Introduction

On behalf of the Computer Centre, I would like to give a warm welcome to all new staff and students who have joined the University in this academic year.  I take this opportunity to introduce the Centre's wide range of computer facilities and IT services.  To our old users, I would also like to update them on the new developments of our hardware, software and services in the last few months.

The Computer Centre provides comprehensive computer facilities and network services to meet the different IT needs of teaching, learning, research and administration in the University.  We hope that you will acquaint yourself with the numerous IT services available on campus, and if you should have any difficulties in using any of our services, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Location

The Computer Centre is primarily located on the first and second floors of the Run Run Shaw Building.  The other major site is located on the first floor of the Old Library Building.  Students and staff can access the numerous PCs available in the PC laboratories or access to the campus network resources with their own notebook computers through the ACEnet (Access Everywhere Network) facilities in these two locations.  Faculty-based PC laboratories are also set up in various buildings, including Knowles Building, Main Building, KK Leung Building, Runme Shaw Building, Composite Building, Chong Yuet Ming Building and buildings in the Medical campus, the Dental campus and the Student Amenities Centres.

Central IT Services

All students, faculty and staff members of the University are eligible for free e-mail service, Internet access and gaining access to our various computer servers to meet their daily needs.  Computer accounts for first-year undergraduate students are automatically created using their student numbers as account names when they enter the University. Other students and new staff members can apply for an account on our host computer system online via the Computer Centre’s homepage.  If you have difficulties in doing this yourself, you can go to the Help Desk at the Run Run Shaw Building and the Old Library Building during office hours and ask for assistance.  Starting from this new academic term, we have begun to make use of the Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology to deliver our applications and services over the network.  It is our plan to extend this state-of-the-art technology for use by the entire University community to realize our vision of making HKU a prominent digital paperless university.

PC Facilities

The Computer Centre provides a large number of Pentium III PCs which are set up in various locations across campus for use by staff and students.  To access these PCs, you must have an account on our HKUSUA computer system.  All students have been created accounts on this server system.  If you are a staff member with an account on the HKUCC system and you need to use the PCs in the laboratories, you can always create an account on the HKUSUA computer as well.  A large variety of popular PC software and tools are provided in our PC laboratories to meet the different needs of our students.  Laser printing service is available on a chargeable basis.  All the PCs in the student laboratories are connected to the HKU Campus Network.  For staff members, they can gain access to the Campus Network conveniently with the network connected PCs in their offices.

The central PC laboratories can be booked by teachers for instructional purposes.  These laboratories provide network points for teachers to connect their PCs or notebook computers to the network.  Overhead and video projection facilities are available.  Booking should be made two weeks in advance through the Centre's General Office.

Campus Network and Internet Connectivity

Our campus network consists of a sophisticated high-speed ATM-based network backbone supporting over 14,000 network points installed around the campus and in the student residences.   ATM WAN links from the University’s main campus are set up to provide high-speed network access to the remote campuses in the Queen Mary Hospital area and in the Prince Philip Dental Hospital compound.

Our international Internet connection has been upgraded with a big performance improvement over the last summer.  Now, the HKU Campus Network is connected to the Internet through a 30 Mbps link to HARNET (the Hong Kong Academic and Research Network) which is configured with a 48 Mbps international Internet link to the US.  We are also in the process of improving our WWW proxy server facility for better response of web access by our users.

ACEnet and Hallnet

Since two years ago, undergraduate students entering our University have benefited from a student notebook computer programme.  To provide ubiquitous network access for the notebook computers, 4,000 ACEnet (Access-Everywhere-Network) network points have been installed throughout the University premises so that students can connect to the campus network anywhere on campus.  Students residing in halls also have direct access to the campus network from their own bedrooms.  Each student is provided with a network access point through the HKU Hallnet and each room is also provided with a telephone.  To use either the ACEnet or Hallnet, staff and students are reminded that they must register their network cards with the Computer Centre through their own personalised Staff or Student Intranet webpage.

Dial-up Access to Network

Furthermore, all staff and students can connect to the HKU campus network and Internet from their homes through modems and telephone lines using our PPP dial-up service.  There are now over 800 data lines which support 56Kbps V.90 standard modems and the service is free to our users.  PPP network access accounts are created for all new first-year students as soon as they are admitted to our University.  All other students and staff members who have not yet had their PPP network access accounts can register one by themselves online through the Computer Centre’s homepage.

Wireless Network for Classrooms and Public Areas

All the centrally time-tabled classrooms with 100 seats or more now support high-speed wireless network connectivity. The facility provided is of the latest IEEE 802.11b standard with 128-bit WEP (Wire Equivalent Privacy). The same kind of wireless network is also installed in our Centre’s user areas and the open areas of the podium and concourse of the Haking Wong Building, Shaw Buildings and the K.K. Leung Building. We shall see further extension of our wireless network to the Sun Yuet Suen Square, inside selected areas in the Main Library and Medical Library and in the Student Amenities Centres.  Please refer to the relevant articles in issue of this Computer News for more information.

CA and ESD development

As mentioned above, the Computer Centre has embarked on a development to deploy Electronic Service Delivery (ESD) to improve the efficiency and user convenience in many of our daily academic, administration and service activities.  Built upon the use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology that enables the use of Digital Signature over the web and Internet, we have recently set up a HKU Certification Authority server (HKUCA) and an ESD server (HKUESD) to support this development.

