With the recommendation from Student Senate, we wanted to share some great offers that Rockhurst Students may want to take advantage of very soon before they expire.

1. Microsoft Windows 7 is available for only $29.99 by going to this website: http://www.win741.com and clicking on “Buy”, then “Buy Now”. You will need to input your student e-mail address and you will receive a confirmation e-mail allowing you to order the software for this price. If you upgrade to Windows 7 we recommend you remove McAfee Antivirus first, and be sure to backup your data.

   Windows 7 is already supported on Cisco Clean Access so you will still be able to get on our network, but you will need to install Microsoft Security Essentials (which is free) instead of McAfee. For more information on our anti-virus change please visit our website: http://help.rockhurst.edu/msav.

2. Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 is available for only $59.95 by going to this website: http://www.microsoft.com/student/discounts/theultimatesteal-us/default.aspx. Again, click on “Buy Now” and input your student e-mail address and you will receive a confirmation e-mail allowing you to order the software for this price. Office Ultimate 2007 includes Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Access 2007, Outlook 2007, OneNote 2007, Groove 2007, Publisher 2007, and InfoPath 2007.  
3. Microsoft is giving 1 Asus Netbook away each day for 50 days. The offer runs from October 26th – December 14th, 2009. To enter visit the following website: http://my.liveatedu.com/contest and click the “Enter Sweepstakes Now!” button and fill out the appropriate information including your student e-mail account.
4. Get access now to 25GB of free storage you can access anywhere. As part of your Exchange Labs e-mail account which has 10GB of storage space for e-mail, you also have what is called a SkyDrive. Your SkyDrive is basically 25GB of storage space on Microsoft’s servers for any files you want to save and have access to from any Internet connection. Think of it as a 25GB flash drive on the web.

   To access your SkyDrive, log into your Rockhurst e-mail account and click on the SkyDrive link at the top of the page, then click sign in. For more information about using SkyDrive visit the following website: http://www.windowslive.com/Online/SkyDrive

Thank you and we hope you enjoy these great offers!

Rockhurst University is committed to providing secure access to its network resources. For some time we've been using McAfee Enterprise Anti-Virus to accomplish this. However, as the landscape of virus and malware threats has changed dramatically, it has become necessary for our security measures to change and adapt. 

Computer Services is pleased to announce that beginning this winter, we will begin migrating campus systems from McAfee Enterprise Anti-Virus over to Microsoft Forefront Client Security. In addition, we will begin the process of moving our student and employee home-use options away from McAfee and over to Microsoft Security Essentials, which is a free consumer based version of the Microsoft Forefront engine.

This will have an effect on our users in a few ways.

We apologize for the issues anyone may have had logging into thin clients on campus the morning of Monday, September 28. The issues were related to minor backend issues and have been resolved. If you have further problems accessing campus thin clients please contact our office. 

Update, 1:34PM: We are looking at additional issues and hope to have them corrected soon.

We are aware of issues related to WebCT8 (https://webct8.rockhurst.edu) and SSL, and are currently working to correct them. If you receive security related errors when logging into WebCT8 please ignore them for the time being. We hope to have this problem resolved very soon.

These errors have no affect on on other WebCT server.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

(Update: This problem should now be corrected.)

Rockhurst Universty Computer Services is pleased to announce the launch of my.rockhurst.edu, a new site that consolidates many of the resources available to students, faculty and staff. The site features single sign on, so you can use your Rockhurst username and password to sign-in once and access all of these services.

• check your grades, class schedule and finances
• check your email
• participate in WebCT classes
• participate in LiveText classes (requires a one-time password configuration)
• view the campus calendar
• check the cafeteria menu
• order textbooks and other bookstore items
• get the latest news from around campus and the world

We hope you really enjoy using the portal and that it makes it easy for you to access all the resources you need from one location. 

We are aware that many faculty and students are having issues getting into WebCT and using WebCT this semester.  We wanted to address those issues to give you an update as to why we have been having so many problems and also what we are doing to resolve them. 

Computer Services would like extend a special welcome to the Class of 2013, and to also welcome returning students back to campus. We hope you have a great semester and we look forward to helping you all enhance your Rockhurst education through technology.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact our office at (816) 501-HELP (4357) or email us at helpdesk@rockhurst.edu and we will be glad to assist you!

