Calendar 2002–03

140 Part4•Support Facilities, Services, andStaff Organizations software pack ages, general UNIX applications, and Internet ap plications to support theteaching and instructional needs of the University. • a large pool of PCs and Macintoshes netted in a Novell Local Area Network facilitate PC software application/dev elopment and furnish access points to oth er supercompu ters, min icomp uter s, workstatio n ser vers, and campus network applications. These personal computers are located at the User Area on 1/F, Pi Ch’iu Building, and Room 103 of Wong Foo Yuan Building. • several IBM AS/40 0 mach ines an d UNIX mach in es that sup po rt the developmentand running ofmanagement information systemsof the University administration. The ITSC provides a wide variety of services and resou rces for staff and students to promote the effectiveuse of information technology in teaching and learning. They include resources and support for online teaching and learning; new means for the delivery of instruction; training for teaching staff to acquire new technologiesand skills for teaching; consultation and support for designing instructional materials and media production. The ITSC is also equipped with sever al special-purpose labor atories that arefurnishedwith high-tech facilities for multi-media applicationsand courseware development, optical mark scanning, colour printing, text/imagescanning, and user self-paced learning. Campus Bac kbone Ne twork The campus backbone network was first set up in 1992.Over the last few years, the backbone technolo gy h as been u pgraded g radu ally from FDDI (Fibre Distributed Data Interface) to ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode), and from ATM to Gigabit Ethernet. Connections between switches can therefore be made at 155Mbps o r up to 1,000Mbps. The n etwork is also a member of the Hong Kong Academic and Research Network (HARNET), a wide area ATM network linking thecampus networks of eight tertiary institutions in Hong Kong. Allthe computer systems for research and academic purposes are connected by this advanced campus backbone network so that they areaccessible to users in various dep artments, colleges, studen t hostels, libraries, classrooms, public areas, and at home. In recent years, the campus backbone network has been further extended. Through the available connection outlets, staff and students can now log into the campus network using either their notebook computers or the built-in computers. Th e ITSC also plays an impo rtant r ole in the dev elopmen t of In tern et services in Hon g Kong as it • operates the Hong Kong Internet eXchange (HKIX), which acts as a neutral interconnection point for the routing of intra-Hong Kong and intra-Asia-Pacific Internet traffic, and this eliminates the need to send local information overseas before being routed back to Hong Kong and provides faster and less expensive paths to local sites; • maintains a list of WWWservers in Hong Kong; and • exchanges thousands of USENET newsgroups with many ISPs.