About Claremont's Computing Facilities... About Claremont's Computing Facilities...Claremont High School is the district host for a WWW-server, anonymous FTP sites, Unix host accounts and e-mail services, streaming services, remote-access and roaming wireless servers and the district's gateway to the Internet via T-1 DDS and a private broadband CATV system (10Mbps). This is done using a mix of Sun Microsystems, Macintosh, IBM-compatible, and other hardware including a cluster of Sun Enterprise/250 servers supporting a user base of more than 1000 users. Much of our Unix access is suppported by a "cluster" of computers running with NFS. Click here for a glimpse into our machine room.
Access to network resources is free to students and faculty and is governed by an Appropriate Computing Use document which details CHS' computing guidelines. The high school also has created a Statement of User Responsibility which details the obligations of account-holders on our computing systems. We attempt to inform parents of the benefits (and potential problems) with granting FULL Internet access to students from home through a Parental Permission Form -- more details below. Additionally, our Network Abuse Policy details some of the network behaviors we consider abuse. Claremont High School's EdTech Committee is considering the Student AUP for students who may not yet have established privileged, private accounts through us but wish to use our networked resources on campus.
Students, faculty and staff are eligible for shell accounts on first-class Internet servers, supporting a wide range of facilities including the support of web-hosting for personal site, perl and C compilers and CGI services. Access to these hosts are supported by Secure SHell (SSH) for encrypted connections (both SSH1 and SSH2). Access to CHS--our primary host--is also available through a MindTerm web-based Java tool using http://www.cusd.claremont.edu/www/computing/mindterm/.
Most of the 600+ computers on campus support TCP/IP which means that students can take advantage of Internet resources without requiring individual accounts on a distributed system. Classroom use includes ftp-ing (using Fetch and Anarchie), Usenet news access (using NewsWatcher and InterNews), Gopher (using TurboGopher), and WWW and WAIS (using Netscape, Mosaic, MacWWW, and MacWAIS). We support an automated mail-list server which allows students to communicate with others having similar interests. Student and faculty access to Internet e-mail is provided using NCSA Telnet, Eudora, or LeeMail, combined with other SMTP and POP-mail services.
Given the sorry state of funding for public education here in California, CHS has been forced to rely on a variety of private, corporate, state and national grants in order to create this network. A schematic diagram of the CHS network (10,880 bytes) details the extensive structure of the LAN. Much of this was made possible via an AB1470 California State grant and with S.I.P. funds. Our original connection to the Internet was with 19.2Kbps asynchronous phone line generously donated by our local Rotary Club; this was upgraded to a 64Kbps synchronous DDS with hardware donated by the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. We have a network map (29,347 bytes) which shows a snapshot of the logical network. Recently, we have upgraded our connections to the Internet "cloud" using DS-3 (44.21Mbps) circuits. A diagram detailing our current LAN design can be seen here.
We are past recipients of a State of California "Digital High School" award. This funding has allowed us to install a structured LAN network composed of gigabit fiber-optic connections to dedicated, switched 10/100 megabit ethernet service into every room. Additionally, we have installed a cluster of Sun servers which host most of our user accounts--and replace our aging Digital Ultrix host.
Network performance is monitored on 30-second intervals and network maps are generated on the fly from one of our Macintosh NOC servers. (Be patient. This server generates a new JPEG image on demand...)
Other significant donations from the Cornell Theory Center and the National Science Foundation have allowed us to develop shared Internet resources (such as this WWW site). Harvey Mudd College's Academic Computing department has also been a particularly close ally.Appropriate site addresses include:
The High School network supports twenty-eight AppleTalk zones of networked computers with a hybrid mix of ethernet and LocalTalk supporting TCP/IP, IPX, and AppleTalk protocols. We also maintain sixteen dial-in ports for student and faculty access to the campus network--this includes four ports for terminal sessions and two ports of Apple Remote Access (ARA), all using v.32bis modems. The campus supports SLIP and PPP dial-ups using a pool of twelve 33.6Kbps (v.34) modems. Students eligible for this additional level of access to the campus network are required to have an informed consent form signed by a parent or guardian. This is patterned after a similar document created by NEARnet.
Claremont is a community approximately 45 miles East of metropolitan Los Angeles, nestled against the San Gabrial Mountains at the foot of Mt. Baldy (a.k.a., Mount San Antonio). A community with a population of over 50,000, Claremont is also the home of the Claremont Colleges.(* Icon above stolen from Wired Magazine's home page.)
Up to the CHS Web homepage
