Information about housing for international students in Vienna

The "House Doebling" was the first student hostel in Vienna to become equipped with a permanent connection to the internet (in 1994/95). In 2000, the "House Doebling" became the first student hostel in Vienna to be equipped with a wireless LAN that allows students wireless access to the internet all over the campus. The "House Doebling" was also among the first student hostels to be connected to our internet service provider, the university of Vienna, via a speedy ADSL with a comfortable bandwidth of 2 Mbit/s (down) & 512 kbit/s (up). Bandwidth is doubled approximately every 1-2 years to meet increasing demands. In 2004, the current bandwidth is 10 Mbit/s up & 10 Mbit/s down. There are a few more "records": Our webpage was the first webpage of a student hostel in Vienna, and the "House Doebling" was among the first student hostels to run an own webserver.

There is a "computer room" in the "House Doebling" that can be used by the students who live in the hostel. Currently there are 11 PCs and two servers (one running linux the other one Win2k). Users can work under Win2k and linux operating systems. There is a scanner, a ZIP drive, a CD/DVD writer and a laser printer. Most of the PCs are equipped with headsets. And the number of PC workstations still continues to increase ...

In addition, students can rent a wireless LAN card in the office for a monthly fee and plug it into their own PCs or notebooks. At the moment, this service is only available for permanent residents, not for summer guests. Around 320 students already take advantage of this possibility. Wireless access is possible on the whole campus, not only in the private student rooms but also in the shared study rooms and even in the garden! Just think about the idea of lying on the lawn in the sun communicating with your friends or doing your course work with your notebook & wireless access to the internet!

As mentioned above, the "House Doebling" was the first student hostel in Vienna to become equipped with a permanent connection to the internet.

The idea to establish a computer room in the student hostel in order to provide students with access to the internet was born and persued by Peter Pichler while he was a representative of the student association in 1994. In the same year, the proposal that the university of Vienna would provide internet access (without charging provider fees to students and student hostels) was accepted by the senate of the university. The proposal was brought up and supported strongly by Dr. Peter Rastl, head of the computer center at the univiersity of Vienna, who knew that it would be extremely diffictult to establish a sufficient number of computer work places in the crowded computer rooms of the university. Helping student hostels create their own computer rooms would ameliorate the situation. This provided the formal basis for the realisation of the project.

Therefore, our internet service provider is the University of Vienna. The first connection was a 19.2 kbit/s modem line. Unfortunately at the very beginning the speed was actually only 9.6 kbit/s for several months. About two years later, the speed was increased to 128 kbit/s, and around the beginning of the new millenium in spring 2000 we got an ADSL so that the current bandwidth is 2 Mbit/s (download) and 512 kbit/s (upload).

During the first several years, the connection to the internet could be used solely from the "computer room" of the "House Doebling". Actually, it was Maciek Bieleninnik who set up the first NT server and PCs - i.e. Maciek was the first admin of the computer room. After Maciek, Robert Hoffmann became the next "main admin". Robert installed a Win NT 4.0 server, set up the workstations, and designed the network the way it is now. In short, Robert is the "main architect" of the computer room. At the beginning there were only four PCs located in a small room. Currently there are two large rooms, 11 PCs and two servers (one running linux the other one NT).

The linux server was first set up by Ansbert Sturm who works at the Institute of Software Science of the University of Vienna now. After Ansbert, Klaus Kreiner became the next "main linux admin". Klaus set up several new services on the linux server, and he was also the one who built the linux machine that serves as a router & firewall for the computer room and the wireless LAN.

In November 2000, the "House Doebling" was equipped with a wireless LAN built by Schoeller Network Design. There are nineteen Orinoco/WaveLAN access points and four 3COM switches connected to a state-of-the art fibre backbone. The wireless network was launched in November 2000, and it became an immediate success. Around 100 students already enjoy the convenience of wireless access to the internet and to the student hostel's local area network, and the number still continues to grow ...

