UK National Host

University of Wales, Aberystwyth - Infrastructure for Experiments

Introduction

The University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UWA) provides a unique opportunity for ACTS experiments. There is a modern student village owned by the University, with fibre interconnections to nearby campuses and the JANET network.

Student Village Area Infrastructure

Description of Facility

As student numbers have increased over the last few years, UWA has built extensive student accommodation. In particular, in 1994 UWA opened a Student Village, to complement traditional halls of residence. This village, called Pentre Jane Morgan, houses some 1000 students in individual houses, each of which accommodates 5 or 6 students. All the roads of the estate are privately owned and the estate has a duct infrastructure feeding all the houses and a central social block. The estate is linked to the main Penglais academic campus by a private footbridge, which also carries a duct containing a multiple fibre cable to the central block. A second academic and residential campus is located about 2 Km away in Llanbadarn and a duct is about to be constructed in which a multiple fibre cable will be installed. The above artist's drawing gives a good impression of the village, and the map shows the geographical location of the campuses adjacent to the town of Aberystwyth.

Technical Information

As mentioned above, the infrastructure comprises three areas interlinked by ducted multiple core fibre-optic cables. Internally, the Penglais and Llanbadarn campuses are wired with a mixture of twisted pair and co-axial copper cables together with recently installed fibre optic backbone.

The fibre-optic cable to Pentre Jane Morgan is in place, as are all ducts, but the cabling between village houses is yet to be installed. It is likely that a mixture of fibre-optic and copper will be installed and EU ACTS and Telematics projects may be able to influence precise details.

The duct and fibre from Penglais to Llanbadarn is scheduled to be in place before Autumn 1995 and will be of sufficient capacity to support considerable experimentation. This particular duct routes via the grounds of a local secondary school and the provision of a side duct entering the school is a possibility. The school already uses N-ISDN to link to the University Network.

The Penglais campus houses, amongst others, both the Computer Science Department, responsible for academic teaching and research, and the Computer Unit responsible for computing and network provision. The University's link to the Internet via the JANET network feeds into the main computer room as do multiple N-ISDN basic rate accesses and leased lines to other locations. The JANET link currently operates at 2Mbits/sec and is likely to be upgraded to at least 8Mbps in the near future. The National Library of Wales, the Aberystwyth Science Park and Bronglais General Hospital are situated on land adjacent to the Penglais Campus, and ducts run from the campus to the first two of these. The main college telephone exchange is also located on the campus along with more student accommodation. The campus also houses the Arts Centre for the region.

The Llanbadarn campus houses the University's Department of Information and Library Studies and the Institute of Health Informatics. The campus also hosts the Ceredigion Further Education College and the Welsh College of Agriculture; the latter is soon to merge with the University. The University buildings are also the location of the Aberystwyth studio of C5C, the Video Conference network for all the constituent universities of the University of Wales. C5C can interwork with the SuperJANET video network via equipment at another node. The buildings also host the Audio-Visual department whose facilities include a recently constructed television studio and multiple video editing suites.

The University has normal office and secretarial resources which could potentially be made be available to projects along with residential and catering facilities.

User Community

The initial user community is the educational, training, research, technical and administrative staff of the University together of course with the students. Rapidly, it is becoming clear that the students also provide a market for what can be best called 'residential services', certainly covering all aspects of entertainment, teleshopping and access to Health and Public Information.

The proximity of schools, local government premises, various medical facilities, the National Library of Wales and the Science Park provide other opportunities.

A list of User Services might thus be given as:

Costs

Costs will depend on the nature and extent of access and support required.

Contact

 

Mr. David Price 
Computer Science Department
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
Dyfed. WALES
SY23 3DB, UK

Tel: +44 1970 622428
Fax: +44 1970 622455
e-mail:dap@aber.ac.uk

Prof. Mike Tedd
Computer Science Department
University of Wales
Aberystwyth
Dyfed. WALES
SY23 3DB, UK

Tel: +44 1970 622424
Fax: +44 1970 622455
e-mail:mdt@aber.ac.uk
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