Nightmare on Elm Street to It's a Wonderful Life
Marlane C. Steinwart · 1997
In the summer of 199S, Valparaiso University physically wired all seven of its reside&e halls to provide a portfor each student living in each residence hall room --a 'port-per-pillow.' While the wiring was completed, thefinancial burden of purchasing hubs and.related electronics made it impossible to bring all seven hall on-line that fall.Instead, only two halls (totaling approxima fely 600 ports) went "live." One contained all freshmen, the other all upperclassmen.Ultimately only 100 connections were used by students duriitg the 1995-96 academic year.No minimum hardware configuration was dictated --students brought computers in all shapes, sizes, and operating systems and we connected them.We encountered some difficulties, but it was a manageable workload (at least by comparison, which we would later find out).Fixing connections and tweaking machines in those residence hall room occupied about 60% of one fill-time staff member's life.