It's more and more clear all the time that low-speed analog dialup no longer serves the needs of many individuals wanting to access campus resources from home. We'll examine some recent developments in medium- and high-speed access to UIUCnet, local ISP's, and the Internet from residential locations. Initial efforts on CCSO's part will be targeted at high-density student areas, but the goal is to blanket the community.

All this connectivity unavoidably generates serious policy problems for the campus. As the Internet becomes more and more a general-purpose communication medium, and increasing numbers of residences become connected to UIUCnet at speeds faster than analog dialup, the majority of traffic exchanged with outside providers is now more representative of a general purpose ISP than a research and education network. While we certainly need to continue to play the role of ISP, heavy demands on bandwidth by both research/education applications and by casual web browsing overload network components and create issues for faculty research and education. The campus itself needs to decide what to do about this quandary: throw funding at the problem, separate UIUCnet into research/education and ISP components, or try something else.

This two-part talk will both bring you up-to-date on the exciting new home connectivity options, and also hopefully educate you on the increasingly conflicting missions of UIUCnet and the need for campus-wide decisions as we try to make commitments to datacommunication architectures for the beginning of the next century.