SCM

We can see -

• Admin Affiliation - the admin affiliation here is arts-classics (our fictitious department)
• Addhost Records - Classics has three computers registered in addhost to use the network
• "Addhost IP's" and "Addhost MAC's" - you can ignore these two fields - they are just saying that all three computer entries in addhost have an IP address allocated and have their MAC address entered
• Machines Seen - all three computers have been seen on the network
• Network Ports Standard - there are five standard network wall outlets seen to be in use by Classics (these are connected to network equipments ports)
• Ports Seen - 4 of the 5 outlets seem to be in current usage
• Ports Total - the total number of outlets in use by Classics is five
• Walloutlet - This shows a count of the actual walloutlets - should be the same as "Ports Total"
• Billable services - the largest number on the line is highlighted in a light blue box - when ITS charge, they use the largest number on the line
• Monthly charges - what you are actually being charged in dollars
• Snapshot - the date and time at which the snapshot this report is based on was taken

The only two you really need to even look at are "Addhost Records" and "Ports Total". Because ITS charge based on the largest of these numbers, that's the number you have to somehow reduce if you want to reduce your bill. Of course, when they are equal, you'll need to reduce both. Well look at that in a moment.

But first, if you were to click on the "5" in the Billable Services column, you would see something like this -

We can see that all three registered computers for Classics have been seen recently so they are all obviously in use and we can't remove any of them (if you did want to remove one or more, you'd need to contact Ian Coulter or Johnathon Blythe).

What we'd like to try to do here in Classics though is see if any wall outlets can be removed because for Classics this is the larger number (there are more outlets than registered computers) - we could save $17 per month for each one. So we go back a step then click on the "5" in "Ports Total". We then see this -

Here's how the thinking might then go -"Ok, the first three are definitely all right, but what about those last two? What's this computer "Private-mjones.arts" doing in there still? That was the privately owned laptop of that visitor we had back in 1997 - he's long gone. Let's get Ian or Johnathon to remove that one and we'll save $17 a month from now on (of course, we wouldn't have things that old in the tables - this is just a more extreme example to highlight the point). Also, we got Ian to trace the outlet for the fifth one and found that port 11 on switch clay-11s-601-eas1 is in room s620 outlet D6S/39. Oh, now I remember - there used to be three computers in that room when it was our sessionals room but now it's a single user office and that outlet's not being used so let's get it turned off."

(You wouldn't normally turn off network outlets though because it won't usually save you anything since you will almost certainly always have more registered computers so that's the number ITS will use in charging you. Also, they'll charge you $260 later on if you decide to get the outlet turned on again!)

Hopefully, this covers everything. From the start of 2004 onward, ITS started charging individual schools for their outlets/registrations. If there's anything else you need to know please contact me (and I may add it to this page).