• Access to services for students and staff had been made easier through dedicated portal pages that use the latest technology.
• Cluster setup is now used to serve web/portal sites and to insure high availability, reliability and better performance.
• Security through encryption is made available wherever needed.
• Share Point portals for Collaboration purposes has started at CIC as pilot project and it will be made available for staff/students after that.

• 350 Thin clients with the latest specs had been provided.
• The necessary number of servers with suitable specs had been provided.
• Required training for the lab supervisors had been made.
• Now the project is installation phase and expected to be ready by the starting of the second semester this year.

• To insure stability, reliability and better security Thin client technology had been adopted to serve administrative staff running Oracle applications.
• These thin clients will be using Citrix system which is centric computing and will reduce the cost of ownership and ease the support and application updates.
• This project is in implementation phase now and will provide around 120 thin clients plus the early used 60 thin clients (total 180 TC will be in use for administrative staff at this stage).

• Active Directory infrastructure is very important project that is necessary for:
• Authentication purposes: for most of the provided services through portals and other resources access such as wireless, RAS ..etc.
• Security purposes: by implementing the suitable policies, insuring OS and Antivirus optimum functionality and updates.
• The design and infrastructure of the Active Directory had been early made last year.
• All users accounts (students, staff ) has been created on the Active Directory and access to different resources ( such as wireless access)  is granted through the adopted procedures.
• A scheduled plan to include all the PCs infrastructure has started last year and hopefully will achieve goals this year 2007.

• New upgrades had been made to insure email system security and terminate spoofing.
• Anti Virus and Anti Spam upgrades had been made to reduce harmful and unnecessary emails.
• Hardware and storage upgrades are planned and will be achieved if the financing is available through this year budget.

• The project has started last year and adopted the latest developing tools.
• The project integrates with portals and insure high security measures.
• Cluster setup infrastructure that insures high availability, reliability, scalability and higher performance had been provided.
• User friendly and ready-to-fill forms are provided to make the updates by contacts very easy.
• Contacts training workshops had been made.
• The site will go life by the starting of the second semester this year 2007.

• Help desk office had been opened last year, the starting was  to support users and grant access for the wireless infrastructure.
• Help desk system had been installed and the technical support tasks are now managed through this system.
• Soon support calls will be accepted through this automated system to make call for services easier and follow ups better.
• Knowledge base and variety of faq(s) will made available to give end users fast and easy support.

• This project aims to create single sign-on procedure based on Active Directory to provide access for a user to the granted services and resources.
• Awareness sessions and deep discussions had been made in cooperation with Microsoft to discuss the possible scenarios to do this project.
• Proof of Concept project has started.
• An expertise team from Lebanon financed by Microsoft are implementing this POC, all concerned staff are involved in the implementation.
• The next step will be decided after the end of the POC to be completed soon.

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a method for taking analog audio signals, like the kind you hear when you talk on the phone, and turning them into digital data that can be transmitted over the Internet.

With VoIP, you can make a call from anywhere you have networks(LAN) connectivity. Since the IP phones  their connected to LAN, Another alternative is the softphone. A softphone is client software that loads the VoIP service onto your desktop or laptop. The softphone has an interface on your screen that looks like a traditional telephone. As long as you have a headset/microphone, you can place calls from your laptop anywhere in the broadband-connected world.

VoIP phones features includes:

• Caller ID
• Call waiting
• Call transfer
• Repeat dial
• Return call
• Three-way calling

VoIP  Technology Advantages:

• Enhancement of phone calls quality.
• Connecting the university with its health centre in Irbid without the use of the infrastructure of any communication company, like what was in the past, but using the computer network infrastructure which is already exist.
• Users may use their IP-phones anywhere, while they are keeping their phone numbers.

We are looking forward and planning to use this technology with the wireless network, which will develop a mobile phone network within the university

The success of projects and initiatives can depend on how we access and share the latest news, ideas and information. The video conferencing suite in our Knowledge and Learning lets us share information with other groups, individuals and communities across the globe as if you were meeting in the same room, helping us to get the most out of our education and business communications.

Video conferencing is an interactive form of real-time communication that uses screens, in addition to a sound link. This TV-style linking allows you to hold meetings, discussions and give presentations without having to leave your place of work, helping you to save time and money.

