The Linfield summer upgrade to a new version of the Cisco Clean Access Agent prevented video game consoles from connecting to the servers, a problem which was finally solvedSept. 8.
The new Clean Access Agent identifies all computers, including consoles, by their Internet Protocol address, or IP address. Consoles usually don’t have a static, unchanging IP address, which the new version of Cisco requires for all machines that connect to Linfield’s Internet.
The previous version of the Clean Access Agent only required the Media Access Control serial number of the video game consoles.
The Media Access Control is like every other serial number: It’s used to tell millions of identical machines apart from one another.
Since every console has a different serial number, networks call tell one machine from another.
Because the old version of the Clean Access Agent is no longer supported by its company, Cisco, Integrated Technology Services was forced to upgrade from the obsolete edition to prevent Linfield’s network security from being compromised by malware.
Irv Wiswall, chief technology officer for ITS, said the new version of the Clean Access Agent is also meant to be less intrusive than previous editions.
Previous stories in TheLinfield Review, such as “Internet falls short of expectations,” TLR, Feb. 19, detail some student complaints and the efforts of ITS to address those issues.
ITS was ready to address the issue with consoles when summer ended, as evidenced by its e-mails about registering gaming devices, but not enough computers were on the network during the summer.
This prevented the ITS from conducting a stress test — pushing the network as hard as it will go to see when it fails or its effectiveness degrades.
With so few computers and so much bandwidth available, it was impossible to overload the network, making a stress test meaningless.
With the network connection problem solved by ITS, students have resumed their multiplayer Internet games from their consoles.
Joshua Ensler/News editor
Joshua Ensler can be reached at [email protected].
