310 likes | 316 Views
Anne Märdimäe Estonian Educational and Research Network ( EENet ) Tartu, Estonia NATO ANW: The Fourth CEENet Workshop on Network Management Management Issues for Excellence in Research and Education Networking (MIXREN) Moldova 2004. Network users in CEE. Ways to identify their needs.
E N D
Anne Märdimäe Estonian Educational and Research Network (EENet) Tartu, Estonia NATO ANW: The Fourth CEENet Workshop on Network Management Management Issues for Excellence in Research and Education Networking (MIXREN) Moldova 2004 Network users in CEE.Ways to identify their needs
Overview • User categories in CEE • Identifying the needs of the user community • User surveys by EENet
Categories of users (institutions) (1) • Universities • Research institutes • Libraries, Museums, National Archives • Secondary Schools • Institutes of higher/further education • Government departments (national, regional, local) • Primary Schools
Categories of users (institutions) (2) • University Sites • Hospitals (other than University hospitals) • All Others
HU HUNGARNET LT LITNET LV LATNET MD RENAM PL PIONIER RO RNC RU RBNet/RUNNet SI ARNES SK SANET UA URAN NREN-s whose data was extracted from TERENA Compendium data: AL ANA AT ACOnet BA BIHARNET BG IST Foundation BY BASNET CS AMREJ CZ CESNET EE EENet GR GRNET HR CARNet
Allowed user categories in CEE (1) Data source: TERENA Compendium 2004
Allowed user categories in CEE (2) Data source: TERENA Compendium 2004
Identifying the needs of the user community • How does the NREN in your country find out the actual needs of its different users (institutions)? • In your opinion, in what areas are the needs of researchers and educators different?
Ways to find out the actual needs: 9 - Our customers themselves contact us for expressing their needs [also: regular contacts with users] 8 - Our specialists estimate the needs of users according to current usage of services, use the experiences of other NREN-s 6 - The board consisting of representatives of users defines the needs of users
4 - We organize user conferences where the users can express their needs • 3 - We run user surveys regularly (EE, GR, HU) • direct contacts with decision-makers or technicians in institutions • generalization of the information received from the main client and applying that on other end-users • participation in conferences which are organised for schools involved in IT projects
Areas with different needs of researchers and educators: Researchers need more: • Available bandwidth • More advanced services like VLAN, IP telephony, manageable bandwidth... Educators need more: • End-user support
Rather no difference in need for: • Reliability of service • Centrally offered services by NREN like electronic mailboxes in the NREN-s server, webhosting
Summary about needs “...all researchers, teachers and students require cost-effective, reliable, widespread and advanced network services, regardless of their geographical location or subject discipline.” SERENATE studies 31 December 2003
User surveys by EENet • Annually since 2000 • High response rate (58% of all user institutions in 2004) • Possibility to keep track on changes of needs • Respondees: one contact person per user (institution)
NREN can learn from answers: • Are all existing services familiar to the users? • How the users evaluate the current services? What they think should be changed in them? • Fields of usage of Internet connectivity • How the needs of users have changed? • Need for additional services
Importance of surveys for users: • Their opinion matters • A channel for suggesting changes, give new ideas, to transmit both critic and praise • Possibility to compare the answers to these of others as the report is publicly available • Getting information about newer services
More benefits: • Feedback to the board of NREN, to the ministry and other politicians • Reasoning of funding applications • PR • Positive feedback to NREN personnel
EENet’s user survey 2004 • Target group: Institutions (research, educational, cultural) using one or several services in the Estonian academic network • 781 questionnaires posted • Responding activity 58%
Aims • Find out the number of end-users of the academic network (permanent connection only) • Examine the contentment with different services, find out needed changes • Get information about how well the users know the existence different services (thereby also promoting the services which are less known)
Some results Permanent connections • About 210 000 end-users using EENet's permanent connectivity in 2003 • 65% satisfied with their present Internet connectivity via academic network
Current bandwidth and actually needed bandwidth (universities, high education)
Current bandwidth and actually needed bandwidth (high schools, gymnasiums)
Additional services/changes asked for: • more bandwidth • guaranteed bandwidth during the videoconference • GRID • information about all (incl.very short) connectivity breaks • central server for archive of video lectures • backup services via backbone
WiFi services in academic nework • VoIP • LANtoLAN • support for building of homepage of the smaller institutions • possibility to administer the e-mailboxes in EENet's server (create, delete) • courses (for system administrators, on security, data communication etc)
more HOWTO-s in Estonian • consultations about security, warnings about security holes etc • different databases (e.g. about art schools, music schools, software for teachers etc) • etc...
Actions after the User Survey • Full report in the Internet • Translation into English will be prepared and published later • All the organizations which asked specific information of complained about specific technical problems were contacted, informed, helped out
Links • http://www.terena.nl/compendium/2004/ • http://www.serenate.org/publications/d21-serenate.pdf • http://www.eenet.ee/englishEENet/usersurvey2003.html • http://www.eenet.ee/englishEENet/webstr.html
Thank you! Anne Märdimäe anne@eenet.ee