During the year 2000, Peter Pichler invited several business corporations to submit written tender offers. Peter measured the wireless signal in many rooms to test if the equipment would work properly. These measurements in conjunction with a simple (but effective) network topology and a competitive situation for the offering business corporations made it possible to reduce the costs substantially (compared to the first offers for a "wired" or a "wireless" network). Without these cost reductions, it would probably have been impossible to realize a LAN at all (whether wired or wireless).

The whole computer group finally made a recommendation to the management of the student hostel which of the various offers to choose. Because of the fact that the costs were acceptable, the wireless LAN could be realized in a rather short period of time in fall 2000, and it can be offered to students living in "House Doebling" at a reasonable price now - they find it "just great"!

The history of our webpage:
The first version of our webpage was written by Peter Pichler and published in 1995 on the webserver of the university of Vienna. John Haas was the next wwwadmin who modified the pages. Later, the student association built its own webserver (Linux, Apache). Reinhard Mayr is now our main wwwadmin. He edited the English version of our webpages and he created the German language version of our webpage that contains a lot more information.

Of course, the history of the establishment of computer services in the "House Doebling" is not a story about a few single persons, but one written by many helping hands. It's a story on cooperation and teamwork. Therefore, the following list contains the names and information on all the students having lived or still living in "House Doebling" who have ever been members of the computer group and who have contributed, everyone on his or her own, by bringing in their ideas, knowledge, work and time ... The computer room and wireless LAN is merely a product of the teamwork of all of them together!

