Information Technology Unit
Mission
- Develop integrated strategic information systems to suppor t and improve the productivity and effectiveness of all operations and service to our clients
- Ensure computer network continuity, integrity and optimum performance and that IT equipment and software is properly maintained and fully operational.
- Research and evaluate innovative approaches to information management , work and service.
- We are recognised as leading Information Technology Provider through excellence in client service, teaching, research and administrative services support.
- Excellence
- Achievement
- Teamwork
- Trust
- Responsiveness
- Innovation
- Continuous improvement
- Consistency
- Maximise organisational and staff capability
- Enhance the technological infrastructure of our strategic support services
- Improve the educational experience making it rich and easy to access
- Embrace change and focus to attain excellence in provision of world class technology and customer service.
- Become a recognised key provider of IT expertise in the university
- Explore emerging technologies that show potential for applications in all mission areas.
The ITU is presently located in room 412 in the Link Building (J13). The staff of the ITU, however, will often be out of this area as they will be busy in other areas. Postgraduate and undergraduate students will be discouraged from visiting the ITU, and instead will find support in their respective laboratories. If further help if needed, users should email to ‘helpdesk’.
the ITU supports an extensive network of Unix file and compute servers, mainly Suns, together with PCs, X-terminals and printers, all available in buildings J03 and J13. Users in this category may apply for an account on the research servers. Servers are also provided for electronic mail, Usenet news and the department's WWW resources.
New staff and postgraduates should obtain a copy of the document ‘Introduction to Unix’ from the office; this has descriptions of various tools and utilities available on the Unix machines within the department, and guides and tutorials on various of these utilities.
To have a new account created, the ‘Request for Account’ form should be obtained from the Dept Office or from the ITU, filled in and returned to the ITU (either written or via e-mail).For general system problems, mail should be sent to ‘helpdesk’, explaining the nature of the problem. Since staff are often required to be in other parts of the building, attending the ITU office in person is not guaranteed to yield results. We, however, always read mail.A guide to using the Research network may be found on the web under the Department’s home page and are also available in printed form from the Departmental office.
there are over 200 PCs in nine undergraduate labs in the Department, connected to Novell and Sun Unix file servers. The Unix machines are also used for mail and WWW services and, in some cases, as compute servers. Network availability extends to all the undergraduate labs. Undergraduate users are provided with accounts on the Novell servers and Unix servers which they will use through their entire undergraduate programme of study. The PCs are bootable under either DOS/Windows or Linux, with some machines also supporting OS/2, and the network supports remote connection to any of the servers.
New undergraduate users should obtain a copy of the document ‘Students’ Guide for using the IT resources within the EIE laboratories’ from the staff in the digital laboratories; this has descriptions of various tools and utilities available, and guides and tutorials on various of these utilities.
Accounts are automatically created for undergraduate users at the start of the academic year. Should a student not have an account he/she may see one of the staff in the digital laboratories.
To get help, students in laboratories should approach the lab staff or tutors in the lab first, failing which mail should be sent to ‘helpdesk’ explaining the nature of the problem.
Guides to using the Novell network and Linux may be found on the web under the Department’s home page and are also available in printed form from the Departmental office.
Staff interested in facilities for computer assisted teaching and learning should contact the ITU. Support is provided for some CAD tools (Pspice, TurboCAD, MatLab, LabView, Magic, Electronics Workbench), for presentation tools (PowerPoint) and for Web publishing.
Academic staff who are interested in IT support for teaching should send email to ‘helpdesk’ or speak to the staff of the ITU.
The network in the School is primarily a switched Ethernet, feeding staff and research network domains (ee, sedal and speech) and the undergraduate domain (eelab). The network covers building J03 and J13, and is connected to the University ATM backbone.
The research network for staff and graduate students includes a central computer server, Cassius, 33 Unix machines, mostly Suns, mail, news and WWW servers, 9 X-terminals for remote access to the Unix computers, a Novell server Viking and about 70 PCs.
The undergraduate has two Novell servers, Climax and Kelvin, two Unix servers, Diesel and Comlab, and about 200 PCs covering most of the undergraduate laboratories.
The administrative network has a Novell Server: Nimda and the PCs connected are running Windows95/98/2000.
There are 10 printers, a scanner, a CD jukebox and DAT backup facilities.
D C Levy
