INDUSTRIAL PRACTICAL TRAINING FINAL REPORT

GAPCO TANZANIA LIMITED

Mafuta Road P.O.BOX 9103,

DAR-ES-SALAAM, TANZANIA
BY
DADI AMRI
REG NUM: T/UDOM/2008/03887
DEPARTMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEM
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN INFORMATION SYSTEM
B.Sc IS
AT
CIVE-UNIVERSITY OF DODOMA

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 DECLARATION
I hereby declare that this report has been prepared by me DADI AMRI with the
registration number T/UDOM/2008/03887 as recommended by my college of
Informatics and virtual education.

Supervisor name: MR H. MONGI

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to thank the many people who helped with this report. I am grateful to
my mother Rafiya Sindano for the support and consideration she showed me.

Also Mr. Pascal Shila has been a helpful and energetic editor. Thanks Pascal. I
would also like to thank Mr. Brown A. Mollel, Gapco IT Manager and PT
Supervisor for the support he gave me and Useful Information concerning many
things that gave me energy and ability to write this report.

Finally I would also like to thank my family and friends for their support and
company.

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Abbreviations
IT -Information Technology
PT -Practical Training
IT -Industrial Training
ISP -Internet Service Provider
TZ -Tanzania
RIME –Reliance Industrial Petroleum Corporation
POP3 –Post Office Protocol 3
IMAP –Internet Mail Access Protocol
HTTP –Hypertext Transfer Protocol
SMTP –Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
LAN -Local Area Network
CIVE –College of Informatics and Virtual Education
UDOM –University of Dodoma

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………….2

Abbreviations…………………………………………………………………….3

1.0 Introduction…………………………………………………………………5

1.1 Introduction to a practical training………………………………………....5

1.2 Historical background of Gapco tz ltd…………………………………….5

2.0 Assigned tasks………………………………………………………………7

2.1 Studying Gapco System and Applications………………………………7

2.1.1 Gapco application…………………………………………………….7

2.2 Networking………………………………………………………………...16

2.2.1 Peer-to-peer networking………………………………………………..16

2.2.2 Server-Based networking……………………………………………….18

2.2.3 Extending LAN Segments………………………………………………19

2.2.4 Network Cabling………………………………………………………..20

2.2.5 Guidelines for Installing cable……………..……………………………21

Problems encountered during the PT-period…………………………….….21

Recommendations……………………………………………………….…..22

Conclusion………………………………………………………….……….22

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 1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction to a Practical Training

Well, Most Students who take a degree in computing (Computer Science,

Information System, Informatics or similar) aim to find a computing related jobs in
a Private Companies or public sector Organizations. Jobs like that needs a lot of
experiences, and that experiences gained by doing a lot of Practices, this is because
there are a lot of devices that needs to be controlled by professionals who will be
trained well. So, to get useful of these equipments and how to come across with
any computing problems and there systems, any computing students needed to
practice in Public or private companies so that to be able to work comfortably in
their carriers.

I, as Information System student preparing myself to be an expert in my computing

field, I did my Industrial Training at GAPCO TANZANIA LIMITED.

1.2 Historical Background of GAPCO TZ LTD

GAPCO Tanzania Limited was incorporated on 11 th July 1994, to take over the
operations of ESSO Tanzania Limited that had operated in Tanzania since 1951.
GAPCO Tanzania Limited is the subsidiary of Gulf Africa Petroleum Corporation
(GAPCO) Mauritius and was under the management of Mr. Yogesh Kotak until
June2007. Since July 2007, Reliance Industries Middle East Dubai Dmcc (RIME)
acquired the majority shareholding and control of GAPCO Mauritius and GAPCO
Tanzania continue to be directly under the control of GAPCO Mauritius as in the
past.

The principal activities of GAPCO Tanzania are importation, storing, marketing,

selling and distribution of petroleum products. The company owns petroleum
terminal/depots and comprehensive chain of prime service stations across
Tanzania. The company imports quality petroleum products and supply them
through strategically located terminal, depots and service stations covering the
whole of Tanzania. It also supplies all types of petroleum products to independent,

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reseller, other Oil marketing companies and also to large consumers like bottling
plants, harbours, Railways, Cement Plants and Road contractors & other major
contractors throughout Tanzania.

GAPCO head office is situated at the terminal of Mafuta Street in Kurasini area in
Dar-es-Salaam city. Chain of depot and Petrol Stations are located throughout the
country, we have been instructed to value all the plant, properties, equipments
based on various location across Tanzania. The corporate culture of the company
has been to maintain international standards keeping in mind safety and
environmental regulations.

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 2.0 ASSIGNED TASKS
As a Trainee student in computing field (Information System), during the entire
period of training I had been assigned to different tasks that taught me a lot of
things and made me strong in such away that I can work in any challenging
environment.

