- Impact
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now that Nigeria has better equipment, you may exprience/receive more money making emails from them +
http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/po...=tionline/legacy/inst2006/mar06/fnigeria.xml&
Networking Nigeria
IEEE Helps Engineering Students Get
World-Class Internet Facility
BY HARRY GOLDSTEIN
It took the better part of two and a half years and tens of thousands of dollars, but there I was on 5 January 2006 sitting in the spanking-new computer center in the electrical and electronics engineering department at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. I was there with the encouragement of my boss, IEEE Spectrum Editor Susan Hassler, to celebrate what the IEEE Nigeria Section and the university had accomplished. The project was backed by donations I had helped them solicit from the IEEE, the IEEE Foundation, and the Hewlett-Packard Foundation.
I was alternately banging out e-mail and using a friend’s cellphone to call the IEEE office in Piscataway, N.J. The computer center’s manager was on another cell, talking with a server technician in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. The clock was ticking. IEEE Past President W. Cleon Anderson, along with a host of students, faculty, university administrators, and Nigerian press, were due to visit the 60-seat IEEE/HP Telecenter for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony in less than 24 hours. And the IEEE Xplore digital library, the centerpiece of the IEEE’s donation to the telecenter, had to be accessible from all 60 computer terminals in the building.
The satellite Internet connection had just been switched on, and I took full advantage, sending a message to IEEE’s Publishing Technology Department, listing all the IP addresses that IEEE servers had to recognize to give the telecenter’s computers access to the 1.2 million documents in IEEE Xplore.
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Standing at the entrance to the IEEE/HP Telecenter at its dedication in January are, from left, IEEE Past President W. Cleon Anderson, IEEE Nigeria Section chair Tunde Salihu, University of Ibadan engineering chair Ola Fakolujo, IEEE Spectrum Senior Editor Harry Goldstein, University of Ibadan Vice Chancellor O.A. Bamiro, former section chair Isaac Adekayne, HP representative Stanley Muoneke, and former Ibadan student branch chair Debo Onifade.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And then it hit me: this unique facility was finally online. Although there are a few computer labs scattered among African universities, the one at the University of Ibadan is special in two ways. First, it supports 60 users at any given time, thanks to 15 Hewlett-Packard 4-4-1 workstations, computers that have had their processors and hard drives partitioned four ways to feed four different monitors and keyboards. The IEEE/HP Telecenter is the first in sub-Saharan Africa to use these low-cost but robust machines. Second, thanks to a US $14 000 donation from the IEEE Foundation to fund Internet access for two years and a matching donation from the IEEE, students and faculty have free access to the IEEE digital library for at least three years, giving aspiring engineers and their instructors a valuable resource found nowhere else in Africa.
COMPUTER-POOR After I visited Nigeria for the first time, in June 2003, to report on the impact of the $640 million SAT-3 fiber-optic cable for IEEE Spectrum, I didn’t imagine that I would return any time soon. True, I’d made friends among the engineers, students, professors, and many IEEE members I’d met. Although all endured the typical privations one expects in a developing country—bad roads, rolling
http://www.theinstitute.ieee.org/po...=tionline/legacy/inst2006/mar06/fnigeria.xml&
Networking Nigeria
IEEE Helps Engineering Students Get
World-Class Internet Facility
BY HARRY GOLDSTEIN
It took the better part of two and a half years and tens of thousands of dollars, but there I was on 5 January 2006 sitting in the spanking-new computer center in the electrical and electronics engineering department at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. I was there with the encouragement of my boss, IEEE Spectrum Editor Susan Hassler, to celebrate what the IEEE Nigeria Section and the university had accomplished. The project was backed by donations I had helped them solicit from the IEEE, the IEEE Foundation, and the Hewlett-Packard Foundation.
I was alternately banging out e-mail and using a friend’s cellphone to call the IEEE office in Piscataway, N.J. The computer center’s manager was on another cell, talking with a server technician in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. The clock was ticking. IEEE Past President W. Cleon Anderson, along with a host of students, faculty, university administrators, and Nigerian press, were due to visit the 60-seat IEEE/HP Telecenter for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony in less than 24 hours. And the IEEE Xplore digital library, the centerpiece of the IEEE’s donation to the telecenter, had to be accessible from all 60 computer terminals in the building.
The satellite Internet connection had just been switched on, and I took full advantage, sending a message to IEEE’s Publishing Technology Department, listing all the IP addresses that IEEE servers had to recognize to give the telecenter’s computers access to the 1.2 million documents in IEEE Xplore.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Standing at the entrance to the IEEE/HP Telecenter at its dedication in January are, from left, IEEE Past President W. Cleon Anderson, IEEE Nigeria Section chair Tunde Salihu, University of Ibadan engineering chair Ola Fakolujo, IEEE Spectrum Senior Editor Harry Goldstein, University of Ibadan Vice Chancellor O.A. Bamiro, former section chair Isaac Adekayne, HP representative Stanley Muoneke, and former Ibadan student branch chair Debo Onifade.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And then it hit me: this unique facility was finally online. Although there are a few computer labs scattered among African universities, the one at the University of Ibadan is special in two ways. First, it supports 60 users at any given time, thanks to 15 Hewlett-Packard 4-4-1 workstations, computers that have had their processors and hard drives partitioned four ways to feed four different monitors and keyboards. The IEEE/HP Telecenter is the first in sub-Saharan Africa to use these low-cost but robust machines. Second, thanks to a US $14 000 donation from the IEEE Foundation to fund Internet access for two years and a matching donation from the IEEE, students and faculty have free access to the IEEE digital library for at least three years, giving aspiring engineers and their instructors a valuable resource found nowhere else in Africa.
COMPUTER-POOR After I visited Nigeria for the first time, in June 2003, to report on the impact of the $640 million SAT-3 fiber-optic cable for IEEE Spectrum, I didn’t imagine that I would return any time soon. True, I’d made friends among the engineers, students, professors, and many IEEE members I’d met. Although all endured the typical privations one expects in a developing country—bad roads, rolling
