News

The emphasis on information technology in the CityU has induced a soaring demand for computing technical support, and the numbers of CSC Work Request as well as service calls have increased significantly especially during the past few months. Together with the persistent shortage of CSC manpower, the length of the CSC Work Request queue has increased rapidly and the average waiting time in the queue is now over a month.

Ever thought about tuning up your desktop PC? There are a few optimisation tricks that can make your PC run faster. In this article, we will focus on how an experienced user can fine-tune some system and hardware settings of the PC to improve system performance at no extra cost. Unless you are familiar with handling PCs, one has to be extra careful when changing the system settings.

1) Fine Tuning Your BIOS Settings

To provide easier and faster navigation, a new Intranet Home Page was launched in late September 2000. To give you an idea on what’s new, below is a summary of the enhancement that you should not miss.New OptionsMy Email Instead of clicking through the “Admin. & Commu.”menu, then “Email - EudoraPro Submenu” and finally your username, you can now just click on this option once for a quick and direct access to your Eudora mailboxes.Facilities Booking By using this option, you can reserve the bookings on the lecture theatres, classrooms, CSC teaching studios and sports facilities on-line in advance.WebCam This is a live view of the Student Hostel construction site at Cornwall Street.

 

In the previous issue of Network Computing, we have touched on a few aspects of the large-scale plan for IT Infrastructure Upgrade, namely what actions should be taken to remedy the weak points of the Campus Network, the addition of resources to some of the critical central servers and the largest ever PC upgrade exercise which was conducted in full swing only recently. In order to complete the picture of the plan, we shall examine in turn each of the other areas that also require immediate attention. They are:1) Upgrade the network infrastructure and bandwidth Over the last 15 years, the CTNET, CityU’s campus network, had undergone several phases of development in order to cope with the increasing needs and to adopt new technologies. Currently, the network consists of two parallel backbones, one for carrying ordinary data and the other for video. By adopting this model, we can be sure that optimal performance can be achieved when running services like CityVoD, video conferencing, video and TV broadcast, digital image library and multimedia applications without affecting the network traffic of services provided on the data network.

 

If you watch closely on campus, you will see more and more students use portable notebooks to browse on the Internet, register courses or check e-mail in public areas like the Library, Student Canteen, the 4/F Mall and Covered Terrace. One may begin to ask how these notebooks get connected to the network without the fuss of wiring them to specific network points. The answer is the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). To be exact, it is a flexible data communication system using electro-magnetic waves (radio or infrared) to transmit and receive data over the air.

Scanning the University network or the ports on the network is a normal exercise carried out by any network administrator. However, if it is performed without prior approval, it is considered as an offence. It will be disastrous if such activities are adopted by hackers who will make use of the University or external facilities to search for vulnerable systems within the University network or other sites as break-in targets. In fact, a number of incidents had occurred in the past whereby complaints had been received from other Internet sites.

As an I.T. support unit, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) has an obligation to introduce the most advanced technology to students and faculty. Therefore, during each academic calendar year, the CSC hosts bi-weekly seminars, known as the CSC Forum, to present topics that are of maximum academic value. The focus of the CSC Forum series is on communication between CityU and the outside world on any and all topics pertaining to computing technology.

The campus network upgrade was completed last summer and has been functioning in full scale since then. After several months of close monitoring on the performance of the network, we have identified some weak points that require immediate improvement or else single point of failure or security problems may result. The following networking equipment are needed to rectify the situations:Upgrade of Core Routers

Early in the morning, piles of cardboard boxes lined the corridor and staff running up and down were busy checking the machines to make sure that they were in good condition and ready for use. Then the staff wheeled them to different locations lot by lot for the scheduled replacement, and the real hard work had just begun.The setting was not the aircraft depot of the Hong Kong International Airport. It was the campus of the CityU in which the PC upgrade exercise was well underway. After months of discussion, the University finally made the decision in November 1999 to embark on the large-scale PC upgrade exercise.