The tasks dived into four main parts, these are as follows;

i) Studying Gapco Computing Systems, Applications and Installations

ii) Networking

2.1 Studying Gapco Computing Systems, Applications.

Gapco Tanzania limited has divided into some departments, these are as follows;
IT department, Department of operations, Department of Finance and accounts,
Department of Marketing, Department of Human resources. These Departments
are integrated by one local server located at IT department. But other branches of
GAPCO including this at Kurasini Mafuta Street Networked together with the
Main server located in Mumbai India.

At GAPCO TZ LTD, both Departments networked so that they can share

Information and documents to each other.

2.1.1 Gapco Applications

Apart from studying working system inside Gapco, I also got to able to work with
some applications (Packages) that assist daily communications, one of them that
was very common and interesting is a Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook 2007, Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager

from Microsoft, available both as a separate application as well as a part of the
Microsoft Office suite.

Although often used mainly as an e-mail application, it also includes a calendar,

task manager, contact manager, note taking, a journal and web browsing.

It can be used as a stand-alone application, or can work with Microsoft Exchange

Server and Microsoft SharePoint Server for multiple users in an organization, such
as shared mailboxes and calendars, Exchange public folders, SharePoint lists and

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meeting schedules. There are third-party add-on applications that integrate Outlook
with devices such as BlackBerry mobile phones and with other software like
Office & Skype internet communication. Developers can also create their own
custom software that works with Outlook and Office components using Microsoft
Visual Studio.

Microsoft Outlook Configurations

Outlook provides this service during a typical setup scenario. Your Internet service
provider (ISP) provides the required settings that populate the configuration pages
of the Internet E-mail information service.

You must correctly configure the Internet E-mail information service to send and
receive messages in Outlook. To do this, you must have the following specific
information about your e-mail account to manually configure it in Outlook. The
following are some information required to configure e-mail accounts.

 Your full e-mail address.

 The type of e-mail account: POP3, IMAP or HTTP.
 Your user name.
 Your password.
 The SMTP server name or address.
 The POP3 server name or address.

Method 1:

i) Start Outlook.
ii) On the File menu, click Info, and then click Account Settings.
iii) Select Account Settings from the drop-down list.
iv) On the Email tab, click New, select Email Account, and then click Next.
v) Click to select the manually configure server settings or additional
server types check box, and then click Next.
vi) Click Internet E-Mail, and then click Next.

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 vii) In the Add New E-mail Account dialog box, click Microsoft Exchange,
POP3, IMAP, or HTTP, and then click Next.

Configure the new email account. You can configure the new email account
automatically or manually.

At Gapco TZ ltd we were configuring Microsoft Outlook Manually. As follows;

To configure the new email account manually, follow these steps in the Add New
E-mail Account dialog box:

a. Click to select the Manually configure server settings or

additional server types check box, and then click Next.
b. Click Internet E-mail, and then click Next.
c. Under User Information, follow these steps:
1. In the Your Name box, type your full name.
2. In the E-mail Address box, type your full email
address. 

Your ISP provides this information. Your email address usually takes the form of a
combination of your first and last name and the name of your ISP, separated by the
at sign (@) and periods. 
For example, Farida Rajabu uses an ISP that is named Dadeez.com. The ISP may
assign an email address of frajabu@dadeez.com.

d. In the Account Type box under Server Information, click

to select the type of email account that you have.

 If you clicked POP3 or IMAP in the Account Type

box, follow these steps:

In the Incoming mail server box, type the name of the server. This is the server
that holds your messages before you download them to the computer. Type the
server name in lowercase letters. The name may be in the form of
"dadi.gapcogroup.com." Or, the name may be in the form of an IP address, such
as 172.16.0.0.

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In the Outgoing mail server (SMTP) box, type the name of the outgoing email
server. Type the server name in lowercase letters. The name may be in the form of
"mail.contoso.com." Or, the name may be in the form of an IP address, such as
10.252.255.87

Fig 1:

Fig 2:

Manualy Microsoft Outlook Configuration.

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Fig 3:

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Fig 4:

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Fig 5:

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After the above configurations complete you can now be able to receive and send
emails from/to any where.

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How to transfer Internet e-mail
The following information is the four ways to send and receive Internet e-mail.

 Press F9 on the keyboard: If you press F9, your connection type is

verified and then uploads the messages from your Outbox and downloads
your messages from the server. If you are connected through a LAN
connection, messages flow without any other dialog boxes. If you connect
to your ISP with a modem, the Dial Up Networking connection starts and
establishes the connection. Messages upload from your Outbox and
download from the e-mail server.
 On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, and then click Send/Receive
All or click the e-mail account name: You can select to send messages
only. On the Tools menu, point to Send/Receive, and then click Send
All. This option does not download any messages from the server. If you
click Send/Receive on the Tools menu and you have multiple e-mail
accounts, you have the option to select the e-mail account that you want
to use.

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 2.2 NETWORKING
A Network is a group of systems that are connected together for the purpose
Of sharing data or sharing devices. This section provides an overview of the
Two major types of networks: peer-to-peer and server-based (client-server).
I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type, as well as how to
Implement them.

