After Educast.NRW was discontinued (see news from December 1, 2023), the university's own video platform "eCampus Video" is now up and running. The migration of videos from Educast.NRW to eCampus Video was successful. Currently, 9523 videos are already available for studying and teaching. The existing videos on eCampus are therefore still available. The platform can be accessed either directly via its own web interface or via the "Opencast" object in eCampus.

Further information on the new video platform "eCampus Video" can be found on the eCampus website.

The eCampus team is once again offering a wide range of webinars for students, lecturers and employees of the University of Bonn in the summer semester 2024.

Among other classes, introductions to the use of eCampus will be offered. In other webinars, you will learn more about specific tools and formats such as tests or feedback and evaluation in eCampus.

Here you can find the eCampus class overview for the summer semester 2024.

Through the use of cloud-based e-mail clients, such as the new free Outlook app and other e-mail clients (see below), secret login data and e-mail contents can get transferred to third-parties without notice (see news from December 6, 2023). Using cloudbased e-mail clients and backup programmes poses a significant threat to the university data and information security, from the perspective of the IT security and the data protection officer at the University of Bonn.

The paid for Outlook programme (from Microsoft Office) is not affected. It can be used further. Currently, there are no security concerns, as these applications communicate directly with the e-mail servers of the University of Bonn and no data is transferred to the Microsoft Cloud. 

To prevent disclosure of login-data and data outflow, using the following programmes with your Uni-ID is not allowed because of informations security and data protection reasons, in accordance with the HRZ user regulations (see § 3 Para. 2 Clause 5) and must be discontinued immediately: 

• Outlook-App for Android and iOS,
• "New Outlook for Windows" (included from version 23H2 in Windows 11),
• Windows Mail (predecessor of the "New Outlooks")
• Outlook for macOS (when using IMAP with CloudSync),
• Google-Mail (Cloud- and POP3 direct access),
• Edison Mail,
• Newton,
• BlueMail (under certain conditions on mobile phones),
• Spark und
• Xiaomi Mail.

What to do now?

Should you use one of the applications mentioned above, please change immediately (as mentioned in the news from January 20, 2024) to another product and change your Uni-ID password afterwards.

The HRZ will block the retrieval through cloud based E-Mail programmes from the 30.03.2024 by enforcing appropriate technical measures. This means that afterwards you will not be able to receive or send e-mails through the aforementioned applications.

Security risks also with cloud-backup

Please note that backup applications from Google and Apple are also categorised as highly problematic and must not be used, when they lead to outflow of university data (incl. login-data) to external cloud storages.

The »Toolbox Digital Accessibility« on eCampus offers many resources, that were developed by the ILIAS community. It contains an array of important information on the promotion of accessibility. In this toolbox are learning units that deal with the basics and the situation of students with disabilities. Furthermore, the legal obligations are explained and an overview over assistive devices is given.

For the development of teaching materials, advice on the early identification of barriers and checklists for different Office, PDF, and media formats are provided. Teachers receive important advice on accessible designs for their seminars, office hours, exams and tests. 

The University of Bonn is introducing the "Uni Bonn App" for the summer semester 2024, which was developed as a result of the successful DiCe project as part of the digital strategy. The University IT and Data Center is actively involved in the development of the app as part of the Universe project and is responsible for the technical connection to the university services and the provision of the app for all university members at the University of Bonn.

At the time of its launch* (April 1, 2024), the Uni Bonn App offers the following features:

• Employee ID**
• Student ID**
• "Deutschlandsemesterticket"**
• Studierendenwerk canteen menus (Mensa)
• Links to the websites of the University of Bonn, Bonn University and State Library and General Students’ Committee

*The Uni Bonn App is currently being actively developed and has not yet been finalized.
**Can also be used offline after logging in thanks to temporary storage function.

Statistical calculations, scientific algorithms or programming languages are part of your teaching activities or do you offer introductory courses on these topics? Then JupyterHub is the simple and university-wide solution for you!

Since mid-February (see news from February 15, 2024) the University IT and Data Center has recently started to operate the new multi-user data science platform JupyterHub. Thereby, it is possible to do collaborative work in a private and interactive environment, directly through the browsers. Teachers can, for example, use JupyterHub to create a uniform but adaptable study environment via eCampus, without first having to install software on the devices. 

