Taking the advantage of ICT resources in wollo university

The use of ICT is widespread throughout the world, and it has become one of the most useful sources of knowledge and development in our days. Therefore, Wollo University has the willingness to take advantage of ICT resources and it has decided to implement an ICT Center for the Wollo University community, and deploy wireless network. This ICT Center will take care of all the issues regarding not only the Internet Access, but also the communication infrastructure and the access to ICT resources both in Dessie and Kombolcha Campuses.

For that purpose a team was engaged, originally formed by two ICT teachers (Tsegaye Misikir and Molla Tesfaye), one ICT technician (Biruk Assefa), one Spanish student from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (Jesús Berdún, who is doing his Master-Thesis Project about ICT in Wollo University), and all under the supervision of the Research Vice-President (Dr. Yitbarek W/Hawariat). Later, this team was joined by another ICT technician (Alula Bahru) and the recently appointed ICT Director (Alemu Jorgi).

For the time being, an agreement with the ETC has been reached to provide the Dessie Campus with a 2Mbps Internet speed connection, using a new communication system called MSAG, so currently the Internet service has been upgraded from the former 256kbps speed connection, and for the Kombolcha Campus the arrangements are under negotiation. Regarding the Campus intranet, some services are being developed for network management, such as Proxy, DHCP, DNS and Firewall Servers, and they will be fully operative in a near future. Furthermore, the objective is to make e-Resources available, making them accessible from any computer attached to the internal network, using Web Servers. The ICT team is currently working on those issues, and related to this, new investments are being taken for both wired and wireless infrastructure throughout the Campus. Furthermore, there is a plan to implement new Computer Access Pools, like the one that is being arranged in the Library, to give access for students to both the Internet and the Intranet resources, and that it will be finished as soon as possible. Also wireless infrastructure will be deployed to connect different buildings, adding the existing computers to the whole network.

However, this kind of ICT resources needs time to be developed, and also collaboration from all the people in Wollo University, that is, teachers, students and all staff members, and the ICT team members are doing their best to achieve a well-developed ICT Center to provide useful and efficient services to the community.