2.2.1 Peer to Peer Network

In a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, all systems connected to the network can

act as clients or servers. A client is a system that makes a request for a resource or
service on the network while a server is the system providing the resource or
service. In this type of networking environment, all systems are considered equal
with one another because they can all play the same roles on the network — either
as client or server or as both client and server. The recommended number of
systems in a peer-to-peer network usually involves ten or fewer systems because of
the lack of centralized administration. As a network administrator working in a
peer-to-peer environment, you will constantly run from machine to machine to
perform administrative tasks. Typically, a peer-to-peer network involves each
system running a desktop operating system, such as Windows XP, to provide
network functionality (Fig 6 :)

Fig1 system A provides a network resource — a printer — as does system D. This

shows that system A is acting as both a server and a client, which is the purpose of
a peer-to-peer network.

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Because a central machine doesn’t store files in a peer-to-peer network, your
networking environment isn’t based on the centralized administration approach.
With centralized administration, you, as the network administrator, could perform
network administration tasks for the entire network from one place.

The major advantage of peer-to-peer networking is that you save money by not
needing to purchase a central server, which can cost the company thousands of
dollars in hardware and software.

2.2.2 Server-Based Network

Server-based networking, also known as client-server networking, is the

networking model that most companies usually choose when there are ten or more
workstations on the network. Unlike a peer-to-peer network, server-based
networking uses a central machine (the server) that delivers network services to the
workstations. Once again, these network services could be services such as file and
print sharing, user account authentication, or Web services.

The benefit of a client-server configuration is that you can leverage centralized

administration by performing the bulk of your work on the one server. For
example, if you needed to create user accounts for each of the ten users, you would
create the ten accounts on the one server, unlike in a peer-to-peer network, where
one account is created on each system. As the administrator of this network, you
create all of the shared directories on the server along with user accounts so that
the server may verify the credentials of a client who attempts to log onto the
network. All users on the network connect to this server to save and retrieve files.

Tighter security is also a benefit of a server-based networking model. Creating a

more secure environment is easier with a server-based network because your
resources and user accounts are not spread across multiple machines.
See Fig 7 below

Fig 7: the below fig shows that the client systems connect to the server to access
the printer. In this environment, all systems have a defined role — they are either a
client or a server, but not both.

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The disadvantage of a server-based environment is the cost involved in purchasing
the server hardware and the network operating system. When designing your
networking model you want to ensure that you work with someone familiar with
software licensing to ensure that you are getting the best bang for your buck.

At GAPCO TZ LTD, The Server-Based Network is used because of its Advantages

as mentioned earlier.
Additional to that, after explain in glance the network concepts. The main tasks I
was assigned in at Gapco was as follows,

2.2.3 Extending LAN Segments

LAN Segments are groups of computers and associated peripheral devices
connected by a communications channel, capable of sharing files and other
resources among several users.

These including Routers (Switches) an intelligent connecting device that can send
packets to the correct LAN segment to take them to their destination. See the fig
below (fig 8 :)

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2.2.4 Network Cabling

Cable is the medium through which information usually moves from one network
device to another. There are several types of cable which are commonly used with
LANs.

In some cases, a network will utilize only one type of cable, other networks will
use a variety of cable types.

The type of cable chosen for a network is related to the network's topology,
protocol, and size.

Understanding the characteristics of different types of cable and how they relate to
other aspects of a network is necessary for the development of a successful
network.

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2.2.5 Guidelines for Installing Cable

When running cable, it is best to follow a few simple rules:

 Always use more cable than you need. Leave plenty of slack.
 Test every part of a network as you install it. Even if it is brand new, it
may have problems that will be difficult to isolate later.
 Stay at least 3 feet away from fluorescent light boxes and other
sources of electrical interference.
 If it is necessary to run cable across the floor, cover the cable with
cable protectors.
 Label both ends of each cable.
 Use cable ties (not tape) to keep cables in the same location together.

Problems encountered during the practical training period

During the entire period of practical training at GAPCO TZ LIMITED there were
several problems arose, these included the following;

The major problem was a shortage of time to practice. Besides of Industrial

Training being a “real education” there was not enough time to practice and
solving technical problems.

Another problem was the fewer co-operations shown by some of staff members to
trainee. I t happened sometimes that a trainee assigned to a certain task, maybe of
inspecting some of staff PC’s attacked by virus and from that you may face a
difficult time from staff members, sometimes you may not even allowed to touch
there Computers.

In a situation of learning this might even be a limiting factor for becoming a good
professional.

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Recommendations
In order to construct a good professional from IT areas, the management of
responsible company should properly arrange trainee’s timetable with the staffs
and inform its workers any changes or repairs that will interfere with their daily
works at least one or two days, this will help to have much time to practice.

Conclusion
Gapco tz limited it now a big company that can accommodate many potential
students for practical training, this will not only help us but also the company
itself.
Apart from that, I thank GOD for everything he put on my way this journey,
because I have learned a lot of things, I gained fundamental practical knowledge of
networking and other things. Finally I would like to encourage other students
especially of my college CIVE-UDOM to participate fully in their PT Course
because is very potential for their carriers.

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