About The Systems Lab

The Systems Laboratory, which is under the Office of the Dean, provides the Information Technology support and infrastructure to the Faculty of Engineering to enable the faculty to deliver high quality education at the undergraduate and graduate levels and to engender research.  The Faculty consists of the following Departments, each of which has its own departmental laboratory:

• Chemical Engineering.
• Civil Engineering.
• Electrical and Computer Engineering.
• Mechanical Engineering.
• Surveying and Land Information.

The Systems Laboratory assists these Departmental laboratories in their development, ensures access to common teaching and desktop applications and is responsible for the network that interconnects the entire Faculty.  The laboratory also provides full Internet access to both staff and students and email accounts for staff in the Faculty.

The Systems Laboratory has three computer laboratories used for training and for general access.  Two of these (in the Systems Laboratory building) have 33 Windows 2000 PCs each and the third (on the third floor of Block 2) contains 20 Windows 2000 PCs.  There are also several servers as follows:

• 1 Sun Ultra Enterprise 150 Unix server used as the Faculty’s mail server
• 2 Windows 2000 student servers with student accounts and student applications
• 1 older Windows 2000 student server with student applications
• 2 Windows 2000 staff servers with staff accounts and virus protection software (virus protection for student computers is managed by a server in Campus IT Services)
• 4 other Windows 2000 servers used to provide other services such as network address assignment and Windows Software Updates
• 1 Unix Intel based Web server
• 1 Windows 2000 Web server
• 1 Unix Intel based firewall server

The Systems Laboratory hosts the Faculty's web pages and is connected to the rest of the campus via high-speed fibre optic cable.  The Systems Laboratory works closely with Campus IT Services to ensure compatibility and unity with the Information Technology Strategy of the Campus.

RESPONSIBILITIES
The main areas of responsibility of the Systems Laboratory are as follows:

Computer Resources
Running and administering all the computers and user accounts for the Faculty’s shared computer resources

LAN Support
Monitoring, configuring and maintaining the Faculty’s LAN and LAN related equipment

Internet Access
Providing secure and reliable Internet access.
Providing a reliable set of communication facilities via the Internet such as email, newsgroups, and mailing lists.  E-mail and Internet service is provided to the Main Library and the Faculty of Engineering.

Security
To ensure comprehensive protection is in place to prevent virus/worm attacks.
Ensuring sensitive data and/or computer equipment are not compromised by unauthorized users.

Overall Management
Central coordinator for the maintenance of software licenses and software upgrades.
Coordinating purchases of hardware to ensure that minimum specifications are met
Providing a central database of all Faculty accounts.

Technical Support
Providing technical support to the Faculty.
Providing end-user support to the Systems Laboratory users.