Higher and Further Education

Advances in networking technology have provided access to a wealth of online learning resources and repositories; while new network applications including email, video-conferencing, instant messaging, and blogging have helped to connect geographically dispersed research groups.

Existing HE and FE Networks
Within Wales, the higher education institutions and further education colleges have autonomous control over the development and operations of their own institutional local (campus) and wide area (multi-campus) networks. Until fairly recently, interconnect and Internet access requirements were provided by two separate wide-area networks in North and South Wales.

Each regional network was effectively an extension of JANET ® – The UK’s education and research network connecting higher education institutions, further education colleges, research councils, specialist colleges, and adult & community learning providers.

Applications and Projects
The Welsh Video Network project has fast become one of the largest studio-based IP video-conferencing facility in Europe with every HE and FE institution across Wales hosting at least one studio capable of holding multipoint conferences at virtual television broadcast quality video and audio.

Specialist Research
Thanks to their high-bandwidth capability, these networks are enabling research institutions to consume huge volumes of data on subjects ranging from physics and engineering, to satellite image processing, computer science and health science.