Regional computer network as the basis for regional development and the integration of science and administration

Józef Korbicz, Janusz Baranowski

Computer Centre, University of Zielona Góra, Poland,

J.Korbicz@issi.uz.zgora.pl, J.Baranowski@ck.uz.zgora.pl

Abstract:

This article deals with the construction of a regional computer network to be used by scientists as well as central and local government administration. Its main goal is to integrate the development of the Lubuskie province, situated in the west of Poland on the Polish-German border.

The article presents the concept of the construction of LUBRAN – the Lubusz Regional Area Network and its integration with PIONIER – the Polish Optical Internet, whose four network nodes comprise the University of Zielona Góra, the State Higher Vocational School in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Collegium Polonicum of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and the State Higher Vocational School in Sulechów.

The LUBRAN regional network designed at the University of Zielona Góra concerns linking all regional scientific and administrative units by means of an optical fibre cable network of the Gigabit Ethernet standard with the bandwidth of at least 1 Gb/s.

This article presents, among other things, the aspects of using this network for nationwide scientific co-operation, the example being that of the CLUSTERIX (National Cluster of Linux Systems) project, in which the University of Zielona Góra and 12 other universities participated. Within the CLUSTERIX project, a local computational and access node integrated with the nationwide CLUSTERIX computational grid has been constructed in Zielona Góra.

Additionally, the article describes planned projects related to using the network in a variety of areas such as local government e-administration, e-education as well as projects designed by the University of Zielona Góra concerning telemedicine, remote teaching, building regional digital libraries and other applications.