Kyambogo University has received ICT equipment worth Shs300m that will be used to limit the illegal use of their Internet by non-students from neighbouring suburbs such as Banda and Kireka.
The institution has been facing challenges of security and costly bandwidth, as revealed by the Director of ICT and services, Mr John Okuonzi.
“This equipment will help identify who is accessing Wi-Fi and block those who aren’t students from tapping into it. It is also going to strengthen our network in that if a student is trying to access harmful information such as pornography, we shall be able to block the site,” he said.
As a result of using this equipment, he said that students will enjoy faster internet speeds.
“As student numbers increase, the Internet speed is slow because of the traffic on the network. Therefore, with this equipment, we shall be able to increase the bandwidth and in turn, have faster Internet speed.”
The donation was made by Research and Education Network for Uganda (RENU).
According to Prof Eli Katunguka, the vice Chancellor, the university has been facing challenges in the area of ICT, especially with the attitudes of the students.
“We still have a challenge of attitude change. When Covid hit, we had to switch to e-learning because education had to continue. But some of the students and old staff are hesitant to use these services.
Therefore, we are hoping that this equipment will change attitude,” Prof Katunguka said.
He added: “We have instituted an ICT council that will over the next four years focus on building and strengthening the ICT capacity and e-services of the university. Therefore, we are happy to receive this equipment.”
Mr Masiga Brian, a senior network engineer at RENU who handed over the equipment to the university, said this is one of the steps towards boosting education and research in Uganda.
“… we believe with the stewardship of the Kyambogo ICT team, the students will be able to use it for the good which is education and research, beyond what we are being taught in classrooms. The end goal is to improve education and research in Uganda,” Mr Masiga said.
The equipment included Cisco ASA 5585-X SSP-40 router, arista DCS-7050S-52 switches(2 units), juniper SRX300-SYB-JB routers/firewall (2 units), Cisco 3750 X series- 48 port switches(2 units) and Cisco 3750 X series- 24 port switches(2 units).