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I.T. AS AN ENABLER IN THE ACADEME
By Christopher F. dela Rosa
9 January 2005
Speech Delivered to an audience of educators and I.T. professionals of educational institutions on the use of CISCO devices in the infrastructure of the Mapua Institute of Technology.
Broadband IP Systems Hotspots for On-the-go People makes good use of the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology, and operates on the 802.11b and 802.11g Wi-Fi standards. Wi-Fi runs on a 2.4 GHz frequen4cy band that is capable of near-cable download and upload speeds. Data transfer varies from 11-54 Megabits per second (Mbps) depending on the wireless LAN card or the number of online users.
During this time, the need to address the operational efficiency of the system became evident to meet the demands of both top level management requiring consolidated financial statements and immediate reports for decision making and knowledge management; and, students requiring better services and accurate information. Students, being the clients of educational institutions must be accorded and provided with excellent services tantamount to the money they pay.
In the planning stages, the various arguments such as access to computers, internet connection, electronic learning, and I.T. driven and enabled applications for student, academic, and administrative services were to be considered in the long term plan of Mapua's infrastructure. Despite these arguments at hand, one can say, that designing the network is an easy task since there is no existing network to talk of. Yes, but you must be a visionary to know and plan all of these!
Nevertheless, surveys were conducted, reviews were done several times and designs were re-designed to accommodate both the NEEDS and the WANTS. Needs are very basic. This does not require complexity nor require an expensive infrastructure as a major resource. But, the wants, this is another story. Understanding the lack of awareness of the community with the potential returns and productivity brought about by information technology, as this is relatively a new term in the campus, intensive campaign was undertaken to tickle the great minds of our academic community to explore the unimaginable to come up with strategies that will enhance the instructional media and improve the delivery of instructions to our students. The wants became our benchmark in giving flexibility to all academic departments of the Mapua Institute of Technology to apply our motto of LEARN. DISCOVER. CREATE. Indeed, they have mastered this motto well and had consequently defined the strategic direction of the academic offerings towards Information Technology in this age of Information.
The Development Office for Information Technology was created in June 2000 to officially take over the role of the interim group in the implementation stages of the I.C.T. infrastructure of the Institute. Directly under the Office of the President, the Development Office for I.T. was given an opportunity to prescribe the I.T. infrastructure to be implemented.
What did we go for? Well, for obvious reasons, I will not be here in front of you, if we did not opt for CISCO. Mapua Institute of Technology made a bold move in selecting the active equipment to go for our passive equipment.
One advantage of venturing late in the I.T. arena is the implementation of new technologies. Enhanced Category 5 structured cabling is relatively new then. By adopting such passive element, the active elements must be robust enough to meet the projected 1,000 nodes in the Intramuros campus in the next four months.
With the Medium Term Information Technology Development Plan in place, the need to address issues on accessibility, reliability, robustness, scalability, high capacity, traffic management and maintenance must be answered.
Accessibility the extent to which the presence of the network would provide an opportunity to any stakeholder to use the facility for research, for information, and for collaboration. The extent to which the resources are available when needed and where needed.
Reliability - the extent to which the infrastructure is dependable especially on critical times of operations. Enrollment is the mission critical operation of the school. Downtime is not an option in these times of the year. With the limited time in laboratory hands on, students must have a readily available terminal for them to use and for them to explore.
Robustness the extent to which it can accommodate voluminous transfer of vital information for the discharge of knowledge and dissemination of relevant information. With file and data extensive applications used in pursuit of academic excellence, the network must be robust enough to accommodate simultaneous transactions, collaboration and information exchange. Back office transactions must also be given proper consideration --- the volume of data transferred from student personnel services departments such as the Office of the Registrar, Office of the Treasurer, Admissions Office, Office of Student Activities, Library, and the Accounting Office.
Scalability the extent to which the infrastructure is adaptable to changes in organization, structure, and functionalities, thereby, cost of investment is not wasted. It is also the ability to expand the infrastructure with out much effect on any existing functionality to new sites or locations, be it within the campus or totally a new campus.
High Capacity the extent to which the infrastructure is capable of supporting various activities. The infrastructure must have a backplane that is sufficient if not more than sufficient to the future needs and initiatives of the institute.
Traffic Manageability with the projected number of computer laboratory rooms to be in place in the succeeding school year and with the integration of I.T. in the various engineering and architecture programs through the introduction of new computer related courses and the addition of new programs towards the information sciences and technology, the traffic of data, internet access, file sharing, authentication and electronic mail must be addressed. There must be a way to segregate information and reduce the broadcast of unwanted information across the whole network infrastructure.