To introduce JupyterHub, the HRZ offers a beginner workshop for teachers, who are interested in using the system in their courses. The workshop takes place online, on March 15, 2024 from 10:00 to 11:00 o'clock. 

Registration for the JupyterHub beginner workshop can be done via eCampus.

The time has come: "Marvin", the supercomputer of the University of Bonn installed in 2023, consisting of 192 MPP nodes with a total of 18400 computing cores and an additional 300 NVIDIA GPUs, will be available to all users of the University of Bonn (and its cooperation partners) from mid-March 2024.

Use of the new HPC cluster can be applied on the website of the HPC- and HPC/A-Lab-Team. The button for the registration form can be found under this link from March 11, 2024.

Upcoming Demolition work at the junction of the B56 and the BAB 565 (Endenicher Ei) by Autobahn GmbH made it necessary to relocate the university's cable routes in the immediate construction area at short notice. This affected several fiber optic cables between Poppelsdorf and Endenich, which form one of the main connections on the core network of the university network (BONNET). For the relocation, it was necessary to cut the existing cables (which consist of a total of around 350 optical fibers) in front of and behind the construction area and to re-route them via an alternative cable route, which was created together with Autobahn GmbH, and to reconnect them using so-called splice sleeves.

Autobahn GmbH specified a non-postponable time window from February 9 to February 23, 2024 for the relocation. Autobahn GmbH carried out preparatory construction work until February 9, 2024, and from February 23, 2024, the closure of the BAB 565 and subsequent demolition work on the "Endenicher Ei" bridge structure was scheduled. The challenge now was to organize and accommodate the extensive preparations, appointments with suitable service providers and the necessary material deliveries within the specified time frame.

Crucial data connections to Endenich were already and are still secured through path-redundant lines through the main building and the Römerstraße to Endenich.Non-redundant connections were switched to replacement lines via other cable routes as far as possible in order to keep outages in BONNET to a minimum. For a few connections, such as the fiber optic connection to the Klein-Altendorf campus, temporary interim solutions via other routes could not be made possible, so that an outage of one to two days had to be expected here. As part of the preparations, suitable points also had to be found for cutting the connection. The route shafts directly in front of and behind the construction area were not very suitable due to poor accessibility, which is also important for future work. In addition to good accessibility, the shafts must offer sufficient space to accommodate the splice sleeves and future extensions. Once suitable shafts had been found, route tests had to be carried out to ensure that the replacement cables could also be pulled through the routes to these shafts. The decision was also made in advance to pull so-called "speed pipes" into the routes instead of individual cables. These are thin empty conduits into which fiber optic bundles can later be blown over longer distances.  In the case of upgrades, this has the advantage that cables which are organised in distances  of 100 m, do not have to be lined in each shaft. This would always cause disturbances in public areas, which is why all attempts are made to avoid this. Blowing the optical fibers into existing speed pipes can be done over significantly longer distances, without having to open the shafts between the two ends of the route, which facilitates future works and upgrades at the connection to Endenich.

As part of the preparations, the distribution of the occupied and still free optical fibres across the various fibre bundles of the cable made it possible to carry out the splitting and re-splicing successively (12 fibres per fibre bundle). Compared to the logistically much simpler splitting and rerouting of the entire cable in one step, the successive splicing and in particular the simultaneous deployment of two splicing teams at both ends of the rerouting resulted in significantly minimised downtimes in BONNET.

On Friday, 16.02.2024 at 13:55, the time had come: the connection to the Klein-Altendorf campus was started and, thanks to the optimisation of the process, the changeover was completed in less than 15 minutes. The majority of critical fibres were then relocated on Saturday, 17.02.2024 between 07:00 and 15:00. Other, less critical fibres were relocated between 19 and 20.02.2024. As far as it could be integrated into the workflow, the necessary continuity measurements of the optical fibres were integrated into the splicing work, with a particular focus on the critical connections. Further measurements and the necessary follow-up work were then carried out over the following three weeks.