Netsoc
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Netsoc refers to an Irish student based Internet Society. There are many of these in various universities and institutes of technology in Ireland, the first one established in the University of Limerick in 1992.
[edit] UCD Netsoc
"Netsoc" in UCD was founded in 1995. The primary mandate for Netsoc was to address the issue of a lack of internet access for undergraduate students. Netsoc's goal was to provide full Internet access to all students. Access was available only at certain restricted times of day for undergrad students even up until 2000. Netsoc, then, was pivotal in getting UCD students onto the information super highway. While offering email and storage space for webpages and personal files, the real killer app was unrestricted proxy access that was (relative to Computer Services' proxy at least) blazingly fast. Effectively, Netsoc had a campus-wide monopoly on Internet access. Unless you were a Netsoc member, you couldn't access the Internet in UCD. The power of this monopoly was evident; with membership artificially capped by college officials, queues would form at 6am during Fresher's Week as students desperately tried to secure themselves Internet access for the year.At its peak, The UCD Internet Society was the third largest student society in UCD, with approximately 3,000 members.
Netsoc has since generalised it's mandate, making their goal to simply make technologies and services available to students that arent provided by the Universities own facilities. Web hosting with dynamic content and multimedia streaming, live and resumable remote desktop sessions, and additional communication based applications are Netsoc's current highlights, and an "unlimited email" service is planned for 2007. Netsoc also hosts technical talks and demonstrations from various organisations in the computer industry.
[edit] Other Netsocs
* Dublin City University - "Redbrick" (estd. 1995) * Dublin Institute of Technology - "DIT Netsoc" (estd. 2000) * IT Blanchardstown - "ITB Compsoc" * IT Carlow - "Bitbucket" * IT Tallaght - "ITT Netsoc" (estd. 2006) * IT Waterford - "SNET" * NUI Galway - "Compsoc" (estd. 1982, as a computer society) * NUI Maynooth - "Minds" (estd. 2002) * University of Limerick - "Skynet" (estd. mid-1992) * Trinity College Dublin - "TCD Netsoc"(estd. 1996) * University College Cork - "UCC Netsoc"
Collectively, these and other Irish student Internet Societies form a loosely connected community called "Intersocs"
