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Faculty and StaffThere a number of services for researchers and other staff: 
Basic communications services
for your PC or workstation. This includes email, netnews, web page hosting,
and support services such as domain name service.
Access to central Unix accounts
for those who need to do computing that is beyond the capabilities of their
desktop systems.
Software for your PC or workstation.
OIT and University Procurement have arrangements to help you get a variety
of software at reduced cost.
Research Services,
including special facilities for areas such as statistical
processing and high-performance numerical computing.
Consulting and help, both for individuals
and departments.
OIT AccountsYour OIT Account is the key to most OIT computer services. The same account is used to control access to Rutgers dialup lines, Unix systems, email, news, and even some administrative applications (e.g. the online address change form). Any faculty or staff member can get an account. The process for creating these accounts is automated. It is based on data from your personnel file. You will need to supply your Social Security Number and birth date to verify who you are. Guest accounts are also available for people who are working with departments, but are not on the official University payroll. Departmental accounts are available, to allow email and web pages that are associated with a department or project, rather than an individual. For specific procedures, see Creating a OIT Account . The OIT Faculty/Staff ServersMany of these services are provided from a set of Sun Unix systems on each campus. These systems hold mailboxes for faculty and staff email and web pages created by faculty and staff. Some people use these systems without knowing it. Mail and web software will access them automatically. However it is also possible to connect to them over the network and use them interactively. People often do this when they needs that go beyond what their desktop PC or workstation can do. These systems are the basis of all of our services for faculty and staff. Thus you may want to know the name of the system on your campus:
Note that it is possible for faculty and staff at Newark and Camden to get accounts on the New Brunswick system. The New Brunswick system has certain specialized facilities (particularly for large-scale statistical work) not present at the other sites. Basic communications servicesOIT provides services of the same kind that you would expect to get from an Internet Service Provider. This includes email, netnews, web page hosting, and support services such as domain name service. In most cases you can use these services directly from your desktop PC or workstation. However you may need to log into one of our central Unix systems to do a few administrative functions such as changing your password. Some departments provide similar services, particularly for email. So you may have a choice between receiving email on a central OIT server or on a departmental server. For specific instructions, see the pages on communications services:
Central Unix AccountsAn increasing number of people are doing all of their work on their own PC or workstation. However there are often tasks for which a larger computer makes sense. Thus OIT supplies a set of large Sun Unix servers, which any faculty or staff member can use. The same computers are used to store email and web pages. So you may be using these computers for mail, even if you do all of your work from you PC. However this section isn't talking about that. It's talking about people who connect to a central machine using a program such as SSH, and type commands to it interactively (using the Unix shell). There are several reasons that you might want to use one of these systems:
The software available on our central computers tends to be faster than PC software, and it can often handle larger amounts of data. However it is normally used with a command-line interface, rather than a mouse and menus. So many people consider it less friendly. However mouse/menu-based versions are often available on the central systems, if you're willing to set up special software on your PC to communicate with Unix. For more information on using these systems, see Using Unix at Rutgers . Software for your PC or workstationOIT and University Procurement have arrangements to help you get a variety of software at reduced cost. In a few cases the software is free, because the University has a site license. However normally there is some cost. The OIT site license operation is self-funding, which means that we have to recover costs for the software and the staff person who administers it. For PC and Macintosh software, as well as some applications that run under Unix, see the MSSG site license page. There are special arrangements for Unix systems software. People who run Unix systems should consult the System administrator's web page for a variety of information about Unix support at Rutgers. On that page you will find specific entries for software for Suns and SGIs. Research ServicesOIT has a number of special services of interest to researchers. These include
High Performance ComputingHistorically, Rutgers did not have local facilities for high-performance computing. Instead, we made extensive use of supercomputers at various national centers. However we did provide help for users, both in locating an appropriate center and in preparing jobs to run there. This approach is still being used. Rutgers makes heavy use of a number of national centers. If you are interested in pursuing this approach, we suggest contacting Prof. Doyle Knight, ddknight@rci.rutgers.edu. However more recently Rutgers has begun developing local resources for high-performance computing. Most departments that do large-scale numerical computing now have clusters of relatively inexpensive systems (often, but not always, Linux-based), configured to act as a distributed computing resource. A set of these clusters is referred to as the Rutgers Computing Grid. Additional resources are available to members of the Rutgers community through CAIP, the Center for Advanced Information Processing. These include a 36-processor Sun SF12000 system, and a pair of Sun Enterprise 10,000 shared-memory systems, described in the next section. If you are interested in using either a supercomputer at national center, or a cluster at Rutgers, the best contact is currently Alexei D. Kotelnikov, alexei@pinky.rutgers.edu. There is a High Peformance Computing web page that you may find interesting. The Rutgers Computing Grid web page has more information about that project. For more information on use of the CAIP systems, contact Steven Carter, scarter@caip.rutgers.edu, or e10khelp@caip.rutgers.edu. Internet 2Rutgers is a participant in the Internet 2 project. This is a national project to build a high-speed research network. Rutgers participation in Internet 2 has three major parts: (1) connection to a high-speed national backbone, (2) support of high-speed access to a limited number of locations on the Rutgers campus, (3) support for applications that require high-performance networking.Machine-readable data:Rutgers has access to a variety of machine-readable data through the Humanities and Social Sciences Data Center at the Alexander Library. Data is available from the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), New Jersey State Census Data and from other special data archives. For more information, see the Humanities and Social Sciences Data Center. Special facilities for large-scale statistical work:Statistical work can be done on all of our central systems. However there are special provisions for this work on a dedicated system that is part of the faculty computing cluster in New Brunswick. (Newark and Camden users can also get accounts on the New Brunswick system.) These include special tape drives, and large disk space. Rci has all common types of tape drives, including Exabyte, DLT, traditional 6250 bpi tapes, and IBM "square tapes". There is also special software to read tapes in IBM and ANSI formats. This system is configured for large jobs, including larger than normal temporary and scratch spaces. Users with specific needs for large-scale statistical work should contact help@rci.rutgers.edu. Note that some of these facilities are funded by grants, and access to them requires approval of an advisory board of researchers. Consulting and HelpOIT can provide consulting, training, and help for a variety of different purposes. These includes help for individuals, as well as planning, training, and other kinds of consulting for departments. Further information is available in the following sections:
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