on the project see: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/projects/integratedemailcalendar/

Student Housing has started to publish information about the Housing Master Plan, which is scheduled to go into effect in Autumn 2009. Some of you may have read about this in the Daily over the last couple of years. The centerpiece of the changes is the Munger Graduate Residence, and as it opens and Crothers & CroMem become undergraduate, many residences will be "unstuffed." Since we are Residential Computing, and this information has not been widely publicized, we link to it here. The technology impacts should be transparent to students, including changes to the distribution of RCCs and the sizes of computer clusters.

For more information see: http://studenthousing.stanford.edu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65&Itemid=93