meeting IT team at twente university

Friday 18th aug, I spent sometime getting to know how the Twente university network is laid out. Here is one of the IT technical team members explaining in more detail how the university network is laid out.

The backbone of the entire university network is optical fibre with the entire university covered by cisco access points, directional and omni directional antennas. Its an encrypted network which with every student having a username & password granted at the beginning of their course of study at the university. The student's account automatically expires at least three months after completion of the course and they are then given alumni email address.
The email address is free but the former student is treated as a guest and has to pay to access the university network.

Learning how the university is laid out was really a nice experience particularly since i got an idea of setting up a community network in tanzania. It was nice to learn how such huge network of over 7,000 people is kept running with less or no failures at all.

:0)