Summary

Object

Development of the data processing equipment in three different main directions: providing each researcher with the most appropriate tool for his needs, helping him with his publications, favouring the communications with the outside scientific community.

Content

In 1995 the attainment of these objectives, consisted in recruiting a new system manager Rémi Brageu, acquiring new equipment, restructuring the local area network, creating new network services and improving communications with the outside world. Two summer short-term replacements, two CES (Contract-Employment-Solidarity) agents, the voluntary contribution of some researchers, have been helping the five permanent members of the technical team with these various tasks.

LIMSI'S ACQUISITIONS IN 1994: 30 new workstations (9 SGIs, 3 SUNs, 1 HP, 5 MACs, 4 PCs, 8 X terminals). The objectives were to face the increase of the number of researchers, the necessity of replacing obsolete equipment, and the need of more processing power for new problems.

LOCAL AREA NETWORK RESTRUCTURING: The LIMSI's Ethernet was segmented by the end of 1993 in 5 sub networks, isolated by the mean of bridges. In 1994, the replacement of these bridges by an Ethernet switch, has largely improved the throughput of the network. The use of the twisted pair medium was generalised, reducing cabling times. The integration of the new LTF research team into the LIMSI , involved creating a new Ethernet sub network in the nearby building 502-ter, and connecting buildings 502-ter and 508 by the mean of an optical fiber link. Now the total number of connected nodes is about 200.

DEVELOPMENT OF NETWORK SERVICES: The emphasis was put on providing a WWW server* intended to have the LIMSI and its research better known in the outside world. This server allows access to documents such as laboratory presentation, introductory pages of the annual scientific laboratory's report, individual reports and publications, practical information, etc.

IMPROVEMENT OF COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE OUTSIDE WORLD: Until 1994, LIMSI was connected to the outside world by a 10 Mbytes/s link through a router located in the nearby IDRIS building. LIMSI has now a router of its own, which is connected by a 100Mbyte/s link to the external world through the fddi network of the University of Orsay.

Situation

In 1995, a first important objective is internally prolonging the 100Mbyte/s external link by a high rate sub network. This will be an ATM network, since this technology seems to have won the battle of the standards, and since now, all the interfaces required by our local configuration are commercially available. An other main objective is to face the problem of the increasing amount of Gigabytes of data to save through the network: probably by using ATM bandwidth, new backup devices, new backup servers, etc...

References

* http://www.limsi.fr/