FC3 Security

[Rick Bilonick]

Les Mikesell wrote:

>On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 23:45, Rick Bilonick wrote:
>  
>
>>The data center won't consider ANY solution. They won't let me buy my 
>>own port and they won't accomodate me in ANY way. I guess I will either 
>>have to get the department to find me another office or take the machine 
>>home. Needless to say, I haven't found this place to be very accomodating.
>>    
>>
>
>Getting pretty far off-topic here, but if you don't need anything
>specific to the data center LAN and no other network is available
>there, why did you end up in that building?
>
>  
>
Because there is very little space available in the department. I am 
requesting a project office outside the data center. I had done this 
before when I told them I need space for the additional computer 
equipment that I was buying. They ended up giving me more space but 
still in the data center. I thought all my problems were solved until we 
were setting up the system (putting it together in an open area near my 
office) and the IT people started nosing around. My project has no 
connection with the data center so I never involved them (plus I don't 
need them for one computer that's primarily doing number crunching. 
Everyone in the building (outside the data center) does whatever they 
want (the university does not manage their computer - but will turn off 
their ports if the computer becomes a problem). It seems that just 
because my office is PHYSICALLY located in the data center, I have no 
rights whatsoever. Even though there is no real difference between 
connecting my computer in my office or connecting it to a port in an 
office across the hall from the data center. If there were a real 
security threat then at least I could understand this. But from 
everything I know, this is purely political with me caught in the middle.

A lot is riding on this. Not only this grant, but if this grant succeeds 
then there is a much bigger grant to follow. I just started at this 
university and apparently getting a relatively large (first time) grant 
after being here only a couple of months counts for nothing . I have had 
to learn everything here the hard way because they neither tell you what 
the rules are nor publish them anywhere. I did tell everyone about the 
grant and that I needed to buy and use my own computer equipment. The 
proposal was accepted by DOE in large part because it would be using 
innovative methods both in the use of statistical methods and also the 
use of computers.

Rick B.