This summer, RUCS will be performing a complete overhaul of our dorm network infrastructure. This overhaul will standardize all of the equipment in our dorm network on HP ProCurve technology, allowing us to reduce complexity and increase reliability for our students. This change is more than an upgrade, it is a completely new network for our dorms. Between this overhaul and our previously announced Internet bandwidth upgrades, students should expect a much improved residential network come August 2009.

Last summer, RUCS did a partial upgrade to Xavier-Loyola Hall, which served as the template for this project.

This overhaul will remove all previous switches, hubs and wireless access points from the dorms and replace them with HP ProCurve equipment. All of the new switches will feature full duplex 10/100Base-TX connectivity between system to switch, and full 1 Gig-T connectivity from switch to switch. Previously, the network consisted of mostly hubs which are slow and inefficent. In addition, all previous 802.11b access points (11 mbps) will be replaced with 802.11g (54 mbps) access points. These upgrades should allow for maximum access to the bandwidth upgrades the entire campus will receive.

We will also be increasing the number of wireless access points to most of the dorms. The move from 802.11b to 802.11g will also give us greater range per access point. This should allow us provide coverage in all dorm rooms.

• Xavier-Loyola Hall will double the amount of wireless access points it currently has.
• Town House Village complex will double the amount of access points it currently has, we will also be using larger antennas to help penetrate all rooms.
• McGee will go from six, to nine wireless access points, with coverage on every floor.
• We will also be adding wireless coverage in the THV Community Center.
• Corcoran, in addition to having a complete renovation done by Physical Plant, will have all access points that were previously missing or broken, all brought back online.
• Student Activities Hall will now have a dedicated access point, instead of pulling signal from Corcoran Hall or the Fieldhouse.

We will also be utilizing new monitoring software to better track outages, and be proactive about issues. We'll be installing new rack mount power surge suppression systems on all equipment points to help prevent electrical storms or issues from damaging this new equipment. All of the new HP equipment feature lifetime warranties, so this investment will provide future Rockhurst students with a reliable network without additional service contract costs; it will also allow us to replace failed or malfunctioning equipment much faster than was possible with the previous network.

Rockhurst University Computer Services is pleased to announce that we have partnered with Surewest Communications of Kansas City (previously Everest) to provide increased bandwidth to our campus.

Currently Rockhurst has a 20 mbps connection through The Missouri Research and Education Network (MOREnet), a public program that provides Internet connectivity to Missouri's K-12 schools, colleges and universities, public libraries, health care, state government and other affiliated organizations. Over the last few years with the growth of video on demand services like YouTube and Hulu, voice over IP services such as Skype, and the increasing general use of the Internet on our campus, we've needed to increase amount of bandwidth we have available.

The additional Surewest line, which will be added before the beginning of the fall semester, will provide 100 mbps of multiple carrier connectivity. This, in addition to our current MOREnet connection will provide a total of 120 mbps to our campus, an increase of 5X.

Having a second provider also gives us redundant capacity. Should one of our ISPs have a problem, or need to be taken offline for maintenance, the campus should still have Internet connectivity through the other provider. Also, since we're now using multiple upstream providers (AT&T, Cogent and Level 3) , we should have a more reliable connection overall. We also hope to run the fiber connections to the campus through different pathways to limit the chances that a physical disaster would take the campus offline.

We will also be installing better, more reliable and more powerful, traffic control devices on the network over the summer. This will insure that all users of our network resources have a fast and reliable connection and to help manage this additional bandwidth. Since our connection to the Internet is a resource that we all must share, it's important for us to make sure that everyone has fair and equitable use of that resource. It is also important that this resource is used in a way that is consistent with our university's mission, and in both an ethical and legal way.

Our migration from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007 (employee) and Exchange Labs (students) has been completed. The old mail address, https://email.rockhurst.edu has been discontinued. At this time, the following addresses should be used for web mail access.

Students 

• http://email.hawks.rockhurst.edu
  OR
• http://www.outlook.com
  (if you have issues logging in at the first address, use the second)

Employees

• http://mail.rockhurst.edu

Students, if you have not setup your Exchange Labs account, you should contact the Helpdesk at 816-501-4357 for assistance.

For more information about Rockhurst e-mail, please see the Mail & Messaging section of our website. You can get more information about accessing up your email account from various desktop clients as well as Mobile Phones.