Southern Federal University

About Southern Federal Universit

Technological Institute of "Southern Federal University" in Taganrog (TTI SFU) – is one of the leading technical higher educational establishments in Russia. The history of the University started when in 1952 there was established the University of Radioengineering (TSURE) in Taganrog – an industrial and seaport city in southern Russia.

According to its organizational structure the university is an educational scientific and production complex, which includes: 6 full-time attendance faculties, the faculty of on-the-job forms of education, advanced training faculty, municipal comprehensive lycee, pre-university training center, intersectoral regional center for advanced training and retraining (MRCPK), 36 departments, scientific and technical library, retraining center "Vibor", research departments: Scientific Research Institute of Multiprocessor Computer Systems, Experimental design bureau "Mius", Experimental design bureau "Ritm", Scientific and design bureau of computer systems, Research and development center "Intech" publishing, and other establishments, which ensure functioning of the University.

According to the license, the educational process includes pre-university training, training of bachelors, specialists, masters, postgraduate education and additional professional education.

At present eight faculties of the University teach more than 10773 students, including full-time – about 6500 students. During the period from 1997 to 2002 there were trained 3318 specialists.

Additional professional education (including the second higher education) is given in the Intersectoral regional center for advanced training and retraining (MRCPK) which was founded in 1994. The Center is a structural subdivision of TTI SFU. During these years more than 6500 people have studied in MRCPK, including 1120 executive employees and specialists; 1920 medium-level specialists; more that 1800 people received their second profession. Over 2002 there studied about 451 people.

Project goals

The project goal was building of a the administered telecoms network based on Cisco equipment in five campus’ hostels, which was designed for work of the teaching staff and students with external network resources of the institute, as well as for access to the Internet with tariffication of provided services. This project was carried out by the KROK company within modernization of the telecoms infrastructure of the hostel campus, which belongs to the Engineering Institute of "Southern Federal University" in Taganrog (TTI SFU).

Fulfillment of this task was not realistic without the use of a flexible and reliable billing solution, which allows the teaching staff, students and guests of the University to access not only the Internet, but also other information resources and services of the university, including different multimedia content. All this, in turn, contributes to organization of effective educational process and creation of an optimum system of educational process management.

Among other things, there were set the following requirements to the system:

• division of users into groups: teaching staff, students, guests of the university (within each group there should be the option to set up an individual security policy;
• authentication of user in one of the following ways:
  • full access;
  • through the Web-authentication portal;
  • authentication by name and password (with the help of local base of users on a wireless access controller or full authentication MS-CHAP with the help of a RAIDUS-server);
  • usage of SSH, Telnet, SNMP protocols to manage active network equipment.

The solution and what has been done

The automated billing and customer care system (B&CC) Billmaster, developed by Inline Telecom Solutions, was chosen as a system, which met all requirements and possessed all functional possibilities.

The service of accessing internal network resources and the Internet is provided on the basis of Cisco ISG (Intelligent Service Gateway) technology, which is controlled by way of B&CC Billmaster, which allows to organize tariffication and management of access to services in real time. ISG/SSG allows subscribers to dynamically connect to services, and ensure quick, convenient, easy and comfortable access to the network and information resources they are interested in.

The basic "point of access" to internal network resources and the Internet for teachers and students of TTI SFU, is the BISA authorization portal, which was developed by Inline Telecom Solutions. The BISA portal is used for authentication of service users, their connection and accessing of different resources of the internal network and the Internet.

Usage of the Cisco ISG technology, B&CC Billmaster and the BISA authorization portal gives to possibility to organize real time dynamic access to services, with different tariff plans, which can be changed independently by connected subscribers, as well as specified by a certain group of subscribers. Such possibilities allow to very flexibly and easily delimit access to different (paid and free) information services for the teaching staff, students and guests of TTI SFU.

In addition, in order to simplify the possibility for subscribers to replenish their personal accounts there was carried out integration with the Campay system of instant payments.

Results

The main result of the carried out project is launching of the billing solution Billmaster, which allowed to "cover" all requirements of the client and provide:

• easy and convenient access to information resources and the Internet for different categories of subscribers;
• flexibility in tariff policy realization, by combining free and paid access to different educational and information resources;
• large functionality, reliability and usability;
• optimum management of the educational process;
• increase of TTI SFU rating and its attractiveness for teachers and students;
• short term of project realization (3 months) due to implementation of the "standard" solution, large experience and professionalism of project teams from the part of KROK and Inline Telecom Solutions.