Students at Indiana University enjoy one of the most extensive information technology environments in the nation. Consistent­ly ranked as one of America’s “most wired” universities, IU is recognized as a leader and innovator in information technology.

University Information Technology Services (UITS) is the main technology organization at IU and develops and maintains a modern information technology environment throughout the university in support of IU’s vision for excellence in research, teaching, outreach, and lifelong learning.

UITS assists in academic success with tools and services to sup­port the academic and administrative work of the university, including a high-speed campus network with wireless access, central Web hosting, a rich selection of free and low-cost software for personal use, tools and support for instruction and research, supercomputers for data analysis and visualization, and telecommunications systems.

At IUB, the UITS main office is at 2711 E. Tenth Street (Wrubel Computing Center) and several other Bloomington campus locations. At IUPUI, the UITS main office is in the Informatics and Communications Technology Complex (ICTC) at 535 W. Michigan Street.

More information on UITS support and services is available at http://www.uits.iu.edu/.

Research

UITS supports IU’s teaching and research mission by provid­ing and facilitating the use of centralized research computing resources. The high-performance computing systems dedicated to IU research are configured to optimize stability and through­put for CPU intensive, I/O intensive, and/or memory intensive jobs. Use of these systems is restricted to IU faculty, faculty-sponsored graduate students, or faculty-sponsored staff, and support a broad range of areas, including life sciences, archae­ology, astronomy, and computational physics.

An IBM Opteron cluster known as AVIDD (Analysis and Visual­ization of Instrument-Driven Data) is a distributed computing facility designed to process data generated by large scientific instruments. AVIDD runs Redhat Linux and supports parallel processing.

Other research computing resources include an IBM Blade cluster running AIX, and the Research Database Complex (RDC). The RDC supports large Oracle databases and is comprised of database servers (Sun V1280) and Web front-end to access them.

General-purpose and instructional computing is supported by a Sun V100 cluster known as Steel. To users, the group of servers appears as a single resource. Steel is available to any member of the university community and is popular among undergradu­ate Unix users.

Terabtyes of data can be managed by IU’s Massive Data Storage System (MDSS). This advanced system provides researchers with flexible, high-performance, high-capacity resources for data management.

Data visualization is another area of expertise at IU. The UITS Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL) supports two world-class, state-of-the-art displays within the new Informatics and Communications Technology Complex (ICTC) at IUPUI: an ultra-high-resolution display wall and a reconfigurable virtual reality theatre. These two resources complement AVL mid-range technologies, including the John-e-Box, commodity rendering clusters, Access Grid nodes, and 3D scanning devices.

Networking

IU provides world-class network connectivity to its research­ers in support of high-performance networking and research applications. IU is a founding member of Internet2 and runs the Network Operations Center for the Abilene Internet2 network. In addition to having its own fiber optic network, I-Light, con­nected to Internet2, IU is a member of TeraGrid, a national, open scientific discovery infrastructure. IU is also the lead U.S. institution in the TransPAC2 connection between U.S. research and education networks and the Asia Pacific Advanced Net­work.  In addition to high-speed Ethernet connections on campus, UITS provides wireless connection to the IU network at many locations on campus.

UITS Technology Centers

UITS provides hundreds of computing workstations in both Stu­dent Technology Centers (STCs—located in academic buildings) and Residential Technology Centers (RTCs—located in campus housing), which offer students a rich array of up-to-date hard­ware, software, printers, and plotters. To meet the needs of a diverse student population, the STCs and RTCs provide a variety of hardware platforms and operating systems. Some STCs can be reserved for teaching classes.

Campus Housing Technology Services

All campus housing computing support and telephone service is provided by UITS. Each campus residence offers high-speed Ethernet connectivity and dedicated residential support.

Software, Hardware, and Wireless Phone Service

Free or low-cost software for students is available thanks to UITS’s license agreements with companies such as Micro­soft, Adobe, SPSS, and Symantec. Offerings include operating systems, antivirus programs, and software for word process­ing, spreadsheets, Web development, citation management, statistical analysis, graphic design, and more.

Many software titles are available for free download while other titles are available on CD at campus bookstores at deep discount. Students also benefit from educational discounts negotiated with vendors such as Apple, Dell, and CDW-G. Like­wise, IU has an agreement with Cingular Wireless to provide discounted personal cellular services to students.

Free and Low-Cost Information Technology Classes

UITS offers instructor-led computing workshops and provides self-study training resources. Workshops are available on more than 80 beginning to advanced computing and information technology topics.

Expert Help 24/7

UITS offers a number of choices for award-winning information technology support:

• Visit Support Center walk-in services—IUB: Indiana Memo­rial Union (room M084) and in the Information Commons (first floor of the Herman B Wells Library); IUPUI: Informat­ics and Communications Technology Complex (room IT 129).
• Get UITS online support at www.uits.iu.edu.
• UITS Support Center phone consultants—IUB: 855-6789; IUPUI: 274-4357.
• E-mail the Support Center—ithelp [at] indiana [dot] edu.
• Chat with Support Center consultants— http://ithelplive.iu.edu/.  

News and Notices

Most students are automatically subscribed to the UITS Moni­tor (IUB) or UITS Newsbit (IUPUI) electronic newsletters when they get their e-mail accounts. These newsletters provide award-winning weekly updates on a range of topics. Subscrip­tion information and Web-based news is available at http://uitsnews.iu.edu/.

For More Information

Learn more about UITS support and services at www.uits.iu.edu/.