On December 17th 2007, the Colorado Alliance will be changing our IP addressing scheme.  We have compiled the below FAQ for your information.

Please feel free to forward this to anyone in your organization that you feel needs to be aware of the changes.

Thank you.

FAQ About IP Address Change andNetwork Upgrade on December 17, 2007

What is happening?

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries is upgrading its available bandwidth. We will be replacing our existing dual T1 lines with a 10Mb/sec connection to UCAR’s UPoP service (part of the Front Range GigaPop) via a QwestMetro Optical Ethernet (QMOE) service. We plan on retaining one of the T1s as an emergency failover connection should a problems arise with the QMOE line.

Also during this downtime, we will be upgrading the Operating System on our network switches and updating and patching our firewall.

Unfortunately, the change in ISPs requires us to change the IP addressing scheme that we use.  To this end, we will have to renumber all of our servers and public interfaces with a new IP address.  Connecting to any Alliance service (e.g. Prospector, AllianceDigital Repository, Gold Rush, CSM Voyager) via domain names will remain unchanged and no changes to your local Web pages or services will be needed.  However, if you connect to any Alliance services via a numeric IP address, you will need to change the IP address

When is the Alliance changing its IPaddress?

The IP change over is scheduled to happen on December 17^th starting at or around 8:00am.

How long will the Alliance services beunreachable?

This is a hard question toanswer.   Assuming there are no problems encountered, we anticipate that all services will be restored before 5:00pm on the 17^th.  There may be some delay as the DNS changes propagate across the Internet.  However, as with all projects of this magnitude, there are always unforeseen circumstances that may pop up that could  cause the downtime to be extended.

What benefits arethere with the new connection?

Simply put, access to all Alliance services should see a marked improvement.  Uploads to the Alliance Digital repository (ADR) should be faster and Prospector and Gold Rush response times should experience less “lag”.

The increase in performance is not only attributable to the increased bandwidth, but because most of our member institutions are members of the UCAR Front Range GigaPop (FRGP) we will be ableto eliminate a lot of network hops that traffic has to take between the Alliance and those Institutions.

What do I have to do?

For most of you, nothing.  When service is restored you will be able to access Alliance services just like you always have.

However, you will need to have your IT staff update any firewall rules that may be in place.  See next question.

What is the IP address of XXX?

To keep things as simple aspossible, the host portion of the IP address will not be changing, only the network portions.  For example:

The current IP address for Prospector is 208.178.237.47.  The new IP address will be 129.19.152.47. 

We will be consistent throughout the addressing scheme.  So any Alliance address you need to update; in firewall rules, scripts or anywhere else, you will simply replace the 208.178.237 portion with 129.19.152, keeping the last number as-is.

Can I get a headstart on this?

Yes and no.  The new IPs will not be valid until December17^th, changing any of your existing references to the new scheme will cause your connection to fail. However, if your IT staff would like to get a head start on updating your firewalls, they may add rules duplicating any existing rules with the new address, just be sure to leave the existing rules in place.  After the 17^th, when service hasbeen restored, the rules referencing the 208.178.237.0 network can be removed BUT NOT BEFORE.

PROSPECTOR SPECIFICISSUES

Don’t all local integrated library systems have a numeric IP address embedded in them?  Who will change this?

Yes, all local integrated librarysystems (ILSs) have the prospector numeric IP address embedded in them.  For III systems, this will be changed by Innovative Interfaces Inc. and not by the local site.   We will carefully coordinate this with Innovative since this cannot be done ahead of time.  For Voyager sites (CSM and the University of Wyoming), each library must change the appropriate .ini files that reference the numeric IP address on December 17^th.For Denver Public Library, we will work with DPL/DNS and other technical staff on our side to make sure all instances of the numeric IP address have been updated on December 17^th.

What about special Ports for Prospector?

Each ILS that interacts withProspector has special ports that must be opened in your local firewall for sending bibliographic updates, circ updates, patron authentication and requests.  These special ports must be opened to this new IP address.  Our recommendation is to open these new ports ahead of time to 129.19.152.47 (the new Prospector IP address).  Once everything is up and running on or after December 17^th, you may then close down these special ports to the old Prospector IP address at 208.178.237.47.  Below are the ports that must be opened in your local firewall:

Ports for III sites

• Ports 5020 and 6601 – These ports are used by Innovate ILSs for record loading (bibs and items)
• Ports 6601 – These ports are used by Innovative ILSs for circulation messages
• Port 443 – is used for patron verification for Innovative ILSs that use SSL encryption
• Ports 512-1024 – are used for patron verification for Innovative ILSs that DO NOT use SSL encryption.  If you use SSL encryption only open port 443 and this larger suite of ports can remain closed.
• Port 4444 – used to access Web reports for Prospector for both III and non-IIII systems

Ports for non-IIIsites (Voyager and CARL)

• Port 5021 – This port is used by non-Innovative ILSs (Voyager and CARL) for record loading (bibs and items)
• Ports 6601 – These ports are used by non-Innovative ILSs for circulation messages
• Ports 512-1024 – are used for patron verification for all non-Innovative ILSs.  III does not support SSL encryption for non-III systems.
• Port 4444 – used to access Web reports for Prospector for both III and non-IIII systems

GOLD RUSH

Will Gold Rush be down during this upgrade?

Gold Rush will be down most of the day on December 17^th  just like all other Alliance systems to put the new network in place.  However, once the network is restored you should not need to make any changes for using Gold Rush.

Will we need to make any changes for using the Gold Rush public interface or staff toolbox.

You should be accessing Gold Rush using domain names (e.g. goldrush.coalliance.org orgrm staff.coalliance.org).  Since domain names are not changing you will not need to make any local changes. 

What about the GoldRush link resolver baseURL?

Once again, the baseURL for theGold Rush link resolver that is embedded in other systems uses a domain name so that you should not have to make any changes anywhere.

ALLIANCE DIGITALREPOSITORY (ADR)

Will ADR be downduring the upgrade?

ADR will be down most of the day on December 17 just like all other Alliancesystems to put the new network in place. However, once the network is restored you should not need to make anychanges for using ADR.

Will ADR performanceimprove?

ADR sites should see dramatic improvement for ingesting single items or doing batch ingests for the reasons mentioned earlier.  Viewing large digital objects from the ADR public interface will also be much faster.

For more informationcontact the Alliance office at 303-759-3399 or email:

Tim Donnelly – tim@coalliance.org for general networking and IT questions

George Machovec or Rose Nelson – george@coalliance.org or rose@coalliance.org for Prospector orGold Rush questions.

Jessica Branco Colati – jessica@coalliance.org for ADR questions