Maciek Bieleninnik	was the first admin of the computer room. Maciek was well known in the student hostel for the network that he had established together with others on his floor in house B. In addition, Maciek was one of the very first students living in "House Doebling" who knew how to administrate a Win NT server & network. So he was asked to set up the first server & PCs.
Walter Ebner	was a LINUX admin for several months in 2000. He wrote a linux documentation for beginners together with Sveto.
Kianoush Eshaghi	joined the computer group in 2001. Kianoush helps Peter with organizational issues, and he is also involved in general user support.
Christian Faisstnauer	was a member of the computer group for a short period of time.
Svetoslav Gergov	became LINUX admin in 2000. First, Sveto worked on a linux documentation (together with Walter). Then - in collaboration with Klaus - Sveto configured the firewall/masquerading/DHCP server, and he also worked on various queuing strategies with iptables. Svetos knowledge increased steadily. Right now, Sveto is the "linux/network guru" of the student hostel - his main responsibilities are: linux router configuration / administration & network issues. Traffic over our ADSL will be classified into "high priority" and "low priority", thus providing optimal bandwith to high-priority applications (http, telnet, voive-over-ip).
John Haas	Johnny has written the second version of our webpage, he has also been a member of the computer group.
Robert Hoffmann	is now the main admin in "House Doebling". Robert set up the NT server (currently over 160 users!), he built the PC workstations and the server, installed the system, planned the network architecture etc. Robert also placed several hundred meters of wire into the new computer room (together with Klaus and Sveto). Now Robert also administrates the wireless network in addition to the computer room network. Without his work, neither the computer room nor the internet services in the "House Doebling" would be possible. Robert knows virtually everything concerning computer hard- and software. He is our "NT and network guru". Robert has also been very active in the student association of the "House Doebling" and he helped negotiate contracts and agreements with the management of the student hostel. Recently, Robert began to work on a program that will integrate user-information (in a database) with administrative functions. This program will allow users to go to a certain webpage and prolong their account simply by entering their username and a 16-digit PIN-code written on a token that they can buy in the student housing office. This will dramatically simplify the amount of work that has to be done by the admins.
Gerald Katzbeck	was one of the linux admins. In addition to that, he explained users how to use the linux (preferred J!) and Win-NT systems, and he tried to explain the advantages of LINUX.
Ferhat "Feri" Kiymaz	became linux admin in 2001 (until spring 2002). Feri set up the "surfstation" in the club-room, and he also helped test wireless equipment for the wireless LAN.
Markus "Max" Klocker	joined the computer group in 2001. Together with Markus Meier, Max provides superb user support for both the computer-room and the wireless LAN. If users have problems installing wireless access on their PC, Max will help them (for a small fee). Max also helped build many of the workstations and servers of the computer-room. Whenever there is a hardware problem, Max (or Markus) will solve it! Together, Max and Markus maintain the hardware of the computer room. In addition, Max helps Robert and Reini with NT administration.
Klaus Kreiner	was the main LINUX admin for several years. Klaus set up several new services on the linux server, and he was also the one who designed and set up the linux machine that serves as a router & firewall & DHCP server etc. for the computer room and the wireless LAN. Klaus knows virtually everything about LINUX and networks in general - for several years, he was our "network & linux guru".
Reinhard Mayr	is one of the NT admins, and he is also the wwwadmin. Reinhard wrote the German version of our webpages, and he also edited the English version. Reinhard helps Robert build and set up the workstations, he also works as an NT administrator and as a webmaster in "real life". In addition, Reini writes great programs that are useful for our webserver (cgi-scripts etc.) and for the computer-room.
Markus Meier	is an NT-admin since fall 2000. Markus is also responsible for the hardware, and he helps Robert build and set up PCs etc. Together, Markus and Max maintain the hardware of the computer room. Markus also provides superb user support for computer-room and for wireless-LAN users. If users have problems installing wireless access on their PC, Markus will help them (for a small fee). Markus also helps Robert and Reini with NT administration.
Peter Pichler	had the idea to establish a computer room with internet access in 1994 when he was a member of the "House Doebling student union", and this project was realized in 1995. Peter is a medical student, he is the "organizer" of the computer group and involved mainly in organizational issues and user support. Peter has established and maintains contact to the university of Vienna (our internet service provider), the telekom Austria and other corporations. He planned and "organized" the first computer room and the various data links used for internet access (first: modem link, then: DDL-L digital data link, now: ADSL asymmetric digital subscriber line). Peter also helped the computer group attain sponsorship by the "Creditanstalt Bankverein" and by "Schoeller Network Design" (the company that established our wireless network). He also contacted the Ministry of Science so that the management of the student hostel was granted a subsidy for establishing internet access. In addition, Peter wrote the first version and contributed to later editions of the English version of the "House Doebling" webpage. In spring & summer 2000, Peter persued the idea of establishing a wireless network in the "House Doebling". Peters detailed planning and testing of the wireless network and the competitive situation for the offering corporations lead to a substantial drop in the price of the submitted offers. So Peters organizational efforts helped the student hostel save a considerable amount of funds. In fall 2001, Peter organized the first "Vienna student hostel admin" meeting. The idea is to further co-operation between admins in various student hostels: A large part of the problems are similar in most of the around 30 student hostels connected to the internet via the university of Vienna, so it is only logical to co-operate and share ideas for the solution of these problems (mainly quality of service issues). There is also a "majordomo" mailing-list run by Robert Wein, and a webserver run by Markus Zöchling (http://www.sth.ac.at/) that serve the main purpose i.e. to increase co-operation and exchange of ideas between student-admins.
Georg Piwonka	was an NT admin for about one year. Georg also knows virtually everything about computers. He is a great programmer, he knows about a dozen programming languages, and he is also an excellent NT admin.
Andreas Riegler	joined the computer group in 2001. Andreas is a linux admin, and he also helps with user support (both linux and general user support).
Ansbert Sturm	was the first linux admin in "House Doebling": He built the first linux server and set it up in the computer room. Ansbert works at the Department of Software Science of the University of Vienna now.
Dina Sunic	was a member of the computer group for several years. Dina was involved mainly in user support.
Philipp Vymazal	joined the computer group in spring 2002. Philipp has excellent computer network knowledge and experience with both Windows and Linux operating systems. He is very active as a linux admin, and his responsibility includes general network management and quality-of-service.