The Polytechnic of Viseu is one of the first three entities to have its connection to the RCTS activated at 100 Gbps*, within the scope of the RCTS 100 projectThe President of this higher education institution, José dos Santos Costa, highlights the impact of this update, also emphasizing the role of FCCN services in the daily life of the academic community.
What is the significance and impact of activating the Polytechnic of Viseu's connection to the national 100 Gbps teaching and research network?
Over the past few years, the Polytechnic of Viseu has increased the availability of digital services for its users. The availability of services and ease of access has led to a significant increase in the number of devices simultaneously connected (cell phones, tablets, laptops, IoT, etc.) to our digital services, as well as a significant increase in the consumption of multimedia services.
The connection of the Polytechnic of Viseu to the national 100Gpbs teaching and research network is extremely important to meet the speed needs of various users, now allowing us to provide a service with greater bandwidth and support more users simultaneously with high quality of service.
In terms of technological infrastructure, this update has opened up new perspectives for accessing cloud services (such as Software as a Service), redundancy and fault tolerance services, computing, among others, as well as the transmission of events held at the IPV, to the public, through video streaming.
Academically, it also enabled significant improvements in support for teaching activities, opening up the possibility of using emerging technologies such as virtual labs, immersive environments, virtual reality, and learning analysis of data generated by online e-learning platforms and related services (Zoom). In this context, it contributed to the dynamic adjustment of students' content and/or academic paths, fostering their success and commitment to these new teaching paradigms, always with a view to continuously improving IPV's digital services.
In terms of research and development, it provides faster access to national and/or international scientific conferences in a hybrid format (in-person and online) and access to massive online databases, particularly academic and scientific publications, among others.
What is the importance and impact of the FCCN Unit's digital services and projects on the daily lives of the Polytechnic of Viseu community?
The digital services and projects provided by FCCN to our community are already essential to the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, making it difficult to single out just a few. In terms of visibility and impact, eduroam stands out for enabling our community to have connectivity anywhere there is internet access. eduroam, as well as ensuring this same connectivity, automatically, to all who visit us.
The service is also worth highlighting Colibri, which we depended on so much when the lockdowns began and which is here to stay, as it has become a fundamental tool in the Institute's day-to-day operations. Also B-on is already a service universally used by the IPV community, allowing simpler and more convenient access to all available repositories.
Without being exhaustive, these are examples of services used by our community, Filesender, RCTS-CERT, RCTS-Digital Certificates, RCTSaai, RCAAP, PTCRIS, SCIENCEVITAE and SCIENCEID, Videocast, Educast, Ship and Arquivo.pt.
With greater bandwidth already available for external access, the use of new services, particularly cloud services, will also be explored.
In short, because I must mention and emphasize it as President of the Institution, the services provided by FCCN are already ubiquitous in the IPV and have a strong and unique impact on the daily work carried out by our entire community.
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Learn more about the RCTS100 Project – *Project co-financed by the Operational Technical Assistance Program, Portugal 2020 and the European Union, through the European Regional Development Fund.
