@device[x2700]
@make[report]
@flushleft[@B{EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY COMPUTING SERVICE}]
@flushleft[For the Attention of the E.C.U.C.]

@majorheading[Report on Communications]
@section[General]
The most significant event since the last meeting was the almost total loss of
power in the KB machine room.  Although we were able to bring up most of the
communication kit by patching to the remaining power this operation took a
couple of hours.
@Section[CPSE]
Since the January report
@begin[verbatim]
                   S/W       H/W                   S/W & H/W        Total
                 Crashes   Crashes  Environmental    MTBF            MTBF

KB  GEC 4190        0         1           2        127 days        42 days

AT  GEC 4190        1         1           0         63 days        63 days

AT  GEC 4160        5         0           0         25 days        25 days
@end[verbatim]
Apart from environmental power problems there have been 3 crashes in total on
the 2 larger GEC switches.  The KB switch was booked out once at lunchtime to
allow GEC to investigate a hardware fault.
@Subsection[TelePAC Switches]
@begin[verbatim]
                   S/W       H/W                    S/W & H/W        Total
                 Crashes   Crashes  Environmental     MTBF            MTBF

TelePAC  1 (KB)    0         0            4          >127 days      32 days

         2 (KB)    0         0            2          >127 days      63 days

         3 (Bush)  0         0            0          >127 days     127 days
@end[verbatim]
There have been no hardware or software problems with the TelePAC switches.
The load on the busiest switch has been increasing and is about 4 million data
packets or 300,000,000 bytes/day.
@section[PADs]
The new release of software, now in all the PADs, has improved the MTBF from 18
days to about 30, or one incident per PAD per month.  This performance is
expected to improve further with most of the current problems being caused by
 mains variance and a faulty chip in some CPU boards which are being
replaced.
@section[FEPs]
The incoming external load was switched from EMAS to EMAS-A in preparation for
the closedown and this highlighted both some firmware faults in the X.25 boards
and some software faults in the FEPs and mainframe.  This has caused some 18
crashes in the past month.  The problems have now been isolated and the FTP
load switched to the spare front end to minimise the problems to users.
@section[INFO]
The new Info has been very reliable and is being frequently accessed by users.
Progress is being made to tidy up the presentation of information. 
@section[PSSE]
PSSE is now stable but has suffered from problems in its PSS link late at night
as BT engineers have tested circuits.
@flushright[Brian Gilmore
29th May 1987.]