ECU’s Eastnet blazes Information Highway

An access service to the Internet and the World Wide Web based at the East Carolina University School of Education has put its users on-line for nearly 44 thousand hours in its first year of operations.

The service, called EastNet, opened last March with about 250 subscribers. The current total today is 3,500. About 600 of that total are ECU faculty and staff. Other users of the service include public school teachers and administrators. An annual report issued by EastNet this week showed that its registered users logged onto the system 104,495 times during the period beginning on March 1, 1995. The total hours of on-line time for the year is 43,863.01.

In November EastNet began hosting Web sites for public school systems within its coverage area. Currently Pitt and Greene County Schools have developed their sites (http://schools.eastnet.ecu.edu) through the service. The North Carolina Association of School Administrators will go on-line through EastNet later this spring. In January of this year, EastNet published through McGraw-Hill the 2nd edition of the “EastNet Users’ Guide for Windows 95.” The book is now in its second printing. A popular feature at the site is the EastNet Parking Cam, a camera that posts a live picture from the parking lot outside of the education school’s offices and classrooms in the Speight Building on campus. The camera site (http://eastnet.educ.ecu.edu/image.htm) was mentioned in an article published by “Internet World” and averages more than 400 visits a day by Web surfers.