Following a pilot this summer, a firewall has been rolled out to a number of residences, and other residences will most likely follow into Autumn Quarter. Currently the active firewalls include Crothers Memorial, and all undergraduate residences except: Kimball, Mirrielees, Wilbur, and Row Houses north of Mayfield Avenue. All residents are being asked to select a level of protection when they register their network connections, even if rules aren't being enforced in their residence yet.

The residential firewalls protect computers against intrusions from outside of the local network by preventing distant computers from initiating contact. They do not protect against computers in the same building and in some cases the buildings nearby, nor do they provide protection when using computers in other locations around campus. Communications initiated from students' computers are not be affected. Students can change their selected levels of protection at any time simply by updating the registrations for their in-room network connections.

The residential firewall is brought to you by IT Services, as a part of the ongoing departmental firewall project. For more information see: http://www.stanford.edu/services/firewall/residential/

This summer a permanent and robust wireless infrastructure was added to all Row Houses that didn't already have it, which was virtually all of them. For the last three years, pre-configured and managed Wireless Access Points have been loaned to Row RCCs for temporary placement in locations of their choosing in the Fall, and collected in the Spring. While this allowed wireless access quickly and with no infrastructure changes, it was labor intensive, provided uneven coverage, and left the houses with nothing over the summer when filled with conference attendees (or being serviced by Housing in between).

Over the course of the summer, contractors went through the houses and installed wiring for, and mounted, a vast number of ceiling-height and otherwise unobtrusively placed WAPs. This project was managed by IT Services wiring staff, funded and scheduled by Student Housing, used WAPs provided and configured by IT Services networking, and was overseen by Residential Computing. Next on the agenda is to improve wireless coverage in houses that need it, over the course of this academic year.

This summer student email accounts were migrated to the new Zimbra service, so if http://webmail.stanford.edu/ seems different, you're not imagining it. The new site also includes an integrated calendar system, which allows students to create specialty calendars and share them with others. Faculty and Staff are currently scheduled to migrate later this Fall.

For more information on the service, see: http://www.stanford.edu/services/emailcalendar/

For a list of tips, see: http://www/dept/its/projects/integratedemailcalendar/tips.html