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