Staff and students can now apply for personal digital certificates (HKU-Cert) on their staff or student smart-cards.  A card-size CD-R version of the HKU-Cert is also generated to facilitate use on PCs not equipped with smart-card readers.  At this early stage of development, only a few applications of the Computer Centre have made use of the ESD technology.  We are now working with other departments and offices in exploring some possible ESD application deployments. You can find more information about this exciting development in other articles of this issue of Computer News as well.

Central Computer Servers

The Computer Centre is running quite a large number of computer servers to support our staff and students on their IT needs.  These include computation, Internet communication, as well as many other academic and administration applications.  Among the numerous servers, we have an IBM SP2 supercomputer for research support, a SUN Enterprise 10000 system for meeting the general computation and communications needs of our staff and students, a pair of Sun Enterprise 6000 systems for the central HKU WWW and proxy servers, and a high-availability cluster with two Compaq AXP 12000 systems for email, GCG genetic database and other applications used by staff members.  More information about our Centre’s computer servers can be found from the Computer Centre’s homepage at http://www.itservices.hku.hk .

High Performance Computing (HPC) Facilities

Our Centre is operating a 48-node IBM SP2 scalable parallel supercomputer which is the most powerful one of its kind in Hong Kong.  This system is a very valuable resource for our University’s researchers or graduate students who require intensive computation for their projects.  If you have intensive computing needs for your project, please do not hesitate to seek assistance from colleagues of our supercomputer team (Mr. W.K. Kwan – 28578631 or Mr. C.M. Woo - 28578632).  In the next month or two, we shall install 26 more CPUs to our existing Sun Enterprise 10000  (or the Sun Starfire) system.  By then, the system will be equipped with 41 CPUs and is the most powerful system of its kind in Hong Kong.  It would certainly be a very valuable addition of resource for supporting computation intensive research projects undertaken by our researchers and graduate students.

Help Desk

We have two Help Desks, one located in the Run Run Shaw Building (Room RR104) and the other in the Old Library Building (Room OLB134), to assist our users in computer and network problems during office hours.  For users who are not in the vicinity of the Computer Centre, you can call the hotline number of the Help Desk at 2958-2480.  Alternatively, you can direct your enquiries and requests for support electronically at email address ithelp@hku.hk.  We also respond openly to enquiries put up on the news bulletin board, hku.cc.forum, on a daily basis.

Computer and Network Equipment Maintenance

The Computer Centre provides an in-house maintenance service for PC and network equipment in the University on a cost-recovery basis.  Our aim is to provide departments with a cost-effective, convenient and fast-responding hardware maintenance service to all the PC users in the University.  We pledge to respond immediately to service calls and aims to be on your premise in the Main Campus within half an hour after receiving your call.  If your office is outside the Main Campus, we would still respond to your calls in the same way but would take a longer time to arrive at your site, depending on the travelling distance.  If you are interested in our maintenance service, please enquire about our competitive pricing at telephone 2859-2491 or come to the General Office for details.

Staff and Student Intranet Systems for Administrative Applications Access

Our Staff Intranet and Student Intranet systems provide convenient personal access to university information and communication resources.  The Computer Centre has adopted a web-based system development strategy and most of our client-based administrative systems have been converted to web-based systems for easy access.  The Student Connect system now provides an entirely web-based student administration system whereby students can register and select courses via the Student Intranet.  All students can gain access to the Student Connect system using their email account names.  The University Information System (UIS) provides departments with all the administrative information that they need on the Staff Intranet.  If you are a staff member, you should get an UIS account to facilitate your own access to personal information.

Web-based Course Development Support

The Computer Centre supports the use of the web technology in the University's teaching and learning activities and has installed WebCT, which is a web course tool, to enable teachers to mount their web-based course on the University Network.  We provide assistance to help our users in their web-based course development through our regular offerings of induction courses and training workshops on the use of multimedia design software, homepage programming and use of the WebCT software.

User Training

To provide our users with the necessary skills to use IT and our systems, we offer regular training courses on all of our computer facilities and PC software, email, Internet access and World Wide Web, news bulletin service and multi-media facilities.   Most computer courses offered by the Computer Centre are free of charge. Some courses that are provided by external course vendors through our coordination are charged at cost.  Users are advised to register early to secure a place.  All our courses can be registered over the Intranet through our Centre’s homepage.  We can also arrange special training sessions for departments at a very reasonable cost.

User Documentation

We maintain comprehensive documentation on our Centre's hardware, software and services in our “User Handbook” and "Computer News".  The handbook is normally updated once a year before the academic year starts.  Other updates on our lastest acquisitions of hardware, software and services are published in the Computer News on a bi-monthly basis.  All staff and students are notified by email when a new issue of the Computer News is published.  You can of course access “Computer News” from our Centre's webpage (http://www.itservices.hku.hk).

We also maintain a library of computer periodicals, reference manuals and books, which are available for short-term loan from our General Office located in Room 223, Run Run Shaw Building.

Concluding Remarks

I have summarized the numerous IT facilities and services supported by the Computer Centre and introduced our new developments in the last few months.  It is by no means a complete account of what we offer.  Please read other articles in this newsletter and our Centre’s publications to get all the details.

I hope you will enjoy reading the Computer News and find the information useful.  Your feedback and comments are always welcome.  It will certainly help to improve our services and guide us to develop those services that are important to you.
 

N Ng
Director
Computer Centre
Tel.: 2859 2491
E-mail: nng@cc.hku.hk