Yes, the 1-7700 number is in place to serve those who
do not have access to Ethernet connections.  It will
serve those campus buildings that do not yet have
Ethernet connections.  Also, it was decided not to
block it from the set of residence halls generally
identified as upperclass at the request of students,
some of whom acquired a modem last year and who
needed to cope with frequent busy signals.  The
idea behind the restriction is to make our pool
of dial-in lines available to those who require
them and minimize busy signals.
 
Our difficulty in supporting terminal access from
first-year halls stems from the elimination of
the "Gandalf" dataswitch, a very old piece of
equipment that has become difficult to support.
Without it, we cannot set up the lines to work
as they did last year, even though many of us
would like to see some such option remain available.
 
Less bloated browsers should work fine over MUnet
PPP or Ethernet connections.  Our group chose to
include versions that would work well on recent
machines, and it is good to be fairly recent to
view many pages.
                                --Jim
--
Jim Wilson, Manager, Instructional Computing
Applied Technologies, Miami Computing and Information Services
Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056     [log in to unmask]