Netsoc

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.

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, their main focus was on unrestricted proxy access that was much faster that UCD Computer Services' proxy. Effectively, Netsoc had a campus-wide monopoly on Internet access. Students did not have internet access on Campus. 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 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 its 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.

Unfortunately, despite The New generalised mandate, the UCD Netsoc website - along with all services once provided - appears to have fallen off the Internet as of November 2007. Indeed, the domain 'netsoc.ucd.ie' is ominously not resolving, suggesting the organisation is having severe infrastructural problems.

UCC NetSoc

The UCC "NetSoc" standing for Networking Society was originally founded to address the issue of lack of computer access on campus. As this issue has been effectively addressed by the college the society has changed its focus more towards administrating the student web server in the college, running multiple gaming NiGHTS, coding tutorials, guest lectures, trips to other technological events in Ireland, and the appreciation of technophilia in all its internet forms. The society maintains loose ties with the former Computer Science Society, though unofficially. Many of the committee members are in fact students of Computer Science.

The current (Academic year 2007/2008) committee of the society includes Keith O'Brien as Auditor, with Stephen Carey acting as Chief-Flake. The roles of Public Relations Officer will be filled by Cian O'Mahony, Secretary by Kenneth Rea, Treasurer by Eoin O'Mahony and Equipment Officer by Eamon Wong.

ITTallaght NetSoc

The ITTcomputing society (NetSoc) only came into existence As of 2004 after the original computer society(CompSoc) ended in 2001

Aims and Objectives

• To increase and promote awareness of electronic communication as well as related computing systems.
• To provide a forum to discuss and gain experience in computer networking.
• To help educate people in the usage of Internet utilities and resources.
• To encourage the use of freely available software, under both freeware and general public license distribution.
• To guide people in the proper use of computer equipment as per acceptable usage policies outlined below.

Current Status

After the loss of the societies original server during the summer(2007) as result of a college wide power surge,many services have been affected by this,such as its connection to the intersocs IRC network, The society has run numerous gaming nights and other events to try raise funds for the equipment needed to resume normal operation., The society has recently been issued a grant by the college to acquire new a new server, Which should allow the society to resume normal operation.The new servers will go live 1st of January 2008

ITTralee NetSoc (http://www.netsoctralee.com)

Aims and Objectives

• To play LAN games
• To teach people how computers speak to eachoter
• To play LAN games

Inspired by all the other great NetSocs throughout the country, a small group of students from ITTralee stumbled upon the NetSoc concept through LAN sessions throughout the country. Originally NetSoc Tralee was a small society with only word of mouth dragging between 4 and 12 members on a given night, but nowadays seeing as many as 40 people showing up twice a week on tuesdays and thursdays for an almighty LAN session. 2006's members number rose to over 80 members and 2007 has the numbers already over 50 members. Increases in numbers are largely due to the founding of a website (http://www.netsoctralee.com) with online arcade and forums. NetSocTralee is an out and out gaming society. It's all we do, as games appeal to everyone, but computer networks are not everyone's cup of Java. We have members from many non computing courses like Health and Leisure, Business, etc. We use the college labs which are more than capable of running F.E.A.R, CSS, Quakewars, etc. We convinced the technicians to alter the routing tables to allow traffic between 2 labs (s304 and s306), each of which can hold AbOUT 30 gamers.

This is the first year that NetSoc is an official recognised society of the ITTralee, so next year we anticipate well over 100 members to join.

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. 2004)
• Institute of Technology, Tralee - "NetSocTralee" (estd. 2002)
• 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"