CERN Accelerating science

What is NICE ?

(N.B. La version française ``Qu'est-ce-que NICE ?'' suit.)   David Foster CN/DCI and the NICE team

NICE was established in 1991 to coordinate the activities around Windows and Novell Netware which were well established in various parts of CERN, most notably the accelerator and engineering sectors. What has emerged is a CERN-wide architecture for supporting Microsoft Windows as a desktop computer integrated into all aspects of CERN's activities.

The opportunity to create a single environment for CERN was provided by the enormous momentum amongst software developers worldwide to produce state of the art software packages which run under Microsoft Windows. NICE has led to significant advantages by being able to use advanced development tools to produce custom graphical user interfaces for CERN applications and by customising standard commercial application packages, such as Word and Excel, to fulfil CERN requirements.

These trends have continued unabated and many new possibilities have emerged. With the price of PC hardware continuing to fall and performance to increase, with the introduction of 64-bit graphics cards and with the emergence of high resolution cheap monitors, the software vendors have not been slow to embrace the new capabilities. We can expect to see significant improvements in application user interfaces, already becoming apparent with Windows 95, and a host of more interactive, and easier to use, applications.

What can I expect from NICE ?

When a standard PC is purchased from the CERN PC shop (Frank Ovett/AS), it will be configured ``ready to run'' with NICE. You will need a Novell account which can be obtained from your local administrator whose name is available on the last pages of the NICE guide (``A Guide to Personal Computer Networks at CERN''). Failing that, an account can be obtained from the UCO directly. This account will provide you with disk space on centrally managed servers and ensures that your data are backed up.

Your PC will be configured to run Windows from a centrally managed and maintained Windows environment. This allows NICE to provide a reliable service to the user. There are simple mechanisms, most of them automatic, to ensure that the desktop PC can be returned to a known, and working, state in case of software problems. In addition, you will find that recommended applications, optional applications and many CERN specific applications have already been pre-installed on NICE. The licensing conditions for the use of the NICE applications can be obtained from Frank Ovett/AS.

The recommended applications include the office suite of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Graphics applications (CorelDraw and Designer) and administrative applications (EDH and BHT) are all available. Web browsers, Mosaic and Netscape, are provided as is the HTML authoring tool for Word -- the Internet Assistant. Your PC can be used as a high performance multi-window X-server to let you login to the central UNIX facilities or any UNIX system which provides X client applications such as Xterm. The mail application currently used is Microsoft mail which allows you to exchange e-mail and enclosures with the general CERN community.

There are too many applications to describe in detail, but clicking on the ``more groups'' icon on any NICE PC will show you the range of preinstalled and accessible applications.

I want to move from VM -- Is NICE for me ?

This will depend on the facilities which you are using from VM. Certainly the NICE environment is very rich in administrative, management and office automation tools. It is also very rich in programming development tools, particularly C++ and, very soon, Fortran (77 and 90). A well integrated mail system is available which has some limitations described later. Full Internet access is available from any PC desktop. In short, a lot of capabilities, not yet complete, but we are working to fill the obvious gaps.

Can I work with MAC users?

Yes. We have a growing number of Macintosh users who need to share their information with PC users. Files which are stored in the managed file space are directly accessible to both MAC and PC users. A Macintosh user ``sees'' the servers as appleshare file servers and can access files and directories in the same manner as normal Macintosh folders.

How does printing work ?

Most network printers are available directly from the PC. You can browse printer by name, type, capability and location to allow you to select a printer suitable for your needs.

Tell me about mail.

The mail system available on NICE is deficient in two respects. Although you can freely exchange mail with anyone worldwide from a PC desktop, you cannot, from across the Internet, access your private mail stored at CERN. We are looking at a number of options to allow you to perform these tasks from any Unix or X terminal on the Internet. Autoforwarding is also not possible. This will be available in a future release of Microsoft Mail during 1996. Nevertheless, your mail is part of the data stored on the central servers and is therefore managed and backed up. The emerging mail and messaging technologies are central to mobile computing and ``groupware''. We expect these technologies to evolve significantly during 1996.

What about my PC at home ?

A home PC can be connected to the CERN network through the Remote Lan Node external access service. A set of floppy disks can be created at CERN for installation at home which allows the user access to their mail and files stored on the Novell file servers at CERN as well as direct access via TCP/IP to the Internet. In essence, the telephone line becomes an extension of the CERN network and all facilities available on-site become accessible to the home user, albeit with the speed limitations of the telephone connection. We are currently testing an ISDN service which would give the home user 64Kbit or 128Kbit access speeds.

What about the future ?

We are looking at where NICE will go in the direction of the Windows/95 and Windows/NT operating systems. Windows/NT is strategic for large applications, such as physics data processing and engineering applications, which require a lot of facilities from the operating system (for example Symmetric Multi-processing) and which are required to run on a wide variety of hardware. NT is also strategic for a number of network services which will emerge during 1996. Windows/95 will provide a state-of-the-art environment for desktop computing and is the natural successor to the Windows 3.1 environment of today, eliminating a lot of the constraints and improving the reliability of the existing desktop.

NICE currently supports around 2500 user accounts and more than 1100 simultaneous users. The design of the NICE architecture paid particular attention to scalability and can accomodate the growing user community.

Where can I get more information ?

The User Consultancy Office in building 513 stores copies of the document ``A Guide to Personal Computer Networks at CERN'' in both English and French. This document contains a more complete guide to NICE and to the services it provides and is available on the web at:

http://nicewww/sl/nice_doc/english/nice_doc.htm for the English version and,

http://nicewww/sl/nice_doc/french/nice_doc.htm for the French version.