Classroom connections

Ajman University of Science and Technology is the latest institute to upgrade its network to support the raft of educational applications that universities are expected to supply these days. ACN reports.

Nowadays, it's not enough for universities to have tables, chairs and a desktop PC lab - they need a full network infrastructure with high bandwidth and reliability to support applications and services such as e-learning and video conferencing.

Ajman University of Science and Technology (AUST) is one of the many regional universities that have found that their existing infrastructure is no longer enough for the educational tools they wish to offer to their students.

 

"Our existing IT was an old infrastructure because our old main campus was established back in 1988. So the whole idea behind the project was to update this," says Raghad Ali Koussah, IT manager at the university.

Koussah explains that quality of education is very important at AUST, so the existing network needed to be upgraded to give the students the best educational tools.

"The university encourages students to work closely with professors to learn from each other and to make full use of the technology, achieving in this way a broad and rounded learning experience.

The existing communications infrastructure did not support this vision and we also wanted to guarantee availability of critical services such as e-learning and video streaming but our hub-based network had neither the speed nor the capacity to meet these requirements," he says.

AUST wanted to create a network which was highly resilient and reliable and would deliver the necessary bandwidth across the university's two campuses.