Maintainability - the maintenance must also be addressed for long term sustainability. With heavy transactions in all corners of Mapua in all times of the year, the infrastructure must be able to attend to this with minimal down time and must be properly configured to optimize the infrastructure. Competency of personnel in the various aspects of networking technology must be addressed to fully provide a long term sustainable and optimum network infrastructure.
In the Intramuros campus alone, there are an estimated 1,100 computers connected to the network with 23 entry level, medium level and enterprise level servers to attend to the vast needs of the populace with 17,000 users. With the segregation of schools and departments, a need to put up 17 intermediate distribution frames is evident wherein each computing facility is multi-functioning as laboratory hands-on during the regular days of the term, enrollment centers and payment centers during the off season, and sometimes, even as training centers for professionals and alumni and sometimes for extension services, as well.
In our attempt to fulfill our objective to maximize resources and at the same time enforce security measures to protect our information resources, the network infrastructure was ready in a span of 4 months, this is how we are fully energized to work and determined to meet our goal --- installing and configuring various active equipments such as the CISCO PIX firewalls, various switches such as CISCO 6500 series for the core switch, the 4000 series and 3500 series for intermediate and access layers switches, and routers such as the CISCO 2600 and CISCO 1700.
In 2002, Mapua Institute of Technology had made a strategic decision to locate and put up a new campus in Makati that is totally dependent of the main campus in Intramuros in its operations. In fact, our Makati campus is just an extension of our Intramuros campus hosting our I.T. and health sciences related programs while the Intramuros campus hosts the traditional programs in Mapua such as engineering and architecture. With this, the network infrastructure of the Intramuros campus was expanded and must be able to connect to the Makati campus. With Wide Area Networking technology readily available from our various equipments, the interconnection was easy and implemented in a snap. We just used the same design concepts in putting up the new campus.
In another strategic attempt that will affect all facets of the Mapua Institute of Technology in its academic offerings and operations, from usual semestral system adopted in the Philippines, Mapua converted to the Quarter system. This system was adopted from the western style of educational system evidently used in Canada, United States of America and the United Kingdom. Enrollment was never again the same. From the usual twice a year every June and November, now, we are enrolling students four times a year during July, September, December, and March in one school calendar year. To make things worst, it is an operational nightmare considering that we enroll students in the one week break between terms and enroll them every eleven months.
With out any modification in our physical network infrastructure and its topology, we have successfully met the demands of our complex and ever growing complex operations. To name some:
| * | An estimated 5,000 mail messages received and 3,500 mail messages sent per day |
| * | The presence of Mapua in the world wide web is critical as our strategic partners in India, Japan, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States view our website from time to time especially with our initiative to become certified by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology in the US to be substantially equivalent with their universities in the various engineering and I.T. programs and disciplines |
| * | Around 3,000 students connect simultaneously in our website during enrollment to view their grades, reserve sections and pay their matriculation charges on-line since we enroll 17,000 students in a span of 5 days . On-line job placement enables us to provide services to our new graduates and alumni seeking better career opportunities and also features our outstanding alumni in the various fields in the industry here and abroad . We have implemented virtual private networks for remote management and availability of resources to home users for electronic learning and distance learning |
| * | Implementation of redundant leased lines and optimizing the available communications media using various proprietary protocols from CISCO for load balancing and load sharing |
| * | Fully integrated implementation of the Integrated Network Access Log-in PLUS CARD or Cardinal Plus®, the first implementation of a smart campus in the Philippines using radio frequency smart cards for medical and dental services, security and access, library access and services, infraction and achievement services, and academic and financial services |
As we venture beyond the world of WI-FI to provide access anywhere and anytime in the campus for students and faculty members for collaboration and instruction bridging the boundaries of wired technology, Mapua Institute of Technology, has used wireless fidelity technology to meet this demand. As the younger generation becoming more conscious of the Internet with the vast knowledge it offers, more and more people are becoming techies. With an estimated 700 users of WI-FI technology, we can say that we had achieved our goal of providing information to all our students anytime of the day and anywhere in the campus.
With an exceptionally talented work force that is fully CISCO certified network associates (CCNA), Mapua has fully utilized its network infrastructure and the Development Office for I.T. has fulfilled its commitment of providing a reliable network infrastructure available when needed and where needed.
With all of these initiatives, Mapua Institute of Technology, true to its name and humble beginnings exactly 80 years ago this week, is one of the leading, if not the leading, educational institution in the field of technology!
And to summarize, mission critical infrastructure is not different in an educational setting. In fact, our students and other stakeholders also demand the same mission critical services. We have a variety of users in our network unlike other businesses --- here we have the whole student population as users not to discount the alumni, faculty members and employees. In fact, the operations in an educational institution involve a more complex operation and covers a more wider aspect of technology than other businesses using technology as an enabler of business and productivity. With the help of CISCO, Mapua Institute of Technology was enabled!
Thank you very much and good afternoon. |
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