Facilities

The Department is well equipped for teaching, and is continually upgrading its computer laboratories on a four year replacement cycle to ensure all equipment is up-to-date. Currently there are three Computer laboratories within the department:

  1. Linux Lab (Room 217 Faraday Building) 28 Viglen all-in-one Machines, running SUSE Linux 11.3 on 3Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processors, gigabit network cards, 19" TFT Monitors, 1 network printer.
  2. Project Lab (Room 215 Faraday Building) 20 Dell Machines, running Windows 7 Pro and SUSE Linux 11.3 on 3Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo Processors, gigabit network cards, 19" TFT Monitors, 1 network printer.
  3. Open Access Lab (Room 216 Faraday Building, run on our behalf by LIS) containing 46 Machines running Windows XP Pro on Intel Pentium 4 processors with 17" TFT monitors.

The laboratories contain a wide range of software including: programming languages (Java, C#, C, C++, Pascal/Delphi,etc.), Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, and many special purpose software tools, including graphical rendering and image manipulation tools; expert system production tools; concurrent system modelling tools; Web authoring tools; silicon chip design tools; and database clients and servers.
Students can expect to have all the latest versions of software due to the favourable licensing terms available to the university. The Department is a member of MSDN Academic Alliance which provides students access to use Microsoft products on their home PC for study work using our licenses (e.g., all Microsoft operating systems, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Visual Studio, Visio etc.).

In the background, the Department has a dedicated server room, containing a number of Dell Servers. This has a gigabit network with each machine connected individually to our network switches with either 100Mbit or 1Gbit network cards. All computers have access to the internet via JANET.

Free wireless access is provided throughout the campus via the eduroam service.

All students have dedicated storage on the Departmental Servers available from any networked computer that is backed up by the department on a daily basis. There is dedicated web space on the server for each student. Facilities are also provided by sucs.

The main point of contact between staff and students will be lectures, tutorials and via the Student Support Office. The Department also communicates via e-mail, notice boards and pigeon holes. Students also have access to lockers and a meeting area within the Department.

Students also have access to campus facilities provided by LIS, e.g. web storage, e-mail, library books, online papers, blackboard, etc.