Computing and Networking Facilities

CHEP´97 Online Computer Network

The local computing service of the CHEP´97 and main parts of the conference preparation were based on a PC network organized in a Windows NT domain. For details not mentioned here, please contact Gunter Trowitzsch.

The only used transport protocol was TCP/IP and NetBIOS over TCP/IP inside the NT domain. To complete the local TCP/IP service and to guarantee world wide access over the Internet, a SUN workstation took over the Internet Domain Name Service. The IP domain resided as a subdomain in the "desy.de" domain and the conference setup was connected by an 128 kb/s ISDN line to DESY Hamburg.

Common Structure of the Windows NT Domain

The Primary Domain Controller was responsible for accounting & log on service, file & home directory service, WINS service and printing. The Backup Domain Controller in addition to the obligate tasks inside a domain was also acting as print server for a locally connected printer.

All the workstation PC’s were running Microsoft Windows NT Workstation V4.0 and the domain had been divided into three types of PC’s corresponding to their main purpose. Generally on all types of workstations the following applications were installed: different types of Telnet terminal emulators, WWW browser and viewer, E-mail reader, X11 server, file transfer utilities and Microsoft Office’95.

28 Logon PC’s: For all participants the main purposes were to get remote access to there home institutes, to read and write E-mail, or in general to get access to the Internet. For this type of workstation whenever possible the network based installation was preferred.
18 Session PC’s were prepared for usage during the parallel sessions and the poster sessions. All applications were installed locally to become independent from network problems. Eight of them were set up for dual boot and installed with Windows NT and Linux.
10 Office PC’s for the organization of the conference. The conference was organized by the help of the CHEP´97 Data Base implemented with Microsoft Access 2.0. The database itself was stored on the PDC (file server) and was accessible from different workstations for the registration of the participants, for printing the batches, and scheduling the sessions flow. Most of the organizing work was done this way before, during, and after the conference.

The configuration and installation of all the Workstations was done by preparing master PC’s for each type (Logon, Session & Office) and then cloning by using the scopy tool.

Account and Domain Policy

A common conference account with extensive restrictions could be used to log on at the Logon PC’s and Session PC’s. Under this account it was impossible to change any of the configurations and settings for the PC’s and for the applications. Only to the local temp directory the write access right was granted to this account.

A less restrictive account could be used by the speakers for preparing talks and presentations and for presenting it during the session with the connected video projector. The home directory of this account resided on a local file system sub directory tree because of independence from the network. In addition on the central file server (PDC) a share was available with full access rights granted to the session account.

The accounts of the staff members were tailored corresponding to the needs and tasks to be solved.

Operation and Experiences

The compete setup was operating very stable and reliable. It was easy to run and to manage by organizers and easy to use by participants. Only a few restrictions of the outside connectivity result from the 128 kb/s bandwidth limit of the ISDN line.