Students from Victoria’s School of Engineering will be cleaning, checking and upgrading about 160 old network switches that are no longer used by the University.
The upcycled network switches would otherwise be sold as scrap metal.
The project is driven by the not-for-profit Network Startup Resource Center (NSRC) based at the University of Oregon, which helps institutes like Victoria set up computer networks across 100 developing countries.
Victoria’s School of Engineering and Computer Science Research Associate and NSRC contractor, Dean Pemberton says while the project allows the engineering students to gain hands-on technical experience in the classroom, the real benefit will be seen in Samoan tertiary institutes.
“A lot of the network switches in Samoa are completely unmanageable. These network switches, once cleaned up, will be faster and allow students to have a more reliable internet connection. They will also enable researchers at those universities to better collaborate with colleagues overseas,“ Dean says.