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In <1992Jul30.231204.6384@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> cliff@cs.arizona.edu (Cliff Hathaway) writes:

>I'd like to hear how other institutions are handling access to shared
>telecommunications facilities - telephone closets, mechanical rooms, etc.

In our department, we own (most all of) our own cable plant from the hub
to wall jack, all 10BASE-T and Token-Ring hubs, punch-down blocks, and
wall jacks.  We have access to all closets which have our equipment in
them, and can access and re-patch them as needed for our own needs. 

I have not been made aware of what policy will be for these pieces of
equipment; I believe it will be reasonable - something like "If it's
wedged and you have access, you can cycle power on it just as well (and
more quickly) as we can; if that doesn't do it, call us."

>Are there other educational institutions out there where the departments
>do their own installation and maintenance of telecommunications facilities?

We don't do our own installation; we hire the university
Telecommunications group to do it for us.  We could just as easily hire an
outside network consultant to do it, but Telecom manages the phone system
and PBX, and work closely with University Networking Services, and we find
it *very* convenient to work with them since they know a lot about the
planned structure of the network as it evolves.  We have (I hear) one of
the largest campus internets going right now (between 8000 and 10000
registered DNS hosts; TCP/IP, DECnet, Novell, Appletalk, OSI), and I want
to play along with standard equipment and design as much as possible. 

>Where and how do you make connections with the central service provider, if
>there is one?

We are currently connected to the university backbone via the u's PBX,
using a LANmark (LDI) 1 megabit connection, for which we pay a monthly
access charge of $75. 

Shortly, we will be adding a fair bit of fiber into our system, which will
be central-services owned and managed.  The routers, bridges, and fiber
modems, and fiber itself will be central services equipment, and we will be
charged a monthly access fee for their use, around $50, I believe. 
Eventually, we will be directly connected to the campus backbone via
fiber.  The campus backbone is centrally funded and controlled, and will
carry the same sort of access fee we currently have.

Basically, we are trying to buy our own equipment where there are large
numbers of them, since Telecom charges for everything by the month.  For
example, we rent a couple of jack-to-closet wire pairs from them, at $5
per month, because we don't see a need to pay for pulling trunk cable to a
telco panel for a couple of rooms.  

We could also buy "Internet-to-your-office" services (EtherJack or
AppleJack), at $15 per month per connection, but we could buy a new hub in
each month for the number of connections (about 80 currently) in our
department.  

Additional details upon request..

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	     UMN Department of Soil Science; St. Paul, MN

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