8-23-2004 Windows Upgrade Causing Campus Headaches
Microsoft Corp.'s decision to release a major upgrade for its flagship operating system in the same month that hundreds of thousands of students are reporting to college campuses across the nation is causing a major headache for the higher education community.
Worried that the upgrade could conflict with other applications running on university networks, and a related concern that thousands of students attempting to download the software could bring campus computer networks to a standstill, technology administrators at some universities have taken steps to block an automatic service that downloads the software.
An extremely large file that could slow networks to a halt if too many students download it at the same time, SP2 also contains code that interferes with popular firewall and antivirus programs that many people run on their computers, according to Microsoft.
"Microsoft's timing really couldn't have been worse for us," said Chris Faigle, a security administrator at the school, where classes start today. "For the faculty and students, we simply won't be able to handle all of the additional issues that would almost certainly come up in addition to just getting the students registered on the network."
A number of schools that have built systems to register computers on their network plan to periodically probe student PCs to ensure they contain the latest antivirus updates and Microsoft security patches.
But SP2 can interfere with those automatic inspections since it turns on the Windows firewall, said Jack Suess, chief information officer at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. So UMBC plans to bar computers owned by its 4,000 students from automatically downloading the update until the school is ready to roll out its own tweaks.
Several schools, including Brown and George Mason, planned to circulate SP2 on CD-ROMs, a move that would allow students to install the upgrade without connecting to the Internet. Microsoft, however, last week sent a letter to those schools warning them against duplicating and distributing the patches without buying an expensive license that includes the right to install Microsoft programs on student PCs.
Microsoft has agreed to give schools one service pack disk for every 50 students on campus, with extra disks costing 32 cents each. Microsoft said it has received orders for the CD-ROM from approximately 60 institutions, and that nearly 100,000 CD-ROMs have already been shipped to schools nationwide.
Some schools, including American University, will not receive them for another two weeks, though Microsoft said it expects to ship any ordered discs within five to 12 business days.
"For the vast majority of institutions that have students returning this week, that's too little too late," said EDUCAUSE's Petersen.
Microsoft Corp.'s decision to release a major upgrade for its flagship operating system in the same month that hundreds of thousands of students are reporting to college campuses across the nation is causing a major headache for the higher education community.
Worried that the upgrade could conflict with other applications running on university networks, and a related concern that thousands of students attempting to download the software could bring campus computer networks to a standstill, technology administrators at some universities have taken steps to block an automatic service that downloads the software.
An extremely large file that could slow networks to a halt if too many students download it at the same time, SP2 also contains code that interferes with popular firewall and antivirus programs that many people run on their computers, according to Microsoft.
"Microsoft's timing really couldn't have been worse for us," said Chris Faigle, a security administrator at the school, where classes start today. "For the faculty and students, we simply won't be able to handle all of the additional issues that would almost certainly come up in addition to just getting the students registered on the network."
A number of schools that have built systems to register computers on their network plan to periodically probe student PCs to ensure they contain the latest antivirus updates and Microsoft security patches.
But SP2 can interfere with those automatic inspections since it turns on the Windows firewall, said Jack Suess, chief information officer at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. So UMBC plans to bar computers owned by its 4,000 students from automatically downloading the update until the school is ready to roll out its own tweaks.
Several schools, including Brown and George Mason, planned to circulate SP2 on CD-ROMs, a move that would allow students to install the upgrade without connecting to the Internet. Microsoft, however, last week sent a letter to those schools warning them against duplicating and distributing the patches without buying an expensive license that includes the right to install Microsoft programs on student PCs.
Microsoft has agreed to give schools one service pack disk for every 50 students on campus, with extra disks costing 32 cents each. Microsoft said it has received orders for the CD-ROM from approximately 60 institutions, and that nearly 100,000 CD-ROMs have already been shipped to schools nationwide.
Some schools, including American University, will not receive them for another two weeks, though Microsoft said it expects to ship any ordered discs within five to 12 business days.
"For the vast majority of institutions that have students returning this week, that's too little too late," said EDUCAUSE's Petersen.
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