Cape Girardeau County's computers to get rewired

Cape Girardeau County's mainframe computer and many of the cables used to connect it to workers' stations are 20 years old, ancient by most technology standards.

Eric McGowen, the county's information technology director, is in the process of getting proposals to replace the old computer equipment.

"We have completely outgrown our existing cabling structure," he wrote in an e-mail, adding that some cabling dates back to 1987. "We have sure gotten our money's worth."

Though the equipment is functional, it can't easily handle modern-day demands, such as bulky geographic information systems (GIS) map files. It can't handle online payments -- although the county recently purchased software that will.

McGowen estimated the cost of the improvement at $70,000, but said responses for the county's request for proposal will be more specific. The cost of the upgrade will be paid from the county's information technology project fund, he said.

One of the main reasons for updating the equipment is a yearlong project to update software for the county assessor and collector offices, which should be finished by the middle of 2009.

McGowen said the software needs more bandwidth -- capacity to deliver data -- than the current system allows. The current bandwidth is 10 megabits per second; the upgrade will bring it to 1,000 megabits.

The mainframe-and-cable setup primarily works with what McGowen called "green screen terminal emulation," which is simple text, often colored green, on a black background.

McGowan said each floor of the building would have individual cabling -- with a high-speed fiber optic connection to other floors -- that will further speed computing and provide for more flexible upgrades and repairs. The new county system would allow McGowen and other technology workers and vendors to access the system from other locations. firewall/VPN (virtual private network) to allow secure access to the county network from other locations.

He said the new technology is unrelated to plans to update the county's website.

"The county has many more computers in use than the current infrastructure supports. Several places, we have had to use hubs to attach multiple devices to a single cable. This forces those computers to share the available bandwidth between them. Also, cabling technology has evolved considerably since 1987." The existing cabling supports 10mbps speeds to the desktop; the new installation will support 1,000mbps speed (a gigabit), he said.

The public will also benefit from the improvement, McGowen said, because a free public wireless service will be added to the county administration building. It's part of a plan to add a separate internal wireless service to allow county employees to use laptops and other mobile devices in the building.

He said he was not sure if members of the public would have to get some form of pass to use the service.

"We'll have to see what the proposals say," he said.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127