CASE STUDY: Campus Networking

In today’s era of fierce business competition, the role of an institution
is to build a workforce that can fight the corporate battle with the single
motive of winning. Today’s networking technologies can help build the dynamic
education environment that supports that role. IMT, a premier management
training institute at Ghaziabad, had this very objective in view when it decided
to install a state-of-the-art network across the campus.

The Evolution

The main campus of IMT is spread over 14 acres in the township of Ghaziabad,
20 kilometers from Delhi.

In the last eight years, the IMT network has evolved from a bus topology
network of a few computers, and is moving toward becoming a completely wireless
network by the beginning of the next year. "IMT will be among the first few
educational establishments to instigate smart card technology, complete virtual
library and wireless campus", says Prof. Ashok Ghosh, director, IMT.

The first network of IMT was installed in 1994 comprising a few computers
connected via the bus topology. In 1997, IMT introduced a hub-based network
connecting 78 terminals and in 2001 it has more than 600 terminals on the
switch-based network.

The major decision to upgrade the network was taken in end-2000. Tenders were
floated to invite the best vendors with competitive prices. IBM India was
selected to install a world-class network that could fulfill IMT’s educational
needs.

The intranet installed at IMT has advanced fiber optic cables
running at 1 Gbps and a high-speed distributed network that gives a connectivity
of 100 Mbps to computer labs, each of the hotel rooms, faculty rooms as well as
the administrative block. A bandwidth-rich intranet allows the students and the
faculty to interact in real time.

The internet connectivity is through a satellite-based 2 Mbps
digital link from Data Access and a 64-kbps leased line from BSNL. IMT is among
the few institutes in India to have a Campus Agreement with Microsoft for the
latest licensed software. The computer labs are equipped with top-of-the-line
IBM PCs and IBM Netfinity Servers. IMT has also hosted its website www.imt.edu.

"We will change the way education is imparted in
B-Schools", says a beaming Prof. TP Ghosh, dean (academics), IMT. The
Escorts lab at the institute, a centrally air-conditioned classroom,
accommodates 41 IBM Pentium 800/733 MHz machines for online learning.

The campus wide area network at IMT is based on Cisco
networking equipment including enterprise switches, workgroup switches, network
processors and network management tools, which allows interconnection and
management of networks in a department, a building or across a campus. The total
numbers of users in different buildings who have access to the network is 550.

The IMT network includes Cisco 6509, 4006 and 3548, which
support Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, Token-ring, FDDI, CDDI and ATM in a single
switch. The switches have fault tolerant capabilities, which is an essential
requirement for network centric computing environment. The connectivity to
end-users located in different departments/clusters will be accomplished using
Cisco 3548 series switches.

A Cisco 6509 switch has been installed at MDP, and Cisco 4006
switches have been installed at all the main buildings. Cisco 3548 switches are
there at all other locations. All these Switches are SNMP managed.

The switching modules helps in creating virtual LANs and
provides manifold performance increase as compared to the earlier shared bus
design. These modules help in isolating the total network traffic in small
groups, thus increasing the overall network throughput.

The solution provided by IBM includes a centralized
management station to control and monitor the IMT network. It provides an
integrated fault control, performance, configuration monitoring and management
of all SNMP-based devices including routers, bridges and switches.

AM Sherry, professor of
IT, and Nikhil Agarwal, research fellow,
information and communication management, IMT Ghaziabad