Texas-Sized Support

Help Desk Support at Texas A&M University

Mike Gerst, Information Technologist, Texas A&M University:
We have divided the state, you can see in this colored picture, into six regions and the size is about 800 miles from end to end in both directions, East, West, North, and South more or less; and there are six there. And, they are responsible for the IT infrastructure in each of the counties which is denoted by small square or rectangular object in each of those regions. Each of those regions also have research and extension centers that they have responsibilities to. Many of them are stationed at one of the research centers. And, oftentimes, there's two or more research centers in each of those areas. Some of those county offices that you have in there have their own county IT support staff and they administer their own LAN, and others connect directly to the Texas A&M University system. Some have broadband and a very few, way out there in West Texas near El Paso, are still on dial up.

This diagram shows you something about the Texas A&M University wide area connection. And, we're customers on this connection and it connects all these campuses, all the research centers, and our very large county offices like Dallas, Houston, Austin, and El Paso. And, as you can gather, we have got quite a diversity of connections and we go to the internet, you can see three clouds on there. You can't read them but each of those is a connection from the Texas A&M University System to the internet. So, if one is down we can get two others. And, one of the important things about any remote control product that we're looking for is that we don't have to know how all these folks are connected. Once it's set up and the firewall is set, then you don't have to figure out this network and you don't have to worry about these diagrams. And, that's something that we really like.