Benefits of video conferencing

• enhance your distance learning experience and support by putting you in touch with other learners in different geographical regions and/or with lectures in the University.
• video conferencing allows for collaboration by document sharing. Many people in different areas can work on the same project and make contributions.
• many institutions can receive the same broadcast simultaneously, and thus a much greater level of participation can be gained. For example, a lecture being broadcast to students at many different educational institutions.
• using video conferencing saves money as it can lower your expenses - there is no need for all the costs involved with traveling, such as meals and tickets.
• you can video conference with many more people than would fit into a single meeting room because each party will be using their own facilities.

Video conferencing systems

To support life distance learning CIC had provided and running the following video conferencing systems types

•  TANDBERG
•  POLYCOM
•  AETHRE-VEGASTAR

 A lot of courses where given with contribution with other local and international universities. In addition, many specialized scientific lectures in different field where held.

In this phase, the network infrastructure for the students housing will be built each building is connected to a central point using optical fiber cables, the housing administration staff desks will be connected, so they will be able to use a computerized system for their jobs, and reading rooms will be covered by a wireless network, these rooms are distributed in all the buildings, 4 rooms per building. We are looking forward and planning to cover all students' rooms with wireless network.

A WLAN typically extends an existing wired local area network. WLANs are built by attaching a device called the access point (AP) to the edge of the wired network. Clients communicate with the AP using a wireless network adapter similar in function to a traditional Ethernet adapter.

WLAN can bring JUST campus  into the 21st century. Demand for LAN service in dormitories, classrooms, and throughout campus is at an all-time high. Increasingly, colleges and universities are realizing that wireless LANs can provide the flexibility and simplicity needed to address their connectivity demands. Wireless LANs help JUST providing students with mobility, reduce overall network costs, and connect remote locations to central buildings and data services.

CIC look forward to see JUST community -students, faculty, and staff-could access the network from wherever they were. Instructors could deliver live quizzes during class, providing immediate feedback about the effectiveness of a lecture. Students could collaborate effortlessly, from anywhere. Research and library access could happen from the lawn on a sunny day. Big dreams, yes, but wireless LANs are a key building block to making any of these dreams a reality.

Advantages of Wireless LAN

•  Installation of a WLAN is quick and simple, and prevents the need to break walls to install cabling.
• WLAN provides the flexibility of extending the LAN to places where cables cannot be deployed. The initial investment for WLAN hardware can be more than that of wired LAN hardware, but the overall installation costs and operational costs can be much lower ,Cost benefits are greatest in dynamic environments requiring frequent moves and changes.
• WLAN presents the flexibility and mobility that LAN users need to access real-time information anywhere in their organization.
• The 802.11x standard makes WLAN more secure than the wired LAN. Complex 64-bit and 128-bit encrytion .

To setup your computer (laptop/PDA) to join JUST WLAN visit the following site:

www.just.edu.jo/wlan

Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed to help educators create effective online learning communities, CIC will support hosting eloctronic courses at the beginning of the second semister of acadmic year 2006/2007.

Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services helps users work together. SharePoint sites provide a central repository for documents, information, and ideas, and allow users to work interactively.

CIC begins to use SharePoint Service Localy for the purpose of tasks managment as pilot project that will be extended to all university departments in a short period of time. 

CIC started to develope selected courses from each faculty with cooporation with faculty members, the purpose of this project is to support elictronic courses development and to produce digital resources for university students.

A team for each course was performed to handle all aspects of course development frmo instructional design to the development itself.

This team is consist of :

• The infrastructure to serve this project is ready now:

o       High end IBM Cluster and SAN storage setup had been installed.

o       High end RISC servers that runs Solaris had been obtained.

• Moodle the open source widely used learning management software is currently used in this project; the elearning team had gained the required experience for this system.
• The elearning teams are working with the faculties to develop the electronic content for one course for each faculty at least as starting point.

• The center was working with the providers of these tools for initiatives of site licensing agreements.
• The center had enclosed the year 2007 CIC budget proposal this project cost.
• If the required financing is provided this project will be achieved this year.

• High end PCs and presenting systems had been provided to part of these classrooms.
• Access to Internet/intranet had been made available to all the classrooms through Wireless coverage.