BSUnet: what it was, is and is to be Yury Varatnitski, Director of the BSU IT Center

History of BSU Networking Computer network of the Belarusian State University has been developing since In 1992: the network of BSU connected a library of BSU and a few study rooms; there was one file server and one server in the network; faculties and departments had access to e- by means of dial-up networking; link established to Internet had bandwidth of 14,4 Kbit/s

Nowadays BSUNet is the biggest network compared to ones of other educational institutions in Belarus The network consists of two parts: Corporate BSU Intranet network; Research informational network (NIKS), providing access to national and international scientific and educational resources for external users.

BSUNet Intranet (inside BSU) Belarusian State University BSUNet External Network (educational institutes, students’ hostels etc.)

Connectivity Intranet (inside BSU) Belarusian State University BSUNet BAS-NET UNIBEL External Network (educational institutes, students’ hostels etc.) To GEANT (Internet) The network of BSU is wired by optical fiber channels of 1 Gbit/sec bandwidth to the network of the National Academy of Science Bas-Net and the network of the Ministry of education UNIBEL. For access to GEANT and Internet networks a link to Bas-Net network is used. At present the bandwidth of the link can be estimated about 100 Mbit/sec.

Corporate (Intranet) part of BSUNet Intranet (inside BSU) Belarusian State University BSUNet

Corporate (Intranet) part of BSUNet Intranet (inside BSU) Belarusian State University BSUNet The corporate network of BSU counts more than 4,200 workstations. All employees and students of BSU (more than 22,000 users) have personal logon credentials (login and password) and have free and unlimited access to BSUNet, GEANT and Internet with LANs in all our buildings. Teaching staff of BSU are allowed to log into the network from their homes using dial-up access.

Corporate (Intranet) part of BSUNet Intranet (inside BSU) Belarusian State University BSUNet Students of BSU can work on their own in computer classrooms and labs of the university, faculties and departments. Hostels of BSU are also connected to the corporate network (most of them – using optical fiber channels). There are LANs deployed inside the hostels and students have access to BSUNet and Internet from their suites.

Intranet BSU Backbone Mathematics, Informatics, Physics Law Chemistry Geography Institute of Nuclear Problems Admini- stration Rector’s Office History Philology, Economics Lyceum Institute of Journalism, Philosophy and Sociology Institute of Higher Education Biology Radio Physics and Electronics Sports Complex, Hostels Institute of Continuously Education The backbone of BSU corporate network is built using optical fiber channels. These channels interconnect 29 educational and administrative buildings, inside of which we have LANs configured. International Relations

Data + Voice Mathematics, Informatics, Physics Law Chemistry Geography Institute of Nuclear Problems Admini- stration Rector’s Office International Relations History Philology, Economics Lyceum Institute of Journalism, Philosophy and Sociology Institute of Higher Education Biology Radio Physics and Electronics Sports Complex, Hostels Institute of Continuously Education Hostel (Pobediteley Av.) NIKS office Computer and telephone networks of BSU are united into a single multi-service network which uses shared optical fiber channels. Nowadays telephone network of BSU counts about 1400 telephone end-points. 8 PBXs are marked with red and yellow color

Information Resources BSUNet hosts many different information resources. The most important of them are: external Web-site ( internal Intranet-site The Intranet-site serves as an access point to internal information resources of BSU. Those resources essentially consist of: educational materials of all 16 faculties in more than 1200 learning courses (they are united into a common database with authenticated access. The access to the educational materials is provided for students by e-University specialized network system); resources of the university’s library: electronic catalogue and full-text documents; automated informational system which includes databases of students, employees, scientific and research projects and many others.

The second part of BSUNet is external network. This is a research informational computer network created by BSU. BSUNet External Network (educational institutes, students’ hostels etc.) By means of NIKS we provide access services to national research and educational networks (BSUNet, Bas-Net, UNIBEL), to GEANT and Internet for non- BSU educational institutions and institutions of scientific research, as well as their students, who live in hostels in Minsk.

External BSU Network optical Backbone BSUNet Office National Medical Library More than 300 schools in Minsk, 40 other institutions and 35 hostels are connected to BSUNet backbone. BSUNet provides hosting for more than 700 educational Internet sites. Network of the Belarusian State Pedagogical University Network of the Belarusian State Medical University BSU Main Communication HUB Hostels of the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics Network of the Belarusian State Polytechnic University Republican Olympic Center BAS-NET Beltelecom

Researches and Innovations Design and development of BSU network is based on the results of own research in the area of computer networks. Since 2001 we conduct intensive research on algorithms and methods for optimal design of computer networks. So far we have obtained the following results: performed a classification of information resources by their purpose, request processing workflow and internal structure and proposed analytical expressions and analytical models for QoS estimates of user request processing; designed and implemented an extension to NS2 modeling tool for simulated modeling of user interaction with information resources; invented an iterative decomposable method for optimal information resource placement inside computer networks of fixed topologies; developed an approach for optimization of resource placement using parallel genetic algorithms. In 2007 we won a contest for the concept development of the informational environment of the Ministry of education of the Republic of Belarus.

The informational environment of the Ministry of education of the Republic of Belarus designed by BSU

Researches and Innovations Based on the accomplished research we developed new systems of content management (CMS). They allow rapid development and management of Web-sites systems. For instance, we can take a Web-sites of educational institutions in Minsk. It consists of more than 400 semantically linked websites, which participate in informational exchange. This exchange is not only limited to data exchange (news etc.), but allows informational service exchange as well, surveys and polling for example. In 2008 we developed a new Web-site of the Ministry of education and the National educational portal. These web- sites intensively use WEB 2.0 technologies. These technologies provide users with multiple and flexibly configured services.

Internet sites designed by BSU: The official internet-site of the Ministry of Education

Internet sites designed by BSU: The National Educational Internet Portal

19 BSU Supercomputer Center Peak performance – 1,2 TFLOPS Total RAM Gb Number of processors (144 dual-core 64-bit Opteron 2200 MHz processors) Total HDD space - 11 Tb Communication link - InfiniBand

20 Integration into GRID BSUNET UNIBEL BASNET «Beltelecom» GEANT Baltic GREAD INTERNET СКЦ ОИЯЭИ BSU SCC SCC UIIP Grodno University BNTU BSUIR gLite Unicore gLite Certification Authority Unicore

21 Looking forward to the future the prevalence of electronic educational resources over traditional ones (up to 70%); the vide use of mobile (portable) computers for access to the informational resources; the growing number of students who have personal computers, mobile devices first of all (>90%), the need to be always on-line; the development and a great demand in digital media technologies;

22 Service-oriented Cloud Communicational Infrastructure Wireless Broadband Access Geant / Internet BSU e-Library IP TV «UniTV» LMS e-University Virtual Labs e-Services Supercomputer Center Payment Systems GRID Infrastructure IaaS Desktop DaaS

Integration into the international research and education authentication federation Eduroam BSU

Looking forward to the future The actual directions of development of BSU network nowadays are: creating of infrastructure for wireless broadband access into all buildings of the university upgrade of external channels bandwidth to GEANT and Internet up to 200 Mbits/sec; development of educational informational resources system, creation of electronic tutorials for all main courses; deployment of fully functional electronic library of BSU organization of regular video-broadcasting and video- conferencing in BSU network;

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